MESSAGE #3314157.883 AUTHENTICATED: ALCAEUS, F. (Captain, XIII Legion) RECEIVED AS NARROW-BEAM DATA PACKET AT VERIDIAN MANDEVILLE RELAY STATION TERTIUS, on 7854007.M31 VIA SOTHAN ORBITAL. Have arrived ahead of schedule. Forward recon elements currently initiating planetfall. Orbital augurs confirm presence of greenskin forces though numbers are significantly lower than earlier tactical projections. Require confirmation of mission parameters for Ghaslakh campaign and have received no reply to previous transmissions. Awaiting response. ‘The bullet that killed a king, and murdered a generation; what was it when it was metal in the ground, when it was one amongst many, clinking in a box, shining like so many others? Was it the death of millions then? Did those that touched it feel blood on their hand? Did they know what it would become?’ – from a sealed report to the High Lords of Terra, author unknown If you were alive then I would forgive you for what is to come. Your end seems certain but it is not. If I believed the future could not be changed then I would think everything already lost to darkness and the laughter of atrocity. How can I forgive what might not be? So instead of forgiveness I will give you truth, I will tell you of how you came to be, and how you passed through the hands of history. You have no eyes to see, so I will see for you, and tell you of yourself – of those that held you and how they ended. I will tell you of things that you cannot know… First You are only a few minutes old. You came from the loose chalk as a blackened lump, and were formed by a hundred blows of stone on stone. The sun beat down upon you as your shape emerged like a face rising though dark water. You are no more than a black spike of flint, edges tapering to a point like a willow leaf. You are sharp, and the light splinters as it catches your edge. A shadow falls over you, and your maker looks up to see the stranger standing against the sky at the top of the chalky incline. Your maker has a name, but time will forget it. He is insignificant in all ways but one: he made you. A cloak of black and grey fur hangs from the stranger’s shoulders. Other than the cloak he is naked, his skin smooth, as if the hair has been scraped away, or perhaps never grown at all. Soot tattoos cover his body – rows of straight lines marching down his arms and thorny spirals winding over his chest and face. He has come a long way under the hot gaze of the sun and the cold eye of the moon; not eating, never drinking, and always seeking. His name is Gog, and he knows things that can only be seen in the mirror of still water, or in the dance of shadows upon a cave wall. He has seen many more winters than is his due and he walks without fear of the night. Your maker’s grey eyes meet Gog’s bloodshot blue stare. A dry wind blows into the lengthening moment. Sunlight winks on other shards of flint scattered in the pale dust. Gog’s eyes flick from your maker to you. His gaze is fever-hot. Your maker takes a step back and his foot sends a scatter of stones down into the dry stream bed below. He holds Gog’s stare. Gog leaps down the slope. Your maker is ready and jumps backwards. Gog lands on all fours like a beast. You slash out and kiss only the air, as Gog scrabbles down the incline, quick as a lizard. Your maker takes another step back, but his foot turns upon a broken lump of flint and he stumbles. Gog jumps from the ground, his hands extended like claws. You slice into Gog’s arm. Blood falls from your edge as you rip free of skin and muscle. Blood. Your edge tastes the salt and iron of life for the first time. Your maker never intended you as a crude weapon. He made you because he is afraid of the red in his spit and the wheezing in his chest. He made you so that he could give the lives of animals back to the earth, so that they could die in his place, that the gods might let him live. You were made for ritual, for sacrifice. You were meant to be more than just a knife. Your maker hits the ground, and Gog lands on top of him. White dust and rock shards spill from them as they tumble down the slope. Gog has his hands around your maker’s throat, and is crooning in the voice of a wild cat. Blood runs down his arm, liquid-red against powder-white. Your maker is on his side, and you are pinned in his fist against the ground. Gog’s eyes are wide as he squeezes, his tongue flicking over cracked lips. Your maker tries to strike with his free hand, but his wrist has broken and his fingers are twisted like trodden twigs. Gog laughs as they slap weakly at his face and for an instant his weight shifts. Your maker twists, you come free. Your point flashes towards Gog’s ribs. You stop. Gog looks at you. He holds your maker’s wrist in both hands. Your maker is gasping, the pressure on his throat gone, but he thrashes with panic. Gog mutters something that sounds like the buzz of insect wings, and then pushes downwards. You punch under your maker’s jaw and up into his skull. Thick, warm lifeblood gushes over you. Your maker twitches for a moment and then lies still. Your sharpness is a murder’s edge now. Gog stands. He is smeared and spattered. Blood is seeping from your maker’s throat and mouth. It clots and beads in the chalk dust. Gog raises you to his eyes. His breath coils with scents of perfumed smoke. The pattern of blood on your surface has a meaning for him. The wind whispers in his ears, and tells him that it is pleased with his gift. He turns away from the blood soaking into the white ground. Flies are already swarming over your fallen maker, and his flesh is already turning to black ooze under the sun with unnatural speed. Gog walks away. You go with him, held in his red hand. Second You age in the passing of seasons and in the blood that you spill. You kill many, and maim many more. You forget your maker’s hand, and know only the touch of the tattooed man, of Gog. He carries you close, never out of reach, but never drawn for a mundane cut. You have significance for him. He ages but does not grow old. Men change, cities rise and fall, and the tattooed man remains. Other men call their gods by many different names, but he has learned all of them and knows that they are false. The truth whispers to him in the shadows cast by fires, and he does not need to give that truth a name. Gog serves kings, betrays saints and steals secrets while bearing faces which are also lies. He travels across mountains and oceans and down the long slope of time. He is hunted but