Loken paced through the dark. The lights had failed and he had discarded his ruined helm. The world was grey now, its colours drained into shadows. He had heard the sound of gunfire in the distance several times, and had killed things that had taken the flesh of the dying.

‘In such visage, they turned upon their kin and gnawed then upon their bloody bones.’ The old words of The Chronicles of Ursh rose from a long-forgotten crack in his memory.

He had failed, just as he had failed before. He had not seen. He had failed his new oaths just as he had failed the old. He had failed her.

Cerberus… The old name, the old pull of instincts, which had followed him from madness, drew him on through the dark. He was close. It was close. He could feel it. It was right; Samus was right. It had always been there, the man beside him. The shadow that never left him. But now he would end it. The end and the death for shadow and man alike…

On he went, on through the dark to an end he could not see.

Strike Frigate Persephone, Inner System Gulf

Traitor ships poured from the warp rift towards the Phalanx. Thrusters fired across its vast hull, shaking the vessel as it fell out into the void beyond Terra’s gravity. Her sisters and escorts were gone, burned from being, or left behind. Daemons gnawed her skin, peeling away bites, threading her hide like parasites in diseased meat.

Torpedoes began to strike her. First one, then a dozen. Then more, and more. Titan-sized warheads struck home, and ripped stone and metal away. Swarms of daemons spun and laughed as they tumbled into the void with the debris. The great ship trembled, its shields misfiring. The traitor ships came on, accelerating towards their prey with hunger. There were ships of all of Horus’ greatest vassal Legions amongst them: the Deathchain of the World Eaters, Sovereign Blade of the Emperor’s Children, and Olympian of the Iron Warriors, and dozens more.

Sigismund watched them close on the stricken Phalanx.

‘They have not seen us,’ growled Rann.

‘Attack speed,’ said Sigismund. ‘All guns and all blades ready. Forwards.’

Rogal Dorn duels the daemon of the storm.

Twenty-one

Now you see
When swords will not cut
A story to tell

The Phalanx, Inner System Gulf

‘Now you see,’ said the voice behind Mersadie. ‘There is no way out.’

And she did see. She saw the frozen moment as Rogal Dorn swung his blade to meet the claws of the daemon for a second time. She saw the traitors closing on the Phalanx and the few wounded ships of Sigismund’s fleet plunge into them firing, lashing out with desperate ferocity. She saw daemons stalking the Phalanx’s deep holds and machine spaces as Imperial Fists cut them down with bolter and blade.