‘Sanguinius,’ said the Lion, ‘we have been deluded again. Both of us.’ For the first time since he had arrived on Davin, he spoke without anger. He was grave. The altar and what it meant weighed on him too. ‘The Delphos is dead. Davin is dead. You were wrong to bring us here. I was wrong to believe in the imperative of destruction.’ He sighed. ‘This world was corrupt. Now it is a corpse. What happened here is reason enough to destroy it, but there is no military reason to do so. It will not get us any closer to Terra.’

‘You were the first to show us the way here,’ said Sanguinius. ‘The road to Terra led to Pandorax, and from Pandorax to here.’

‘I know,’ said the Lion. ‘And the means to breaking through the Ruinstorm must lie in this system. It is simply not here, on Davin. Can’t you see, brother? Davin’s history is done. All that would ever happen here, has already happened. This world corrupted Horus, and its population left to spread more ruin. Its task is done.’

‘An entire world bent to a specific purpose,’ Guilliman said, his face troubled.

‘We have seen enough to know such things must be true,’ said Sanguinius.

‘Tasked by whom?’ Guilliman asked. ‘By what?’ There was pain on his face, and he held up a hand before Sanguinius answered. ‘I know. I resist the idea that we are at the mercy of gods. I resist them. I will not abandon reason without a fight. Horus had a choice. All of us do.’

‘Do we?’ said Curze, his tone a reptilian mix of bitterness, amusement and despair. ‘Do you? The future is written, Roboute. You can shake the bars of our cage all you want. They will not bend.’

‘Our problem is not whether fate has brought us here or not,’ said the Lion. ‘Our problem is what to do next.’ To Guilliman he said, ‘If there is nothing here, then we must consider the shadow we saw in the necrosphere. The enemy must be hiding in the shell.’

‘I had hoped our presence here would lure it out.’

‘We have learned otherwise. We must hope it is not too late to change our deployment. I will halt our landings. We must leave.’

‘No,’ said Sanguinius. ‘Our task here is not done.’

‘How can you be so fixated on this distraction?’ the Lion demanded, exasperated. ‘The enemy is the one you saw first, the one you fought.’

Sanguinius circled the room. ‘There is something we are missing,’ he said. As he walked, he looked at the walls, the ceiling and the sides of the altar. Everything was old, eroded, dead. The traces of runic murals were little more than patches. They did not even hint at what forms the runes might once have had. The power that had circled the room, a serpent on stone, was gone.