never caught. You go with him, never lost even in flight or defeat. Your edge gains notches; your handle becomes black and polished with blood and endless use. At last you reach a broken tower in a rain-shrouded land. Gog wakes from a dream to the sound of thunder and the splash of hooves in mud. He is on his feet even as his eyes snap open. Rain is pouring through the roof of the tower. Time has taken the ragged cloak from his back, and replaced it with scarred leather and black ring-mail. He has a sword in his hand. You wait at his waist, held in a sheath of tanned skin. His eyes dart between holes in the tower’s stone walls. His armour is heavy, sodden and cold against his skin. His breath is ragged. He is afraid. He has never faced an enemy that could harm him; he knows too much, but he can no longer hear the voice of the wind. The storm roars around the tower walls, but it has no voice – its sound is silent to his soul. He calls out, but the wind and shadows remain mute. He is powerless. A thunderbolt blinks white light through the cracks in the tower walls. Gog can hear the sound of clinking metal even over the drumming of the rain. The tower has only one door, and its wood is rotten. The light of burning torches flickers through the gaps in the door’s planks. Gog screams for the night and storm to aid him, but no answer comes. The rotten door bursts inwards. The dancing light of torches spills into the tower. Gog screams as he lunges at the first figure to come through the door. It is a knight. Polished metal and silver mail cover the man’s muscled body and a closed helm hides his face. Gog’s first strike staggers the knight, and the second glides through the helm’s eye slit. He falls in a clatter of steel. Blood mingles with rain upon the silver of his breastplate. Gog shouts in triumph and fear. A second knight comes through the door and swings a spiked mace. Gog dodges back and snarls. A third knight follows, carrying a broad-headed spear to stand at his comrade’s side. Gog draws you, curling you in his left hand. The knight lunges with his spear. Gog pivots at the last second, and the spear’s tip grazes the mail over his gut. Gog hacks down with his sword, and the knight’s right leg crumples, his head arching up to expose his neck. You stab into a gap between plate, leather and mail. You rip out, scattering blood that looks almost black in the gloom. Thunder rolls overhead. The remaining knight shouts a challenge and spins his mace – beyond the door wait more metal-clad figures, their pitch torches guttering in the storm. Gog knows that his masters have deserted him, that he will die here. He laughs. The knight with the mace brings it up to strike. ‘Hold.’ The voice is not loud but it rises over the shriek of the wind and the hammer of rain. The knight with the mace freezes, and Gog sees his chance. He stabs at the knight’s face, but a sword blade meets Gog’s lunge and turns it aside. Another figure has entered the tower. Gold armour-plates cover the figure from his throat to his feet. A cloak of scarlet and orange ripples at his back. He wears no helm, though a crown of silver leaves and golden feathers circles his dark hair above a lean face. The drawn sword in the figure’s hand is flame-touched silver. Gog looks into the crowned figure’s eyes, for a second they are the green of the sea. He knows those eyes, though he has never seen them before. Lightning strikes somewhere close by, and in the eye-blink of brightness the golden figure’s eyes turn liquid black. Only now does Gog hear the wind’s voice again; it is faint, as if it is shouting from a great distance. It is screaming with rage, calling out for blood. Gog shivers. He feels pressure building in his skull. He grips you tighter in his off-hand, and mutters a sound that cracks his teeth. The blood on your blade begins to hiss and steam. Gog’s shadow is crawling across the floor. The rain begins to fall as hail. The crowned figure is utterly still, his face as unforgiving as carven marble. Gog’s sword slashes for him, but the figure meets the blow as the thunder rolls, and Gog’s blade shatters. Sharp fragments of steel spin through the air. Gog turns without pausing – you sweep out towards the crowned figure and your edge scores across the gold. Your tip finds a join between two plates and punches forwards. Gog roars with triumph. In that instant, your point catches on flawless silver ring-mail. The crowned figure speaks a single word that rolls with the thunder’s echo. Gog falls to his knees with a crack of shattering bones. You almost fall from his fingers, as his hands grope at the rain-slick flagstones. The figure looks down at him, drops of rain catching in the chalices, feathers and roses engraved upon the golden armour. He turns his sword so that it is pointing down at Gog’s neck. You feel Gog’s fingers tighten on your handle. He can still hear the distant screams of the wind – the voices are calling for blood, for an offering, for a final payment in exchange for his unnaturally long life. Gog knows that he has only one last blow to land, and that he must give a death to the voices beyond the shadows. The sword above Gog twitches. You move first, plunging up through Gog’s throat and into his brain. He looks up at the crowned figure with cold, dead eyes and then slumps sideways. The figure lowers his unbloodied blade, as rot spreads across the dead flesh – the delayed ruin of a stretched life coming to claim its due. Gog’s skull begins to crumble around you. Muscle, blood and brain turns to foul jelly. The crowned man watches the body dissolve. His expression is unreadable. He knows that something has been stolen from his victory, but does not know what. After a long moment he turns and walks from the broken tower. A circle of knights wait for him, holding wind-rippled torches. One of the knights bows his head. ‘We will have to wait for the storm to pass before we set the fires, my liege,’ says the knight. The crowned figure shakes his head and walks on. A pillar of lightning reaches down from the clouds above and strikes the ruined masonry, thunder mingling with the scream of exploding wood and cracking stone. The knights shield their faces, but they will carry the after-image of the thunderbolt in their eyes for many hours. You feel the touch of the lightning, but it does not break you. You lie serenely in the tower’s ruin, as shattered stone and embers bury you and the storm rolls on in the sky above. Third You sleep beneath the earth. You