The underworld war on Calth had been raging for years before he and Phael Rabor had encountered Toc Derenoth. The ascended Word Bearer had fought on since the destruction of Kurtha Sedd, killing Ultramarines without rest. But his transformation had also been a continuous evolution, an ever more complex fusion of the daemonic and the human. He had communed more and more deeply with the gods. And he had gone deeper and deeper into the darkness of the planet.

He had touched the octed.

He had learned.

And in the end, through him, Quor Vondor and Phael Rabor had completed their penance too. They had brought their forces to the octed in the purity of worship and devotion to Chaos. They were present without thought of ambition or rivalries.

The octed tore open the night of stone, and swallowed the devout. And in the warp, the celebrant appeared. It was a being of the immaterium, yet Quor Vondor had seen something of his own calling in it. The celebrant was a Chaplain, though of a kind and of an order far beyond anything human.

The celebrant brought them a mission. Quor Vondor still wondered if the mission was a sign that he and the others with them had purged the weakness of their failure, or if the gauntlet of Calth had instead been the proving ground. Perhaps it had been the fire through which he and Phael Rabor had been destined to walk so they might reach this point, this moment, when at last they would unsheathe the athames they had been given on Davin and drive them home.

The spark of Guilliman’s vessels grew brighter. The two ships became visible. They were rushing in, as if eager for the doom awaiting them. The ships flashed.

‘Torpedo launches,’ Phael Rabor said. ‘A sound strategy, trying to break up our formation with a hard run.’

‘It would be,’ said Quor Vondor. He looked at Toc Derenoth once more. The Unburdened had withdrawn into himself. Shadows gathered around his monstrous form. He was feeding on the ritual performed by the faithful throughout the ship. His lidless eyes burned with the intensity of his concentration. He was the conduit of what was coming. His role was as precise as the one given to Quor Vondor and Phael Rabor. They would wield the blades. Toc Derenoth would bring them to Guilliman.

The Unburdened had the power to do this because the De ­Profundis had also earned a gift from the celebrant. It had been badly damaged in the battle over Calth. It had limped out of the system, and existed as a raider in the years that followed. Its injuries grew worse, more and more of its crew died, until at last it was a husk, its machine-spirit raging impotently in the void. The warp had taken it at last, and its faithful service to the Word was rewarded with this last mission.