‘No,’ said the voice behind her, ‘perhaps not, but you have been very helpful…’

She saw herself then. She was walking down one of the corridors of the ship. She was still there, still whole, but darkness unfolded from her shadow. The walls were blackening as she passed, tapestries and banners burning, stone cracking as ash danced in the air. Daemons were all around her, floating, spinning and gliding, a court following its queen. She looked old, her skin cracked parchment over a skull, her right eye boiled away, her left eye a pit of red fire. A ragged shadow walked at her side, its hands hanging low, its smile an arc of bloodied teeth.

‘You have made this last moment possible,’ said the voice. ‘As the storm reaches into reality, you are a lightning rod and we are the thundercloud. All you needed to do was be here and we could find a path. You are our tether, our door, our messenger. Your thoughts are our way in…’

‘They will turn you back.’

‘Do you mean Rogal Dorn?’ chuckled the voice, and she felt warm, rank breath on the back of her neck. ‘This is not a matter of arms and might, or did you think that a hero shouting on the seashore can truly turn the ocean back?’ She felt the laugh shiver through her. ‘Watch…’ said the voice.

Massak formed his mind into fire. The thought flooded him. He held it still for a second, tasted smoke in his mouth, felt the flames roar through his sight, consuming it, blinding him. The sound of Archamus and his Huscarls firing, of the warp creatures howling, all of it faded. The fire was everything. He held its image, and felt its power grow millisecond by millisecond.

‘Massak, we can’t get through!’ The voice was Archamus’, close but distant, dimmed by the voice of the fire.

He let go.

A white-hot inferno rushed from his outstretched hand. His view through his helm dimmed. Warp creatures in the fire’s path boiled to slime. He strode forwards, panning the flames across the space before him. Daemon flesh unravelled to smoke and embers. Archamus and his Huscarls followed, with his two brother Librarians. Lightning arced from their swords as they cut daemons from the air.

Massak felt his will fight to control the power flowing through him. He could see the inner blast door to the bridge just ten strides away. It was no more than a gaping hole of torn and fused metal.

As he ran forwards, bubbles of colour formed and burst at the edge of his sight. The ether was burrowing through his mind. Cold sweat poured from his skin inside his armour.

‘It is… everywhere,’ called one of his brothers. Massak could feel the same truth. The warp was pouring through the ship, twisting through its substance, grasping it like a claw.