Erebus knew then that he had been cheated of his revenge. She had waited for him to slay her. As much as she had wanted to live, Akshub had died in service of the gods, perhaps party to something greater that he would now never know.

He cast the remains of the heart aside with a cry of frustration. He rocked back on his heels next to the ruin of the priestess's body.

Patience.

He had learned what he needed to learn, but he was not content. Akshub had won.

The knife in his hand began to hum a harsh, troubling note at the edge of his perception. One by one, the others picked up their own discordant tone. It was a terrible, raucous sound, until the eighth knife sang out, and the cacophony became a thing of riotous beauty. Just as the primarch had written, Erebus heard for the first time the eightfold song of Chaos, and the future opened up to him.

Then the notes slowly died.

Erebus plucked the blades from the priestess's body. The final act of consecration was complete, and his shards were ready.

They tingled in his grasp as he gathered them. With an easy flourish he drew one the one he had selected as his own across the skin of reality, and stepped back to the Destiny's Hand.

Erebus left the chamber first, followed closely by Sergeant Undil. Kor Phaeron had an evil look about him, and the Dark Apostle did not have the patience for any more of his posturing.

Many of the others were angry at his obtuseness. What did he care? They were also more than a little afraid of him now, and that gave him a hold over all. His goals were close to fulfilment. The shards would be present as he needed them to be, and the blood they would shed could only hasten the future that he had foreseen, even if nothing else.

If Lorgar did intend to rid himself of Erebus, then he would be disappointed. That the eight Shards of Erebus now also offered his fellow commanders the opportunity of escape from Calth was unimportant to him. Whether or not they would learn how to effect flight through the immaterium should they need it, well...

That was something he would leave to the will of the gods.

+++DATA-INLOAD SUSPENDED. PURGE ROUTINE INITIATED+++.

++FATAL ERROR: CANNOT FIND VARIABLE "ushkul thu"+++

++ERROR+++.

++ERROR+++.

++ERROR+++.

++ERROR+++.

++ERROR+++.

++ERROR+++.

++ERROR+++.

++ERROR+++.

++ERRwe are the dawn of sanctity. what lives in the eighth shall not die. those that cast down shall sit upon thrones. what changes is eternal. that which writhes in the grave's womb will be reborn. they who live without shackles shall be freed. we are the footsteps of the new sun. we are the pyre's childrenOR+++

++ERROR+++.

++ERROR+++.

++ERROR+++.

+WE RISE++.

IT BEGINS+.

~ DRAMATIS PERSONAE ~.

The XIII Legion 'Ultramarines'

REMUS VENTANUS, Captain, Fourth Company KIUZ SELATON, Sergeant, Fourth Company LYROS SYDANCE, Captain, Fourth Company ANKRION, Sergeant, Fourth Company BARKHA, Sergeant, Fourth Company EIKOS LAMIAD, 'Eikos of the Arm', Tetrarch of Ultramar (Konor) TELEMECHRUS, The Sky Warrior', Contemptor Dreadnought AETHON, Captain, 19th Company OCTAVIAN BRUSCIUS, Captain, 24th Company COLBYA, Techmarine URATH, Sergeant, 39th Company The XVII Legion 'Word Bearers'

FOEDRAL FELL, Anointed commander HOL BELOTH, Anointed commander MALOQ KARTHO, Dark Apostle ERIESH KIGAL, Terminator Sergeant ZU GUNARA, Dreadnought Imperial Personae MEER EDV TAWREN, Server of Instrumentation, Mechanicum SUBIACO, Ingenium, Calth Pioneer Auxilia RIUK HAMADRI, Colonel, Defence Auxilia VOLPER ULLYET, Captain, 77th Ingenium Support Division KADENE, Major, Cardace Storm Troopers BARTEBES, Corporal, Cardace Storm Troopers I.

Who will be the last to die?

Honorius Luciel's name is entered in the Operational Records as the first, but who will be the last? The treachery orchestrated by the Warmaster began with the death of an Ultramarine, but Captain Remus Ventanus of the Fourth Company has sworn that it will end with the death of a Word Bearer. Not one of their rag-cloaked rabble of cultist-brotherhoods, not one of the skinless abominations dragged from the empyrean, but with a warrior of the XVII Legion.

Ventanus has marked a strip of oath paper with his angular handwriting to that effect. Sydance and Barkha bore witness to this, and Selaton affixed the wax-sealed strip to the hilt of his gladius. Ventanus will be the one to drag the last of Lorgar's sons to the surface of Calth and tear his armour from him before throwing the bastard to the irradiated ground.

