When Madail arched its back in pain, Sanguinius rose. He yanked the Blade Encarmine from the daemon’s shoulder. He pulled the Spear of Telesto from the monstrous body. The weapon burned in his grip, and the spearhead glowed white. He staggered back from the portal. The herald stood in the midst of the portal, neither in the temple nor in the Veritas Ferrum. Bestriding realities, enveloped by the storm of the warp, he should not have been visible any longer. He should have vanished the moment he entered the portal.

His silhouette was visible, bent over of the body of the daemon, his sword transfixing the Undivided. The edges of his outline trembled, as if the immaterium sought to eat away at his being. His stance over the writhing daemon was strong. He was motionless, already a symbol more than a warrior of flesh and bone. He would stand until his work was done.

‘We have little time,’ Sanguinius said to his brothers. ‘We must act while my son holds fate at this crossroads. We must honour his sacrifice.’ It felt like a crime, like a new form of treachery, to turn his eyes from the herald and the miracle of that silhouette in the portal. At the last moment, he witnessed the greater miracle. He saw the outline of wings spring from the herald’s shoulder.

A new angel was coming into being.

‘Son of my blood!’ Sanguinius cried. ‘Son of my hope!’ And the angel blazed with gold.

Sanguinius forced himself to turn and face the hall. The battle was over. The bodies of Blood Angels, Ultramarines and Dark Angels lay in the near approach to the portal, some mutilated obscenely by daemonic claws and sorcery, others crushed beneath the fallen stone. Despite the losses, the formations were intact. The wall of ceramite stood around the primarchs. The daemons here were finished. Their burned, shattered remains covered the visible portions of the floor. Smoke rose from liquefying masses. Screaming shapes half formed in the smoke, vanishing as it spread wider in the air.

The hall was a mass of rubble. The walls were buckling. Pillars had fallen, and the ones still standing were cracked, stone dust falling from the crevasses. There were ways through the wreckage, though. Where doorways were blocked by collapses, new breaches in the walls opened other passages. The tremors went on and on. The Delphos was shaking itself apart. It had failed in its last task, and the failure was destroying it.