dream in a bed of ashes. Only poisoned plants grow on the ground above you, and men shun the heap of broken rock that was once a tower. The bone of your handle rots; roots curl around your blade like crooked fingers. Floods spread and drain. Cities rise in wood and stone, and end in fire. Wars churn the ground to mud, and blood soaks down to disturb your fitful slumber. Furnaces and factories darken the sky with smoke: iron and the turning wheel remaking the world. Men discover new truths and forget the old ways. Kingdoms and empires spread and contract. Seas and oceans drain to basins of dust. The heavens are conquered and the gods found to be absent from the firmament. Night falls. The fears of the past crawl out once more from the dark. People huddle close around the cooling coals of civilisation. The hoped-for dawn becomes a joke chuckled by the wind as it blows through the bones of dead continents. Then – just when it seems that it was finally an impossibility – illumination comes. The light touches you as fingers scrape away the mud. The light is not the light of the sun but the harsh, white glare of stab-lights. The grubby fingers pause as they expose your hard shape. All trace of blood has long since rotted from your surface; the ring-mail and shattered sword have rusted to almost nothing, and Gog’s body dissolved into the earth. Only you remain, a sliver of cold blackness in the filth. A bare, warm index finger runs down your blade, feeling the ripples and pattern of your making. The finger pauses; it belongs to a man called Jakkil Hakoan. He is young, and thinks that he is clever. The cavern is ice cold, leeched of heat by the machine towers which feed warmth to the upper hive levels, but Jakkil sweats anyway. His round face and hands are exposed and chapped, but it does not matter to him – he needs his hands to feel the earth, and he would be as good as blind if he wore a helmet. His enviro-suit was from the bottom of the pile, and its temperature control is broken. It keeps him warm, true, but too warm; it makes him feel like he is in a tropical jungle rather than four kilometres beneath the hive’s surface crust. He has never seen a jungle, at least not a real one. He has seen pict images, of course. He has reviewed the data, and read all of the accounts of the great jungles of the past. There are jungles on other worlds that lie beyond the sphere of Sol’s sun. He hopes he will see them one day. It is a wish that has kept him labouring in the lower ranks of three Conservatory expeditions. The excavation of the Albian sub-caverns is just the latest step on his road of ambition. Jakkil Hakoan wants to go places, to see their pasts, to own something of their mysteries. He does not care for the Conservatory’s higher purpose – he just cares where it can take him. He licks his thumb and smears the soil from a spot on your blade. His eyes focus on the mottled grey-black of your form. The pale layers that run through you look like clouds hung against a night sky. Jakkil looks at his thumb, at the dirt smudged across his skin, and then back to you. He shivers despite the cocooning heat of his suit. He feels as if he has made a connection with the past, as if he has reached back through the Long Night to touch the soul of someone dead before men reached the stars. He licks his thin lips, and pulls you from the mud. Your edge draws a bead of blood from his palm. He hisses with surprise. A voice shouts across the cavern floor. ‘Found something, Hakoan?’ Jakkil swears silently to himself, and folds you into the pouch on his thigh. He glances to his right – Magritte is working in the trench ten metres away. She seems intent on the small patch of ground before her. He turns to his left to see two figures standing at the lip of the trench. Their enviro-suits are a dull grey with gloss-black heat pipes and clear crystal visors. They are the seniors, the overseers of the excavation. Both have an earnest intensity to their faces which Jakkil despises. A cluster of juniors hang behind them like birds waiting for a farmer to drop a grain of corn from his hand. ‘Well?’ says the one who calls himself Navid Murza. ‘Nothing,’ says Jakkil. ‘I thought I saw something in the burn-layer, but it was just a stone.’ He holds up an irregular grey fragment he has just taken from the trench wall. He waits, and for once he is glad that the suit is making him sweat. Murza’s eyes flick over the stone. Jakkil does not like the cleverness in that look. ‘You yelped,’ says the other one. Hawser is his name. Kasper Hawser. Some of the juniors say that there is something funny about it, like it’s a joke. Jakkil does not get the joke, and does not like Hawser. ‘We thought that you had found something note-worthy,’ he continues. Jakkil grins, and holds up his palm to show the cut and thin smear of blood. ‘Cut my hand on a rock splinter.’ Hawser looks at the hand, frowns, and then turns away. Murza pauses for a moment longer, still looking at the stone in Jakkil’s hand. Then he shrugs and follows Hawser without a word. Jakkil lets out a breath and looks around at Magritte. She looks away before their eyes meet. Unconsciously his hand goes to the pouch where you sit. Magritte comes to him later, when he is in his quarters, rolling some cheap spirit around his mouth and staring at the rusted ceiling. The room is small, the smallest in the hab unit hung by cables from the hive cavern’s roof, a gridiron of closed corridors and block-shaped wings – there is not much space and Jakkil has the smallest portion of it. He is sitting on a narrow bunk with his back to the condensation-covered wall. He has some books and a couple of battered dataslates on a small shelf. A small bird made of pink alabaster sits on a low table of pressed metal beside another half-empty bottle. Clothes lie in grubby heaps on the floor. The room smells of sweat, alcohol, and a lack of care. Magritte knocks twice, and waits for Jakkil to grunt in response before pushing the door open. Cropped orange-red hair hangs lankly to the base of her neck; her face narrows to a sharp nose and small chin. Some might think her pretty in a gaunt, pale sort of way, but there is also something that puts most people off without them knowing why. Like Jakkil, she is wearing an ochre one-piece overall. Jakkil nods a greeting. Magritte closes the door and stands with her back resting against it. She looks at him in silence. He glances up at her face and away gain. Her eyes are hard grey, like stone. Like clouded flint. ‘Where is it?’ she says. ‘What?’ he says, and shrugs. ‘The find you took from the site. Where is it?’ ‘I don–’ ‘I watched you pick it up, Jak. I saw you palm it.’ She is still staring at him. He does not know whether she is angry or not. ‘I’m not going to say anything. Trust me. I just want to see it.’ He pauses, and then takes another gulp of spirit from his chipped cup. ‘Why?’ She laughs. ‘You’re kidding right? It’s something real after six months of sifting dirt, and finding just variation in the soil structure.’ The tone of her voice changes and she emphasises the pronunciation of her words. ‘Remarkable indications of pre-astral ascent agricultural cycles are as dull as the rest of the damned mud.’ Jakkil laughs, half in relief and half because it is a rather good imitation of Navid Murza at his most patronising. He reaches under the pile of clothes. You emerge into the light. Magritte goes still as you glint in Jakkil’s hand. He does not see the flash of hunger in her eyes; he is too busy staring at you himself. Magritte reaches out towards you. Jakkil flinches and she pauses. ‘Please?’ she says, and opens her palm towards you. Jakkil hesitates, and then places you in Magritte’s hand. Her touch is gentle, like the touch of your maker. ‘A killing blade,’ she says softly. ‘What?’ says Jakkil. ‘This was not made as a tool. The blade is too narrow, the edge too fine.’ Magritte holds you up so that the dirty light catches on your edge. ‘It was made to slice and stab, not to butcher meat or trim wood. It was made to murder. That is its essence, its significance.’ ‘Significance? It’s just an artefact.’ Magritte laughs without humour. Something in the sound makes Jakkil nervous. He puts his beaker of spirit down on the floor. ‘The difference between a mundane object and an extraordinary one is what it does – what it was meant to do. If an object is put to a particular ritualised use, it acquires ritual significance. It acquires power.’ Jakkil laughs, a thin mist of liquor sprays from his lips. Magritte looks up at him. Jakkil’s laugh and grin drains away. ‘You are serious, aren’t you?’ She nods once. ‘Objects have power.’ She holds you up. ‘Why did you take this from the site?’ Jakkil shakes his head, and begins to splutter a confused justification. Magritte cuts him off before he gets past a syllable. ‘You took this because its age had significance for you. It made you into a thief, Jak. That is power.’ ‘But, ritual significance?’ Jakkil tries smiling again. ‘That sounds like you are talking about magick. Sorcery.’ ‘Yes,’ says Magritte, and the word spreads ice through Jakkil’s blood. Magritte is staring at you; you lie against her fingers and feel her rising pulse. When she begins to talk again it is in a low whisper, as though she were talking just to herself. ‘It’s why they sent me – to find things like this. To find things that have significance.’ ‘What are you talking about? Who sent you? You’re just another junior conservator.’ ‘No, Jak. No. I am Cognitae.’ ‘Cognitae?’ Jakkil snorts. ‘Does that even mean anything?’ ‘Secrets, Jak, it means secrets. The universe is made of secrets. There are secrets all around us, waiting for us to rediscover them. But you have to find them, and you have to pay a price.’ Magritte opens her mouth. The gesture looks like a smile, but it is not. Jakkil reaches to take you back from her, but she pulls her hand away. A tense pause fills the space between them. Jakkil lunges forward, scrabbling at Magritte’s overall. She pulls back and closes her hands around you. You cut her palm deeply, slicing down to the bone, forcing a shriek. Blood squeezes between her fingers, and Jakkil grunts alcohol-filled breaths as he pries at her hands. Magritte is strong, but Jakkil is twice her weight. He slams her against the walls, driving her breath from her lungs, but still she keeps hold of you. You cut deeper into her hands and fingers. Jakkil releases his grip and punches her in the face. More blood splatters from her nose. Her eyes are blurred and she gasps for air. Jakkil brings his hand back to strike again. She kicks up between his legs, once, very hard. Jakkil crumples away from her with a wordless shout of pain. Magritte takes a shaking breath and opens her hands. Bright, wet, blood scatters from her fingers. You are slicked black with her blood. She looks down to Jakkil lying curled and whimpering on the floor. Someone might have heard his cry, someone might be coming. She knows what must be done. It is appropriate as well as necessary. A ritual act. She wraps her cut hand in a sheet from Jakkil’s bunk, swathing it in thick layers of grubby fabric. She grips the base of your blade again. The blood starts to seep through the material as she tightens her hold upon you. Jakkil tries to rise but she kicks him down again. She kneels beside him, and takes hold of his chin with her left hand. He tries to push her away but she slams his head down on the floor, and he goes limp. She yanks his chin up. You ram point first into the side of his neck and saw across his throat. Jakkil’s eyes snap wide for a moment and then become like glass. Magritte mutters in words almost as old as you. Blood bubbles out of the cut and spreads over the floor in a treacle-slow pool. She stands. Her breath is misting in the air; the moisture upon the walls has turned to frost. She shivers, then wipes you on her sleeve and slips you into a pocket. Then she goes to the door. She has many days of running ahead, of losing herself in the black forests of Albia. She knows that people will hunt her but she does not care. She has you, and you will pay for the secrets she craves. Fourth You go to the stars. You touch the red dust of Mars and the seas of Prospero. A decade passes under the light of strange suns. You have a new handle made by a blind artificer on Zuritz – crimson lacquer and gold thread cover its surface, like blood clotted to a gloss sheen. You kill for Magritte many times. She is no longer Cognitae, not truly. She is a wanderer, a creature of hunger searching out secrets in the shadows of a hundred worlds. She wears many masks and steals secrets from those who have not been blinded by the Emperor’s false illumination. She learns much, but knows only that she has not found what she truly seeks, a truth she can feel moving ahead of her, always just out of sight. It is there, she knows, hiding behind the masks of so many secrets, dancing like a distant light in the mist. She chases that