Fire swallowed the tip of the armada. A ship died, and then another, and another. Torpedoes punched through armour and exploded. Metal skin became shrapnel. Black vacuum became bright flame. Abaddon watched and heard the oaths of his Legion brothers fill his ears, their last signals arriving seconds after the light of their deaths.

‘Martyrdom…’ said Layak from his position on the bridge’s command dais. Abaddon kept his eyes on the sea of fire and Luna waiting beyond. He blinked.

He was gasping, amnion-fluid pouring from his mouth as he struggled for air. The world around him was black. He vomited and tasted iron on his tongue.

‘Do you wish this to be the end?’ came a voice. It rolled and echoed, bouncing off bare stone.

Abaddon became still. The voice was not one of the gene-witches. It was strong in a way that made ice run down his spine. He had been in the black caverns for weeks, maybe months. He had tried to hold on to time but it had fled from him as he bled, and grew, and felt the scalpel arms and needle saws do their work. And between the flesh work, he floated in a sea of images and voices as the hypno-units deluged his mind with learning. When he slept, it was in a lightless pool, drowning in oxygen-infused amnion while his body healed and accepted what it was becoming. Every time he had woken, it had been to the grey and silver presences of the Selenar dragging him up from the water. This was the first time he had woken to pitch-dark.

‘Who are you?’ he managed as a shiver rolled through him. The warm fluid was cold rather than warm, its sheen like ice on his skin.

‘You killed your father,’ said the voice, ‘or that is what I have been told.’

Abaddon went still, trying to feel what direction it was coming from.

‘I did,’ he said, and heard the words echo and re-echo in the blackness.

‘Are you ashamed of that?’

‘No,’ said Abaddon. ‘He was less than a man.’

‘He was a king.’

‘A crown means nothing.’

Laughter, warm and rich in the dark.

‘And what does have meaning, son of Cthonia?’ asked the voice.

‘Truth.’

‘Quite right,’ said the voice.

A pause in which he had just heard his breath slowing and the soft ripple of the pool around him.

‘Who are you?’ asked Abaddon again.

‘I am the one who has come to bring you illumination.’