The Red Tear fired its cyclonic torpedoes. So did the Invincible Reason and so did the Gauntlet of Glory, and the Ultimus Mundi, and the Intolerant, and the Decimator. A superabundance of death burned through Davin’s atmosphere. Three Legions struck at the world with the fury of a last, desperate hope. They struck with anger, determined to see the cursed origin of Horus’ rebellion annihilated, erased forever from human sight.

They struck, because it was written they must, or on this day three fleets would perish, and then the Imperium would surely fall.

The cyclonic torpedoes hit the site of the temple. The Delphos and all its surroundings vanished, the initial blast flashing the region to dust. Then the more terrible wounds came, one after another. The entire surface of the planet turned molten. The core was hit by overlapping blast waves, creating a destructive force many times greater than the one that had broken Episimos III. Davin exploded. The bane of the Emperor’s dream hurled its death cry outwards. The shockwave and the burning fragments of its crust slammed through the near space. The last of the gunships, those that had not been able to dock with the retreating vessels, took frantic evasive action. Some fell to luck, or fate, and died with the planet. The blast strained the void shields of the great ships. The Dark Angels grand cruiser Culverin, its hull badly damaged by a strike from the Veritas Ferrum’s cannons, blew up. The fireball exploded from the bow, and the ship drove forwards, disintegrating, into its own flame. The entire combined fleet rode the wave of annihilation, ships in a storm. They were tossed by the violent ocean of forces they had unleashed. Some sank. Most survived.

The torpedo salvo caused two explosions. The destruction of Davin was the weaker of the two. The greater blast did not touch the vessels of the Imperium. The souls aboard them felt its passage, and they witnessed it. Sanguinius gasped as the wave passed through the Vyssini. It felt like a huge severing. Fragments of time, present and to come, bled and died, and he sensed a falling away of possibilities. Enormous destruction and the final creation of a single future were one and the same.