‘Oh, Aniq,’ he whispered. ‘That we had to see such things…’

He could remember every detail of the Red Chamber, and though it presaged a horror greater than anything he could possibly have imagined, he felt strangely detached from it, as though it was a matter of no consequence to him.

Kai sat up and looked around to see that he lay in one of the principal guest suites of Arzashkun, a chamber so ostentatiously appointed it was almost obscene. Not only was his physical body restored, but a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders, a burden he had not realised was so monstrous until its removal. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes, listening to the fading sound of thousands of voices in his head as they receded into the chambers of memory.

As they pulled away from him, he felt their voices join as one in a wordless sensation of release. The dead could not return, but they could forgive. Kai knew he would never forget these people, and they would never forget him. The thought that they would always be with him made him smile, for they were now part of his story and not a burden to carry.

Kai stood as a warm breeze stirred an invitation at the silken curtain of an opened door that led out onto a balcony. He walked across the marble floor, feeling as though Arzashkun was no longer a place of refuge, but a place of wonder. He had crafted its every tower and chamber from memory, but he had never truly basked in its magnificence. Only now did he appreciate the miraculous skill of its ancient builders, their sense of proportion and joy as they raised its beauty to the skies.

He stepped onto the balcony, but instead of the endless sands of the Rub’ al Khali, he saw a verdant landscape of lush forests, sweeping grasslands and crystal rivers. This was the Empty Quarter before the sands had swallowed it, a bounteous land fought over by kings and emperors since the dawn of civilisation. This was the land where his race had been born, and it shone with the unlimited potential of humanity.

Kai wasn’t surprised to see a regicide board set up waiting for him. His opponent from the game by the shore sat before the onyx pieces, and the memory of that conversation returned to him with sudden clarity. Where before his opponent had been indistinct, now he went bare headed, and Kai nodded in respect as he saw a face more commonly seen rendered in marble.

‘You look different, Kai,’ said the figure, his golden eyes like shimmering coins.

‘I am different,’ he said, taking a seat before the silver pieces of the board. ‘I feel free.’

The man smiled and said, ‘Good. That is all I ever wanted for you.’

‘You brought the Argofrom the warp,’ said Kai, moving a silver piece forward.

‘Are you asking me a question?’

Kai shook his head. ‘No. I don’t want to know. The truth only spoils things.’

‘The truth is a moving target,’ said the figure, moving a Templar across the board.

‘Did you see?’ asked Kai, already knowing the answer.

‘I saw what Sarashina hid within you, yes.’

Kai said nothing, and they played in silence, trading pieces back and forth across the board. Mindful of his last encounter over the regicide board, Kai played a cautious game, husbanding his pieces and unwilling to take unnecessary risks.

‘Do you not want to play?’ asked his opponent.

‘I don’t know what to say to you,’ replied Kai, sitting back in his chair. ‘Knowing what you know of the future, you still want to play a game?’

‘Of course. At a time like this, it is the best way to stay focused,’ said the figure, moving his Emperor forward in an aggressive move designed to tempt Kai to rashness. ‘If you want to know a man’s true character, play a game with him. In any case, the future is the future, and my feelings towards it will not change it one way or the other.’

‘Truly? Even you can’t change it?’ said Kai, willingly taking the bait.

The figure shrugged, as though they discussed something trivial. ‘Some things needto happen, Kai. Even the most terrible things you can imagine sometimes need to happen.’

‘Why?’

His opponent moved his Divinitarch into a blocking position, and said, ‘Because sometimes the only victory possible is to keep your opponent from winning.’

Kai scanned the board, seeing he had no more moves to make.

‘Stalemate,’ he said.

The figure spread his hands in an empty gesture of apology. ‘I know some people think me omnipotent, but there is a catch with being all powerful and all knowing.’

‘Which is?’

‘You can’t be both at the same time,’ said the figure with a wry smile.

‘So what happens now?’

‘I finish the game.’

‘This one?’ asked Kai, puzzled.

‘No,’ said the figure. ‘Our game is done, and I thank you for it.’

‘Will I see you again?’

His opponent laughed. ‘Who knows, Kai? If our game has taught me anything, it is that all things are possible.’

‘But you’re going to die.’

‘I know,’ said the Emperor.

KAI OPENED HIS eyes and saw only blackness. He felt cold, and a suffocating claustrophobia enveloped him. He slid his hands from Roxanne’s and reached up to rip away the bandages wrapped around his head. He tore at them in a frenzy, pulling away handfuls of textured cloth and wads of sticky gauze as he heard the shrieking moans of the Vacant Angel as it drew closer.

The last of the bandages fell away, and Kai looked into Roxanne’s pearlescent eyes. They were the most wondrous shade of gold-flecked amber, and he wondered how he had not noticed that before. The answer came in a heartbeat.

His augmetics, as expensive and precise as they were could not hope to replicate the wonder of human eyes. He saw Roxanne’s expression of shock, and reached up to touch his face. Instead of bruised and puffy flesh where Asubha had ripped out his eyes of glass and steel, he touched soft skin and the gentle give of organic tissue.

‘Kai,’ breathed Roxanne. ‘Your eyes…’

He looked up, seeing the interior of the temple with the eyes bequeathed to him by his mother and father, and though they were imperfect organs at best, he revelled in this gift, no matter how short-lived it might be. It mattered not that his first sight in years was of a ruined building that had become a battleground, that he was seeing at all was a miracle.

Bodies lay strewn in disarray, men and women, soldiers and civilians. Amid the destruction, Kai saw Golovko and Yasu Nagasena, their faces twisted in horror at the hideous form of the Vacant Angel as it feasted on the energies of the dead. Kai tore his gaze from the deathly being and watched as his erstwhile protector and captor fought his last battle.

Atharva and the pariah duelled in the shadow of the faceless statue, one a genhanced superhuman engineered to be the greatest warrior of the Imperium, the other a killer of men like him. The pariah moved like an acrobat, his every movement controlled and precise. Against the bulk of the warrior of the Legiones Astartes, he was a frail and insubstantial figure, but he fought with a confidence born of his unique power to confound and discomfit psykers.

He did not yet know what Kai knew of the Thousand Sons warrior.

Atharva staggered as though in pain, and the pariah leapt in for the killing blow as a long, energised blade snapped from the sleeve of bodyglove.

Atharva righted himself in an instant, and caught him in mid air.

Even though the pariah was helmeted, Kai felt his shock.

‘Once I could see, but now I am blind,’ said Atharva, with terrible sadness and anger in his voice. Kai knew just how great a sacrifice Atharva had made to fight the clade killer, and he doubted anyone else could truly appreciate what he had given up. The pariah struggled in Atharva’s grip, but there could be no escape from such grievous power. The energised blade stabbed down through Atharva’s chest, and the warrior grunted in pain as the blade clove his heart.