Ahriman looked out for a second more, hearing the distant thump of rockets pounding the strongpoints on the hive’s north face. It had taken the Thunder Legions and the armies of Unity a month to break Anak, but when the end came it had been swift and seen hundreds of thousands dead in the turning of a single day.

+There is no time for this.+ Ignis’ sending cut through the psychometric vision, smearing its clarity. The smoke-hazed sky above froze, and the image of the hive blurred.

+There is time enough,+ replied Ahriman.

+There are approximately one million, seven hundred and forty sets of individual remains within this… facility. To extract psychometric impressions from them all will take–+

+I am aware of the factors involved,+ sent Ahriman.

+Then you know that it is not possible.+

+I do,+ replied Ahriman.

+Then why–+

+Because it matters.+ Ahriman straightened and looked up again at the image that he had pulled from the psy-resonance of one of the skulls lining the walls of the comet shrine. +In the end, everything is dust – but what we do before we become dust matters. What things were matters.+

+If you say so.+

Ahriman turned and the image collapsed into dust, and then folded into the reality of a room of bone. The central chamber of the comet shrine had already been stained by blood and battle. Bolt shells had ripped skulls from walls and torn carved femurs and vertebrae from the supports of the high, domed roof. The Imperial Fists had cleared away the debris when they had finished their purge.

Ahriman could feel the disgust of the sons of Dorn at what the Word Bearers had done to this place. Their anger lingered in the marks left by their bolters and blades. Those thoughts and emotions sang in the churn of the shrine’s past, present and future. It was created to remember the dead and the sacrifices they had made in life, but it had been remade into something else by the Word Bearers, something more terrible and profound than a place for dry bones and memories to rest.

In the decades of their stewardship, the Word Bearers had spilled blood in the comet shrine to honour their new-found gods. They had cut subtle sigils into its substance and saturated its shadows with malignancy. Threads of the warp had wormed into the bones, feeding on the memories of the dead. Whispered prayers had rooted in the gloom, locked inside the comet as it turned around the sun.