No one has yet approached Kai Zulane, and Nagasena understands that they are all afraid of him, even Lord Dorn. Everyone can see that Zulane’s eyes have been restored, but how such a thing can be possible terrifies them. But more than that, they fear what he represents. They fear to learn the truth he knows. They hunger for it, but he suspects they will come to regret such cursed knowledge. Truth has been Nagasena’s bedrock, but even he knows there are some truths that cannot be faced without a heavy price being paid. Kai Zulane’s truth is such a thing, but there can be no turning from it.

Nagasena walks towards the man he has hunted through the Petitioner’s City, and his hand strays to the hilt of Shoujikias he looks up at the featureless face of the kneeling statue. Whatever beast Atharva unleashed from within its stonework is gone, but it retains a grim aspect. Whatever else happens here today, it will certainly be destroyed.

Kai Zulane speaks animatedly with Roxanne Castana, and though Nagasena cannot hear what he is saying, he can read the nature of it without difficulty. Roxanne Castana shakes her head, tears flowing freely down her face, but Zulane is insistent. Nagasena hurries his step, a terrible fear growing in the pit of his stomach.

‘Kai!’ he shouts, and every eye in the building turns towards him.

The astropath does not respond, as he had known he would not, and Nagasena cries out as Roxanne Castana lifts the bandanna from her forehead.

Kai’s eyes widen as he stares into the depths of Roxanne’s third eye, and he crumples to the ground with a sigh of what Nagasena can only interpret as relief. Nagasena grabs hold of Roxanne Castana and pulls her towards his body, hoping to break the connection long enough to keep whatever power she possesses from completing its work. Even as he does so, he knows he is too late.

Roxanne turns to him, and Nagasena catches the briefest glimpse of what lies beneath her bandanna. It is milky white and utterly black, a vortex of infinite depths and impenetrable opacity that can see nothing and everything at once. Nagasena feels the alien touch of somewhere far distant, yet all around him, a realm of limitless potential and abject horror that no mortal should ever dare know of for fear of going utterly insane. The thinnest skein divides the domain of Man from the warp, and it chills Nagasena to know how fragile that barrier between worlds really is.

He peers into the nightmare realm of the warp and his spirit is falling, drawn into its unknowable depths. He tries to scream, but he has no voice, and in that fraction of a second, he sees what Kai Zulane saw in Roxanne’s eye, but before he can suffer the same fate, a nictitating fold of skin flicks down over the unnatural orb, obscuring it from sight. The terrible connection between Nagasena and Roxanne Castana is broken, and he drops to his knees as she turns her face away and pulls her bandanna back down.

Breath heaves in his chest, and he looks down at Kai Zulane.

The man is clearly dead, yet Nagasena sees a look of such peace on his face that he almost envies him. Kai is serene and the lines of care that aged him beyond his years are softened to the point of making Nagasena think that he is many years younger than his biographical information claimed.

Kai Zulane’s eyes are open, and Nagasena sees they are the most intense shade of violet. In ancient cultures, such a hue would have marked a man out for greatness.

‘Your journey is at an end, Kai Zulane,’ says Nagasena, reaching out to softly close the dead man’s eyes. Roxanne Castana kneels beside him, and he covers his face.

‘My eye is shut,’ she says, and Nagasena looks up.

‘Why?’ he asks, and does not need to elaborate.

‘He was my friend,’ says Roxanne through her tears, but before she can say more, the Castana armsmen haul her to her feet.

‘Wait,’ he says, and such is the authority in his voice that they obey him.

‘Was what he knew so terrible?’ asks Nagasena.

‘I don’t know what he knew,’ replies Roxanne.

‘I believe you, but they will ask hard questions of you, and they will not ask kindly.’

Roxanne shrugs. ‘I can’t tell them anything. Whatever it was he knew is gone forever.’

‘What did he say to you?’ pleads Nagasena,

‘He said that sometimes the only victory possible to keep your opponent from winning.’

Nagasena knows the words, they are those of an ancient regicide grandmaster, and his heart sinks at the loss of Kai Zulane’s truth.

Before any more can be said, Aeliana Castana approaches and Roxanne musters enough courage to meet her disapproval with a haughty, defiant expression of her own.

‘You are a disgrace,’ says Aeliana Castana. ‘Patriarch Verduchina is greatly disappointed. You have brought great shame upon our house.’

Roxanne says nothing, and the Castana armsmen march her away. Nagasena watches her taken from the temple with a mixture of regret and sorrow, knowing that she goes towards an uncertain future. She is Navis Nobilite, and whatever else becomes of her, the Imperium will always have a use for her.

Rogal Dorn approaches with Maxim Golovko in his wake, and Nagasena gives the primarch a deep bow, careful to remove his hand from Shoujiki’s hilt. Lord Dorn’s face is unreadable, a cliff of craggy features that takes in the carnage wrought here with a dispassionate eye.

‘Was it all for nothing, Yasu Nagasena?’ asks Lord Dorn, staring down at Kai Zulane’s body. ‘What happened here tonight?’

Nagasena has only one answer for him. ‘The truth died here tonight.’

‘Perhaps that is for the best,’ answers Dorn.

Nagasena shakes his head. ‘I cannot believe that. Do we not serve the Imperial Truth? If we do not have truth, then what are we creating? The Imperium must have truth at its heart or else it is not worth building.’

‘Be careful what you say, Nagasena,’ warns Dorn, and the threat is clear.

‘Long ago I took a vow never to speak false, and I will never lie,’ says Nagasena. ‘Even to you, my lord.’

Dorn places a vast, gauntleted hand on Nagasena’s shoulder, and for the briefest moment, he wonders if he too will be sacrificed on the altar of loose ends. But Lord Dorn does not have murder in mind.

‘You are an honest man, Yasu Nagasena, and I have need of honest men.’

Nagasena nods and says, ‘I am yours to command.’

‘Then there is another task I would beg of you.’

‘Name it, my lord,’ says Nagasena, knowing Lord Dorn honours him by presenting his order as a request.

‘General Golovko tells me there is one of the renegades still unaccounted for,’ says Dorn.

Nagasena knows immediately who it will be.

‘The Luna Wolf,’ says Golovko. ‘His body isn’t here.’

‘Just so,’ agrees Dorn. ‘I would not have one of Horus Lupercal’s men at liberty on Terra.’

‘I will find him,’ says Nagasena. ‘But this will be my last hunt.’

The primarch nods and looks down at Kai Zulane.

‘What did you know?’ wonders Dorn aloud, and Nagasena hears something he would never have expected to hear in the voice of such a singular warrior: uncertainty. ‘The first axiom of defence is to understand what you defend against, Yasu, and I fear that this man could have helped me understand…’

‘Understand what?’ asks Nagasena, when Dorn does not continue.

‘I do not know,’ says Dorn. ‘But this day has diminished us all.’

The primarch marches away, and Yasu Nagasena feels a chill travel the length of his spine that has nothing to do with the katabatic winds sighing through shattered windows and punctured roof of the temple.

What are you afraid of, wonders Nagasena . What are you really afraid of?

THE SILVER CYLINDER hummed as it drew near the end of its incubation period. A host of wires and tubes ran from a bank of protein vats, each one encased in temperature-controlled pipework that gurgled as it fed the nutrient-rich broth within. The laboratory was cold, and its lights were dim, as though the work being done here was somehow secretive and its results uncertain.