Brother Massak, former Librarian of the Imperial Fists Legion, knew he was dreaming. He had spent the last seven years in the same chamber he knelt in now. He and his three brothers had seen almost no one else in that time. Their armour, their weapons and the silence of their minds were their only concern. Time had become divisions of equipment maintenance, combat practice and meditation, repeated over and over again.

The clash of axe and sword, the circle of lapping powder over yellow-and-blue ceramite, the slow exchange of breath…

On and on.

This was their duty now: to wait for a day that might never come, and to keep their minds locked from the powers that had been their craft of war.

In other Legions, the Emperor’s ban on the use of psykers had seen Librarians returned to other duties, trusted to abstain from using their powers. But that was in other Legions. The VII did not adhere to rules in spirit alone. So Massak and his brothers had remained in this chamber on the Phalanx, wrapped in silence within and without.

But still he dreamed.

They always came back, sliding into his moments of rest. And recently, the dream images had shaken his meditation even when he was awake.

He walked through caves of stone and through the darkness of forests he had never seen. Stars wheeled and turned. He saw the faces of creatures that were neither human nor beast but both. He saw a woman walking through the passages of a ship he did not recognise. He saw a door open…

His eyes opened. He was sweating, moisture beading his skin beneath his robe. His brothers’ eyes opened a second later, looking at him from across the meditation circle. Cadus, the youngest and lowest in rank, was swaying where he knelt. His left pupil was grossly dilated, the right a pinprick.

‘The tides of the warp… are… growing stronger…’ said Cadus.

‘Turn your minds inwards, my brothers,’ said Massak. ‘What passes beyond is not our concern. Our oaths are to endure and that is what we shall do.’

‘Do you feel that?’ said Sollon. The venerable Codicier moved his hand to the deck beside him. ‘The Phalanx is moving.’

Massak closed his eyes.

‘Return to the centre, brothers. Our eyes gaze inwards. Our thoughts are the foundations of our beings. Our duty the life we lead…’

Silence fell again, and Massak felt the patterns of meditative quieting spiral his awareness away, down and down to stillness. He would wait. But part of him – a part that had waited and listened while the storm rose in the spirit realm – knew that the dreams would come again.

Battle-barge Monarch of Fire, Uranus high orbit