He will wait and watch as the caustic rays from the poisoned sun burn the flesh from the Word Bearer's bones. As layer after layer of skin blackens and drifts away like cinders, the toxic air will scald the traitor's throat, silencing his screams and causing him to retch up the frothing, disintegrating remains of his lungs.

And just at the instant before the sun's deadly rays finally kill him, Ventanus will put a bolt through the Word Bearer's skull.

The last to die will be a Word Bearer, slain by the hand of an Ultramarine.

This is not theoretical.

Purely practical.

II.

Lanshear.

Once counted among the great starports of Calth, the city-sized facility burned in the fires of a Legion's wrath. Hol Beloth and Foedral Fell were two names they knew, but there were others warriors whose deeds might once have echoed with honour in an earlier age, but which were now bywords for betrayal, mentioned in the same breath as Horus.

Lanshear is a necropolis, a cemetery city whose streets are choked with scorched hulks of wrecked fighting machines, the planet-wide detritus of battle and tens of thousands of radiation-blackened bodies. The lethal rays of Calth's sun are burning their bones to ash and irradiated winds blow flakes from the dead in swirling dust devils. Most are the mortal soldiery of the traitors, killed by the retribution of the orbital platforms or poisoned by the sun when the last of the planet's atmosphere was stripped away. Only a scattered few corpses have the post-human scale of legionaries.

Only enemy dead remain on the surface.

The fallen of Calth have been taken below and accorded the proper honour.

Great siege excavators and Mechanicum construction engines intended for wars of crusade are digging mortuary caverns throughout Calth's bedrock; vast galleries and deep shafts where the honoured dead will forever be part of the world they died defending.

Ingenium Subiaco's Pioneers have much yet to accomplish, but honouring the dead was the first task Ventanus set them.

III.

Tawren's purging of enemy scrapcode from the orbital defence grid saved Lanshear from complete destruction, but the thoroughness of her retribution left little standing after the beam weapons, missile stations and barrage platforms pounded the Word Bearers' assault to dust. The shells of foundries and roofless manufactories spread over the blasted industrial hinterland like the ruins of some long-dead civilisation. Forests of sagging tower cranes and the buckled remains of bulk lifter-rigs list like drunks, and the railhead terminal of the Bedrus Oblique is like a child's toy-set of rolling stock scattered across the transit lines and engine hangars.

Munitions depots and cargo containers stockpiled in anticipation of being raised to orbit burn throughout the starport, and hundreds of ink-black columns of smoke striate the rippling aurora of the sky. The crackle of flames and the screech-metal sound of collapsing structures echo mournfully through gutted transport hulks and the wreckage of a world-conquering army.

Ventanus remembers this place.

He remembers the sheer violence, the never-ending blitz of enemy fire, the overwhelming force of it all. Mass-reactives in solid hurricanes, las sheeting like neon rain and the thunder of traitor battle engines howling in bloody triumph. Explosions and screams merging to shape the death-cry of an entire world.

Compared to that, this nightmarish, flame-lit vision of perdition is almost quiet.

Lanshear is dead, but there is yet activity. The distant foundries and cargo depots far to the north of the main fields are wreathed in a mist that is wholly unnatural, and fires burn there that are not the fires of devastation, but of construction and rebuilding. In the midst of this planetary cataclysm, something survives. Fragmentary vox-intercepts suggest Foedral Fell holds the northern foundries, but beyond that supposition, nothing more is known for certain.

The aftermath of the battle for Calth has left a great deal of theoretical, but precious little practical.

Below the ridge where Ventanus and two hundred legionaries of the Fourth are concealed, the rusted tracks leading from the burning railhead terminal run in arrow-straight lines from the Oblique to the foundry depots.

'Can you see anything, sir?' asks Selaton, crawling up to join him at the edge of the ridge.

Ventanus shakes his head. Whatever is happening in the north remains a mystery.

'I need Vattian's scouts,' he says. 'But...'

He waves a hand, leaving the sentence hanging, and Selaton nods in understanding.

During their desperate thrust towards the guildhall, Vattian's pathfinders safely brought them into Lanshear under the watchful gaze of the Word Bearers, but their armour is too light to survive the hostile environment of the surface. Even Mark IV plate can only remain above ground for a limited time before its protective qualities are eroded. Terminators can move with impunity, but Ventanus has precious few of them at his disposal.

'You really think the Word Bearers will come this way?' asks Selaton, and Ventanus knows that the sergeant shares Sydance's belief that this is a theoretical without merit.

'I do,' says Ventanus, nodding towards the railhead terminal. Hundreds of locomotive convoys lie scattered like dead snakes throughout, their fuel tenders split and belching thick, tarry smoke.

'Why?' asks Selaton. 'There are plenty more direct routes to the northern foundries.'

'All of which involve crossing large tracts of open ground.'