Twilight had fallen. There was no wind. The roar of engines and the tromp of boots against stone seemed thin, unable to crack the stillness of Davin. The Delphos was a colossal octagon, built from monolithic blocks of red stone. A tower rose from each corner. A dome covered the central mass. The spires of two of the towers had fallen to the esplanade, and the dome was cracked. A fissure, gaping darkness, ran from the crown of the dome to its base. The primarchs stood beside a wide basin. It had been a pool, but it was dry now. The once-smooth sides of the basin were flaking and pitted, and the bottom was covered in a thick layer of dust. A canal running along the base of the temple wall had once fed the basin. It too now held only dust and crumbled rock.

Tall columns ran on either side of the staircase to the esplanade. They were eroded, as if ferocious sandstorms had blasted their features away. A few isolated patches of gold scale were still visible on the serpents that coiled around the pillars. The sockets of their eyes were deep and hollow. The serpents gaped with blind ferocity at the army below.

Two colossal iron doors formed the entrance to the temple. They were rusted. Their engraving, of two serpents entwined around a spreading tree, was worn down, its details fading into the metal’s decay. The doors were open. The left had dropped from its great hinges. It leaned against the entrance, a corpse fossilised in the act of falling. Great sconces dotted the esplanade, their flames long extinguished. Everything was cold. Everything was still.

The dust was red, the stone was red, but in the gloom of the evening, all was grey. Overhead, the lights of the fleet glimmered. They were the only stars above Davin.

‘So much silence,’ Guilliman said. ‘The galaxy burns because of this world, but there are not even embers here any longer.’

‘These ruins mark its history,’ said Sanguinius. ‘I feel its weight. I feel the corruption that shaped every stone. Don’t you?’

‘That history is finished,’ the Lion said, but he was looking intently at the ruins, as if studying them for the secrets they held within the rock.

‘Our presence here begins another chapter,’ Sanguinius told him.

‘I’m not sure.’ Guilliman looked up at the pervasive grey of the necrosphere. ‘Histories have died here.’

‘Ours will not. The Imperium’s will not.’

‘We risk our histories if the true threat is in the necrosphere and this landing is a distraction.’

‘It isn’t,’ Sanguinius said. He faced the temple’s broken gate. ‘Look at the decay,’ he said.

‘What of it?’ the Lion asked.

‘This was a place of worship when it was pacified. You saw the records from before Horus’ arrival. This is a ruin, but the early surveys said it was intact.’

‘You think it decayed since then?’