'I have passed it, yes. It is a circle of skulls with a crack in the rock, no more remarkable than any of the Krakgard's sights. I paid it no attention,' said the primarch. 'This is a place for gothi's business.'

'Often the mysterious is hidden in plain sight. Syrtyr's Door is active only on this day,' Kva shifted in the chair. 'In one respect, it is a volcanic vent of unusual properties. A geological oddity. In another respect, it is a door to the Underverse. What do you, oh son of the Emperor, believe it to be?'

Russ stared at the hole which led to the glowing heart of the world. He understood the volcanic processes which could lead to this unusual phenomenon well enough. The rational explanation. Then he looked to his gothi, and the skulls and the runes, and he knew in his heart what it truthfully was.

'It is the entrance to the Underverse,' he said.

Kva nodded. 'There is ice, there is fire, water, and air, and spirit…' He pointed his staff at the glacier, the vent, the tarn, the sky and Leman Russ. 'And there is earth.' At the pronouncement of this word, the twin guardians lowered Kva to the ground. The feet of his chair touched the stone. He drew strength from it and his disability seemed less pronounced. 'The elements of Fenris are together in balance in this place. You embody its soul. Only you can make this journey. It can only be done now, and it can only be done with our help.'

He gave two sharp rattles of the bones on his staff. The gothi arranged themselves into a circle between the poles and their necklaces of skulls. Russ stared at Kva. No trace of a Librarian of the Legiones Astartes was evident in this man, nor in any of the others. They were pagan priests, rune casters, ice shamans.

Kva cracked his staff upon the stone three times. On the fourth strike, the other gothi began to hammer the butts of their staves into the ground. In time with their slow rhythm, they chanted. First one began to sing, then the next, and so on until all seven of them repeated hypnotic phrases timed with the striking of their staffs that overlaid and interwove with each other as intricately as knotwork.