And she saw that none of it mattered. This was the end. Dorn could win a battle and Samus would still be there, all around them, a shadow that could not be shed. The warp was pouring into it, sustaining it and remaking it endlessly. The daemons would keep coming no matter how many fell, and the Imperial Fists would die one by one in a fight with an enemy that could not be defeated.

‘That is the truth…’ said the voice behind her. ‘Humanity can never be anything but slaves to us. We are made by you, and while you live we walk beside you. Mortals cannot win a war with what is eternal. What you have helped bring into being here, Mersadie Oliton, is just an example of that truth.’

‘What…’ she began, hearing her voice echo flat in this realm of thoughts. ‘What do you want of me? Why do you show me… this?’

A dry chuckle.

‘You are our gate, but a gate is just an idea – your mind our way into being. Your memories, remembrancer, are our shape and power. Is it not fair for you to see what you bring into being?’

She saw again the cascade of vision, and the mockery of Ignace Karkasy’s face in the grin of a creature as it plunged a rusted sword into a crewman’s neck; saw shreds of Keeler’s burning picts spin in the fire-wind as a fuel line ignited on a machine deck.

‘All mine…’ she said.

‘Yes, all yours…’ said the voice. ‘And now… another relic of the past comes to show you his true face.’

The visions vanished, and Mersadie saw where she truly was.

Massak felt the warp pour into the chamber, furnace-hot and ink-black. Cracks formed in the air as a thing that flickered between forms stepped out of the edge of sight. The corpses hanging in the air burst into a blaze. Molten fat and burning blood spun from them, falling up and congealing into arms, tentacles, eyes, chitin, fur and quills. Massak drew on his will but he could feel the currents of the warp coiling around him, squeezing, suffocating even as he tried to reshape it with his thoughts.

He saw Dorn raise his sword, bloodied but unbowed.

Samus looked at the primarch with eyes that held clusters of dying stars. And it lashed forwards, the world hissing its name as it reached for the Praetorian.

‘No…’ Massak cried. ‘No, lord!’ And he was stumbling forwards, his axe in his hand. ‘Lord Dorn!

Archamus was at his shoulder, firing without pause. Warp-formed shapes exploded.

‘He cannot win this,’ gasped Massak at the Huscarl. Archamus flicked a glance at him. The front and side of his helm was a ruin of shredded ceramite.

‘We cannot–’

‘This is only a part of it,’ Massak shouted back. ‘A single hand of many. It is all around us!’