The herald ship surfaced from the night. Bit by bit her shape grew, spear-blade prow and gun-serrated flanks emerging from a lightless ocean. Shadows fumed from her substance like black ink dropped into water. The sun shone beyond her armoured bows. She had been birthed in the light of that sun but had not seen its light in over a century. The Emperor Himself had named her War Oath, and she still bore that name, but like the Legion that commanded her now, time had remade her. Ghost-light clung to her turrets and pooled in the scars that marked her flanks. The marks of the Imperial Fists had long been removed, and the wounds done to her at the Battle of Phall were now repaired, but signs of her one-time masters still lived in her bones.

Ezekyle Abaddon looked out at the void light through the armourglass dome of the War Oath’s observatory. Perched atop a slender tower on the ship’s command castle, its purpose had been to watch and chart the stars. A great stack of brass machinery hung from the dome’s apex, its lenses, dials and mirrors filmed with dust. Abaddon doubted that anyone had ever used the instruments; what need was there for such poetic flourishes on a warship equipped with sensors and long-range auspex? A neverborn hissed in his ears as it dissolved from the bones of the ship. A spectre with orb-eyes and a smile of needle teeth ran the tip of its claw down the observatory’s dome. It grinned. Abaddon met its gaze as it faded to nothing. The bright, distant jewel of Sol glowed through the fading shadow of its mouth. He caught a glimmer at the edge of his eyes, glanced around and saw the image of the sun shining from an octagonal silver mirror set at the centre of the chamber’s floor. He froze, eyes fixed on the circle of light floating beneath the surface of the dusty silver.

‘The gods bless us, and bring us to the light of truth,’ said Zardu Layak from where he knelt on the stone floor. Candles of human tallow burned with rainbow-streaked flames around him. Eight heaps of ash and blackened bone lay around the Word Bearer. They had been chosen from amongst Layak’s mortal flock and had burned where they knelt as the War Oath translated from the warp into reality. None of them had made a sound as they were engulfed. That silence had clenched the muscles along Abaddon’s jaw. Part of him had thought of ordering the Justaerin Terminators standing at the edge of the room to open fire and reduce the Word Bearers and their foul sacrifice to pulped meat and shredded armour.

Witch-frost cracked from Layak’s armour as he rose. The two red-armoured warriors that had stood guard over his vigil bowed their heads. Layak extended his hand and his staff coalesced into being in his grasp.