‘I’ll revise it.’

‘See that you do.’

They reached the shadows and the curve. The corridor stretched several hundred yards in darkness. Sparks from ruptured electrical conduits created a feeble glow around the De Profundis splinter at the far end. When Guilliman rounded the corner, rasping, inhuman bellowing erupted from inside the shard.

The darkness around the splinter deepened, and the wind grew stronger. The shadows began to bubble and smoke. Cracks appeared in the decks and walls spreading outwards from the shard. The thing inside was taking apart the reality of the Samothrace.

Guilliman ran. The Invictus guards and Prayto charged forwards with him. They hurtled down the corridor, Arbitrator and bolters sending a mass-reactive barrage ahead of them. There were no visible targets, but they had to be there.

This is a trap, Guilliman thought as he pounded deeper into the shadows. The enemy knows I have to respond. The threat is real and I must counter it, so this is when they will spring the ambush.

He understood that the ships of three Legions, and the void war in its totality, were the means to the end that would come now. I should be flattered, he thought.

The shadows were thick as pitch. They pressed against Guilliman, trying to slow him. Even with his enhanced vision, he couldn’t see more than a couple of paces ahead. The spreading red cracks illuminated nothing except themselves. The splinter seemed to hunch lower, melding itself into the fabric of the Samothrace. Guilliman cut through it with Incandor. He shot it as though it were flesh. The Ultramarines’ gunfire hit home. Dying Word Bearers materialised from the dark. Their brothers, giving up on futile concealment, retaliated. Guilliman took the return fire seriously. He snapped off shots at every muzzle flash. His focus flicked back and forth from the attacks in the blackness to the spreading disintegration and the splinter at its centre. Neither was the true assault. Either could be its source.

On his right, Prayto stretched an arm. A blast of psychic lightning tore through the darkness. It burned through the gorget of a Word Bearer and set his head on fire, but still the darkness intensified.

The roars from inside the splinter grew louder. They were mocking, triumphant. As Guilliman reached the shard, two squads of Word Bearers erupted from the dark. They surrounded him, attacking with chainswords and powerblades. He parried and slashed with Incandor. He exploded helms and skulls with the Arbitrator. Gorod and the others cut into the Word Bearers, trapping them between ­Guilliman’s cold rage and his bodyguards’ lethal precision.

This is still not the real attack, Guilliman thought. He plunged the Gladius Incandor through ceramite marked with spidery runes of such density they seemed to crawl. He drew the blade to the right, cutting armour and muscle, disembowelling the traitor. The front of the shard was open, and he moved inside, leaving the struggle at the entrance behind.