‘Of course not, but the connection was there, the door made. This path you have walked, this end that you serve is a later improvisation by Horus, a use of available assets.’

‘The message… the design in the warp… None of it was real.’

‘No, all of it was real,’ said the thing. It was looking at its arm like a child at a toy that it did not understand. It placed the tip of the glass against the skin. Black ran from the point. ‘The best lies are truth. There is a great design in the warp that is undoing the barrier between worlds and delivering the Warmaster to the heart of the Solar System. You are a part of it – a small part, but a part. Dorn could see the edges of it and he is disposed to trust messengers. Especially messengers bearing the truth, especially messengers he has trusted before.’ It looked up at her. Its eyes were red, blood-red, and smoking. ‘Especially you.’

The wind exploded through the windows around them. Shards of glass spun through the air, struck the thing that looked like Keeler, ripped through flesh and bone. And it was stepping forwards, skin and blood falling off it in the razor gale. The image of Nilus was underneath, tall and spindle-limbed.

And Mersadie saw herself again on the prison ship, alone at the controls of the shuttle, arriving on the Antius alone; talking to herself in her cabin; following the blood trail to find the enginseer hiding on the ship’s bridge.

She had been alone all the time, part of her mind locked from noticing that Nilus was never mentioned by anyone else, and never there when she wasn’t by herself.

‘It was all me…’ she said, feeling the shock roll through her as the creature got closer. Nilus was gone now too. It was a juddering shadow now.

‘We are here for you…’ said a voice, a voice that sounded like it was stitched together from a chorus of howls. She saw the red light blinking through the corridor of the Antius, the troopers who had come to kill her becoming red splatter and shreds as the shadow tore them apart.

‘It was not trying to kill me,’ she said. ‘It was–’

‘No, we are the end and the death, but not yours… Not yet…’

The flashes of red memory vanished.

Somewhere far off someone was shouting. She could hear the rattle of gunfire, and the boom of explosions.

It was dark, the night air frosted. A red, sickle moon curved just beyond the reach of bare branches. A pool of black water lay before her. Ice ran around its edge. A figure that looked like a wolf crossed with a skinned man rose from the water. Freezing water scattered from matted fur as it grew.

‘We are here,’ it said.

Seventh Fane of the Selenar, Luna