light until, when she had almost given up, the truth finds her. In a warren of caves cut into a dry valley wall on a world called Tharn, she finds a people who hide from the sun and stare into fires until they can speak unspeakable names. Star-shaped brands cover their bodies, and grey shrouds hide their desert-dried flesh. They know the secret she has sought – Magritte can sense it. She becomes one of them. She endures trials of fire and passes through agony. She begins to realise that before now she knew nothing of the price of revelation. She stares into flame pits and braziers of bright coals until the light burns into her retinas, until she is going blind. She begins to wish she had never started down this path. You are never far from her, ever in her hand as she weeps from the burns that cover her skin. You are all she has left; the only comfort that you can offer her is a swift death. But she endures, and at last the fire speaks to her. She becomes one of the fire’s children. She knows the name of the fire though she can never speak it and live. She knows how to read truth in shadows, and nine runes which can turn the night to day. It is not enough. The more she knows the more she realises that there is a secret being kept from her, a secret greater than all the rest – an ultimate truth hidden amongst the smoke-stained tunnels of Tharn. It eats at her, growing fat on the obsession, until she can bear it no longer and goes in search of it for herself. In the gloom of the shrine tunnels she moves less by sight and more by touch and smell. Her pulse is a rising rhythm in her ears. For months she has been venturing deeper and deeper into the shrine, but this is the farthest she has ever come. A breeze stirs the woven fabric which hangs across the doorway in front of her. You slip into her hand without her thinking why. Still half blind, she steps forward and pulls the edge of the curtain aside. Darkness fills what remains of her sight. She can feel cool air upon her cheek, like the touch of falling night. She takes a step forward, her hand feeling the rough masonry of the wall. The space she has entered is vast; its size and quiet stillness press in upon her like a closed hand. The stone floor is cold and smooth beneath her bare feet. Her steps falter as she walks forward. The sound of her breath and heartbeat echoes back to her. Step by step, she moves into the dark, her arms stretched out in front of her. The sharp edge of the dais catches her knee. She yelps and stumbles, her hands flying out to cushion her fall. You fall from her fingers, tumbling away into the blackness. You meet a waiting hand, and fold into its grasp. Magritte goes very still. She heard something, a brief sound like the whirring of clockwork and the hum of static. She turns her head, straining in the darkness for any thread of noise to follow. The silence envelops her again. She reaches out and feels the edge of the dais. Its stone is smooth but textured with engraved patterns. No. Not patterns. Words. Something primal inside her urges her to flee now, but she knows that she has come too far and paid too high a price. She moves around the edge of the circular dais, before climbing up onto it and crawling forwards slowly. She thinks she can smell machine oil, incense and iron. Something brushes against her face. She flinches back, hands rising as if to ward off an attack that does not come. She is trembling. The sound of her own breathing and heartbeat is deafening. An image appears before her – two pools of darkness in a pale circle. She gasps, then forces herself to calmness once more. Fear falls away from her thoughts. Her vision clears as if she is seeing with something other than her damaged eyes. The image resolves slowly, as though the darkness is draining away from its shape like liquid. It takes her a second to recognise what she is seeing. It is a skull, yellowed and polished by time. She reaches out and touches it, feeling the empty holes of its eyes and its broken teeth. Hair-fine script runs over its crown in spirals. The image in her eyes grows, and she sees that the skull is not alone. It is one of many worked together into a shape that looms above her, rising up in a throne of human bones. A shape made of shadows and blurred night sits on the throne. She cannot see its eyes, but she knows that it is looking down at her. ‘You have come far,’ says a low, resonant voice. Magritte bows low. She thinks that she has succeeded, that she has found what she has spent so long searching for. This is the truth that sits at the heart of the fire cult; this is what they have kept hidden from her. Exultation flows through her, roaring through her veins and nerves in a hot wave. It feels good, it feels like revelation. In her triumph she has forgotten to wonder where you have gone. ‘Who are you?’ she asks. ‘We are truth and retribution. We are revelation and dust. We are the future.’ The voice is a bass rumble, like a tiger forming human words. Magritte feels fear uncoil in her guts and roll up her spine. Sweat is pouring down her spine. She can barely breathe. Somehow she forms the words that she has been following all her life. ‘Show me the truth,’ she says. ‘Show me, please.’ The voice laughs, and the sound rolls through the dark like thunder over a broken tower. Magritte is suddenly certain that she was wrong, that her years of seeking secrets have led her down a path of folly, and that she does not want to know the truth she has asked to see. The figure stands from the throne with a machine whine. Magritte feels it in her teeth and across her skin. Oily heat washes over her skin. She smells the reek of promethium and burning incense oil. An eight-pointed wheel of fire hangs in the air above her, the blackened iron already glowing. Drops of burning liquid fall from the wheel and explode upon the grey stone of the throne’s dais. Her damaged sight is enough for her to see that the chamber around her is a half-sphere of smoke-darkened rock, but it is the figure that stands over her that holds her attention. He is huge, a humanoid monster encased in armour as grey as the stone upon which she stands. His face might once have been human, but genetic mysteries have blunted and broadened the features. Words run down his cheeks in inked rows, as if he is weeping knowledge. You sit in his armoured hand, your black point and sharp edge resting at his side. Magritte cannot breathe. What she is seeing is impossible, a paradox of truth and manifest reality. The figure is a Space Marine, a fanatical warrior of the Imperium. A Word Bearer. The Word Bearer nods slowly, and closes his eyes as if in solemn greeting, as though he were about to ask forgiveness. He has flames tattooed upon his eyelids. ‘What…’ begins Magritte. ‘What are you?’ ‘The truth,’ says the Word Bearer. ‘The truth which will remake the Imperium.’ He moves before Magritte can scream. He yanks her into the air, his hand closing around her throat with a whine of servos. ‘But not yet.’ You flash out, and open Magritte from throat to groin in a single cut. She takes several seconds to die, thrashing at the end of the Word Bearer’s arm, blood and gut fluids steaming to the floor beneath her kicking feet. You sit unmoving in the warrior’s other hand, your edge wet and bright in the firelight. When Magritte is dead, the Word Bearer sets her down at his feet, and kneels beside her corpse. You rise to the Word Bearer’s lips and kiss his mouth as he mutters a prayer. You leave a thin line of smeared red behind. He looks at you for a long while. His eyes see beyond the coating of blood and the beauty of your shape. You speak to his soul, whispering the truth of ages that he has never known. He knows what you are, what you were made for. He whispers your purpose to himself. ‘Athame,’ he says. Fifth Your bearer’s name is Anacreon. You have never known his like – not in the ancient past of your maker, nor in the path you have followed across the stars. Blood, broken faith and lost dreams have shaped him. He is a lost son with a newfound purpose; he is not unlike you, a weapon that will be turned against his maker. You are beautiful to him, as a blade can be only to a murderer. You kill for him. You kill in the name of powers that whisper on the edge of dreams. You know the touch of blessings at many hands: Kor Phaeron, Erebus, Sor Talgron. They speak names to you, names that Gog once whispered as you slept in his hand. Your sharpness wakes. It is a shadow cast by the light of the souls you take. Your edge dreams of the cut, of the spilling of blood, and the parting of flesh. You have always been this way, within the blackness of your core, ever since you first came from the ground. This is not revelation. This is truth. You kill Anacreon on Riehol. The Chosen of Ashes descend from the burning sky like the answers to a prayer for vengeance. Their jump packs scream as they suck in the fume-laden air and breathe it out as blue flame. The ashes of dead worlds dust their grey armour. Beneath them, the Athenaeum Enclave is a swirl of fire. Scraps of charred parchment spin on the turning winds of firestorms. Soot covers the white domes and stone colonnades like charred skin over exposed bones. The sounds of screaming and panic rise from the condemned city along with the smoke. Anacreon fires his hand flamers when he is at roof height. Twin tongues of poured-iron orange reach down to the ground. The rest of the squad open fire a second later; then they all cut the thrust from their jump packs as one, falling through the inferno. Inside his armour, Anacreon blinks away temperature warning runes. The heat seeps through his armour. For a failing second he feels as though he is the fire, and they are one and the same. Enjoyment is not part of his purpose, but this moment is the closest he comes to pleasure. He hits the centre of a paved courtyard, splintered flagstones rippling from the point of impact. He mutters a prayer and the words slow the beat of his twin hearts. He rises from a crouch, sweeping his flamer units around him in a spiral. His visor has dimmed to near-blackness. Around him his brothers land, and their arrival shakes the ground. They rise and walk forward, seemingly silent in the roaring flames. Incredibly, there are people still alive in the ruins of the library city. They see Anacreon and his brothers as black silhouettes coming out of the inferno. For an instant, they remember tales as old as mankind, tales of avenging angels sent by wrathful gods. Indeed, that is the point. Destruction is not enough – those that do not kneel to the truth must pay the price for their arrogance. This is Anacreon’s purpose, the true expression of his nature. He is an angel of righteous obliteration, a destroyer of civilisations. You are with him, resting in an adamantium sheath at his thigh. You have tasted the death of many worlds in his hand, and killed to bless the pyre of each. This is not just warfare, this is ritual. It is what you were made for. Today you will take life and touch ashes. The survivors begin to fire. Hard rounds ring from Anacreon’s armour, chipping away soot and paint. He continues to stride forwards. A pillar-fronted building stands before him. Smoke has smeared its white stone to dull grey. Explosions have peeled back its roof, but it is not burning. Not yet. Muzzle flashes stutter in the broken windows, and between the great columns. Anacreon stops ten paces from the building. The hand flamers in his fists gutter to blue pilot flames. His brothers halt to either side of him, and he clamps the hand flamers to his thighs and slowly reaches up to pull the helmet from his head. Hot ash and the stink of promethium fill the air which washes over his bared face. He looks up at the building, turning his tattooed head slowly, his eyes taking in every firing point in turn. Bullets and las-bolts churn the ground all around him. ‘Phosphex,’ says Anacreon softly. Xen steps forward, and kneels to detach the armoured canister from the small of his back. It is a black cylinder of brushed metal the size of a human head. Xen lifts the phosphex bomb carefully, like a mother cradling a newborn child. Arune Xen is apparently marked for greatness. The eye of Erebus has picked him out, and he is destined to rise high. Bearing a weapon of such complete, holy devastation is just one sign of that favour. Anacreon does not like Xen. He would not go so far as to say that he hates him; he just does not think that the favour shown to him is particularly merited. His dislike is not something he has chosen to share with anyone else – as recent events have demonstrated, that would be unwise. Xen bows his head over the black cylinder and Anacreon hears his voice on the vox, muttering a prayer. Then he twists the cylinder’s top and throws it through one of the building’s windows. An oily flash spills from within. The screaming starts a heartbeat later. Then comes the consuming fire. It crawls through the building like a swarm of insects. It spills over windows and spirals up pillars. It howls as it spreads, crackling with a pyromaniac’s glee. The building’s stone begins to deform like melting ice. Anacreon has to blink to keep the flame from staining his eyes. The gunfire stops and the only screams now are those of tortured stone shattering in the unimaginable heat. You pull from the sheath at Anacreon’s side. The city is dead, but one final death is needed, one last act of ritual murder. The old man is the only one left alive in the building. His eyes are weeping pus, and his skin is a red ruin. Robes that were once blue hide an aged body of thin flesh and stark bones. Anacreon drags him from the building before it collapses, and lowers his body to the paved street. The action is careful, almost delicate. The man gasps and vomits up foamy, soot-flecked blood. ‘We were... compliant...’ gasps the old man. Anacreon and his brothers say nothing. They merely look down at the man as he retches and clutches his chest. ‘We were compliant! We held to the... Imperial truth. We are true. We are innocent...’ You move forward in Anacreon’s hand. He kneels. His voice is low, almost sorrowful. ‘Yes, you were.’ ‘Then... why?’ ‘Because of your innocence,’ says Anacreon. He extends his hand and gently touches the man’s scalp – the hair has burned away to reveal a faded tattoo of a double-headed eagle over the crown. The man is trembling, his hands wrapped around his chest as if for warmth. Anacreon leans forward and kisses the man’s forehead. ‘One day, humanity will understand.’ You raise high above the old man, point down, ready to strike. A smile cracks the cooked meat of his ruined face. His hands open above his heart like a flower to reveal a dull-green sphere held close to his chest. Anacreon blinks once in surprise before the plasma sphere detonates. The blast lifts Anacreon from the ground, super-heating the air around them and obliterating meat, metal and stone alike. You fall from his hand as he crashes back down a moment later. Seconds pass before what is left of Anacreon tries to rise. His left arm and half of his torso are gone, hot worms of residual plasma still eating into ceramite and flesh. His face is hanging off his skull, the flesh seared all the way to the bone. His armour clatters like jammed cog-work. He sees you, and begins to crawl. He does not scream, though the pain is enough to overwhelm even a legionary. In spite of his superhuman resolve, it is Xen’s hand that closes over your hilt instead, lifting you into the air and shedding a thin layer of settled ash from your blade. Anacreon looks up at him. ‘Sacrifice…’ rasps Anacreon. His eyes flicker to you then up at the emerald indifference of Xen’s eye lenses. Xen nods – he understands. They came here as preparation, as a ritual step in a process which has been unfolding for four decades. There are no such things as minor details in such a scheme. Everything has significance. There must be a sacrifice here, a gift to the pyre. Xen knows this even if he does not know you. He kneels next to Anacreon. You glide to rest your edge against Anacreon’s throat, and his hand comes up to wrap around Xen’s. They both hold you. Anacreon takes a last breath and mutters a blessing that hangs in the air, darker than smoke, thinner than mist. You take his soul then. Beyond the membrane of reality, the shadow of your sharpness drinks deeply and shakes free of its dreams. Sixth You spin from Xen’s hand to the oil-sheened deck. Your handle hits the pitted metal and you bounce back into the air, before skittering to a halt. The two men do not move. They are both thin from hunger. Whip-scars cover their flesh, and needles pierce the skin of their arms, backs, and chests. They have been waiting for this moment. Through all the months of testing and trials by agony, it has been their one aim. There were others – men and women who had found the truth hiding behind the face of reality, souls who wanted more than mundane, fleeting power. They had all discovered answers and received blessings, but they wanted more. They wanted to ascend. They wanted to become majir. Now there are only two, standing at the centre of a circle of dim light in the hold of an unnamed starship. Both are ready. One of the men leaps forward with whip-crack speed. He is bald and his mouth is wide in his thin face. Steel-hooked teeth gleam in the darkness of his mouth. His name is Jukar, but it is not his real name; he shed that long ago. You slip from his fingers as they close. The other man’s kick takes Jukar in the gut. Jukar screams as his ribs crack, and another kick hammers into his side before he can move. He rolls and reaches out to you again. You brush his fingers, so tantalisingly close... The other man leaps onto Jukar like a cat, his lean muscles stark under thin skin. Jukar feels limbs wrap around him, and he gasps for air. Blood spatters as rusty pins rip free from pierced skin. Jukar tries to shrug his opponent off. The man clings tighter, working his arm around Jukar’s throat. Jukar screams and rolls again. The other man’s grip breaks, and Jukar twists free. Blood smears the floor as he scrambles across the deck towards you one last time. You find his hand. The other man comes forward again, but this time you rise to meet him. You slip through his skin and muscle until you meet a bone. The man staggers back. Your handle projects from the meat of his thigh. For a second there is no blood; then it seeps around your blade – first in a dribble, then in a red gush. Jukar is staring at the man, his hooked metal teeth forming a grin that is half triumphant and half shocked. In the gloom outside the circle of light, Xen stirs with a purr of servos, but does not move. He has seen what Jukar has missed. The other man is not defeated. Not yet. Not by a long way. Jukar looks up and the smile dies in his mouth. The other man is standing upright, dark eyes gleaming. His skin has paled and a muscle is twitching in his jaw, but he looks very much alive. Focused. Like a blade himself, perhaps. Carefully, he reaches down and pulls you from his thigh. Fresh blood runs down the man’s leg. He seems not to notice it. Jukar snarls and leaps forward. You slash up and across. Jukar stumbles, and then falls to his knees. His hands fumble for his neck where a new mouth is smiling blood. He crumples, folding into the expanding pool of arterial red. The other man bends down and smears more of the blood onto your blade. It is warm against your killing edge. Xen comes forward while the man is still kneeling beside Jukar. ‘Rise.’ The man stands, suddenly drained by his experience. His name is Criol Fowst, and he has come a long way over many years to be here. Xen stares at him, green lenses glowing in the newly-painted metal of his helm. You come up in Fowst’s open hands, your blade still shining with the blood-blessing. Fowst bows his head, offering you back to his master. You feel Xen’s touch, the life in his veins so rich and so close. You hunger for his soul, but he seems to sense this and pulls his hand away. ‘Majir,’ says Xen. Fowst begins to tremble at the word spoken aloud. ‘Confided one. The blade is yours.’ Xen turns and walks away. Only then does Fowst fall to the floor. You do not leave his hand as he passes into dreams of falling stars and dying worlds. Seventh Calth. The word rolls around you while you are at Fowst’s side. He says it with reverence, as if speaking the name of a shrine, or closing a blessing. Things are happening faster now, accelerating to a point. You stay close to Fowst. He thinks you are beautiful. Sometimes he talks to you in his mind. He does not think that you hear him. His understanding is limited. You hear words that resonate in your razor-edged dreams: Octed, Ushmetar Kaul, Ushkul Thu. There is a storm rising. It speaks to you as it once spoke to Gog, when it was nothing but a weak breeze. Fowst feels it too, but the constant buzzing of his desires blind him to the simplicity of what is coming. He fails to see the threads of fate stretching back through time, the billions of events that have led here, to the first stroke of a final reckoning. He is a blind soul, as they all are. You kill on Calth. You plunge into the neck of an oblator. You take a little of his purpose and touch the edges of the ritual that is about to be completed. It tastes like the blood of your maker. It tastes like a beginning. There are other deaths, but they do not matter. Something greater is coming. You can feel it in the haze of the future, like a teasing promise. Somewhere beyond the horizon of time, there is one cut – one moment of perfect, ritual sharpness. You can almost see your way to that end now, returning back to the place where this all began. There are many like you on Calth: spikes of black volcanic glass, blades of metal and stone. But there are none so old; none that have followed your winding path here. Yes, you can sense the way, and it does not lie in Fowst’s hand. You must leave him. You will kill him. That has always been the way, ever since your birth under the sun of a savage but kinder age. You draw blood from Fowst’s fingers while he laughs at a burning sky. ‘Ushkul Thu! Ushkul Thu!’ The men and women around him are shouting the words, tears of joy rolling down their cheeks, but the syllables mean nothing to you and the burning sky is just empty light. You have played your part to make this moment, but you have a different purpose. It will not be long until you find another hand. Your chance comes on a landing beside black, polluted water. A man is spraying las-fire into a group of Fowst’s ignorant kin. He is killing them with an efficiency that is almost startling, given his unassuming, forgettable appearance. He moves with a weary swiftness, like a soldier. He moves like someone who has fought all his life. Maybe longer. But he has not seen Fowst. Fowst rushes forward. You are in his hand, reaching to take the soldier’s soul. Fowst ignores the hunched mechanical figure standing immobile next to him. It is just an old loading servitor, probably from the docking operation. Fowst is but a pace from the soldier’s back. You rise, point ready to strike down. A mechanical arm punches into the side of Fowst’s head. You slip from his hand as he falls. Fowst is bleeding but not dead, yet you know that you will kill him soon. The gunfire fades into the tapestry of sound which cloaks the dying city. You feel fingers close around you. They are somehow familiar, as if the hand has reached out of memory. It is the soldier. Most people who know him call him Oll Persson, though that is not his real name. He too, then, is a creature of secrets, like so many with whom you have travelled the path. Perhaps that is what is familiar about him. You wait for him to bend down and deal with Fowst – you wait for the taste of death that has marked every step of your existence, the blood that has always sanctified your passing. But the soldier stands, and leaves Fowst on the deck. Something has gone wrong. As you drop into a thigh pouch, your shadow twists with anger and thirst. Your sharpness must feed. You feel incomplete, but you can do nothing. Fowst will die, his skull blown half away, his blood seeping into ash-clogged water, but it will not sate your need. You hunger still. The soldier carries you across dark water to a beach of black rocks. The shadows are strong here, the veil between them and the dim light of reality grown thin. The echo of your edge is so close that you are almost one, the dream of sharpness and the stone blade edge. There is no sun. You were born under the sun. You first knew blood under the sun. This is the night of your existence, the true darkness that has always waited beyond the horizon. You have arrived. You are more than a knife here. You are an athame, and your significance trails behind you in time like a shimmering cloak of wet skin and dry bones. This is where you were meant to be, where you were always meant to be. You fold into the soldier’s hand again. He is not what he seems. He is a product of time and chance. He has a significance that he did not choose and does not understand. He is like you. He makes a series of cuts through the air. Your edge and your shadow sing to one another. The soldier mutters a prayer. He is asking for forgiveness. You cut through the skin of the universe, and in his hand you pass through into the place where your shadow has dreamed for so long. Eighth That you will reach here is not certain, just as it was not certain that it would be you that would play this role. There were others – other knives and daggers made of iron, of steel, of cold night. It could have been any of them or none of them. At each step chance could have changed your path, could have left you as another piece of history’s flotsam discarded upon the shore of time. Fate only exists in retrospect, but the road is now set, and though it may be long it will end, as all things must. And I wait for you.