Blood and pain and terror spilled into the warp and flowed inwards, cascading down through the patterns of old rituals and beliefs like the waters of a broken dam. It was all Ahriman could do to hold his thoughts steady in the enumerations. He felt the War Oath strike the Ring of Luna, saw the fire billow across the moon’s surface. He tasted blood. Across his connection with Menkaura he saw the symbols of the Solar System slow in their orbits. Blood was filling the crystal sphere marked with the Lunar sigil. The other spheres were glowing with flame and shadow.

Everything had been for this. The assaults planned by Perturabo, the strike of the fleets deep in-system – all had taken ground, killed, weakened defences. But more than that, they had formed this alignment, this moment of ritual power written in the planets and stars.

+Now,+ he sent. And in the caverns of the comet shrine, the Word Bearers who remained put their knives to the throats of the psykers chained to the floor. And as the mortals’ death screams poured into the warp, the torrent they formed met the flood-tide already surging in.

Ahriman withdrew his mind, and had a second to feel his breath gasp ice from his lungs as the gunship accelerated away.

The comet vanished.

Time blinked.

Night fell to blinding light.

Sound.

Voices.

Night.

Across the Solar System, every being felt a tremor in their soul, like something stood behind them but inhaling through their mouths.

Then the sun went dark.

Nineteen

Trust the messenger
The man beside you
Fane of rebirth

The Phalanx, Inner System Gulf

The grey ship docked with the Phalanx as it broke Terran orbit. Huscarls surrounded Mersadie and Loken as they crossed the docking limb. All around them the Phalanx trembled as it pushed into open space and towards its enemy.

Mersadie recognised some of the sights they passed, statues of heroes, images inlaid in stone, floors of black-and-white marble. She had been here before, years ago, after they had fled Isstvan on the Eisenstein. She remembered walking through the…

Vengeful Spirit, Maggard and the soldiers all around her. The sound of the ship, the silence that followed them as they went further. Something was wrong. She was…

…walking through the Phalanx, Loken at her side, a wall of Imperial Fists around her.

‘Dorn…’ she said, feeling the word rise from within. She felt disconnected. Something deep in her mind was screaming that it was almost too late, that she was almost out of time. There were things moving in the root of her memory and mind, vast unseen gears turning. ‘I must reach Dorn…’ Her feet were still moving. A buzzing had started in her head that might have been static or water falling down onto rock or wind blowing through a dry valley filled with skulls…

‘We are almost there,’ replied Loken.