The air is too thin.In his heavy-eyed delirium, his own thoughts came in Ingethel’s voice. And my lungs are pierced by spears of rib.

For a time he lay there, struggling to stay alive, breathing blood-wet air into weak lungs.

The daemon died with the same maddening dissolution of so many aetheric insanities in this haunted realm. As for Ingethel, the primarch had no idea. He would check soon. Not yet. Soon. He… he had to…

‘No more tests, Anathema’s son,’ said a voice.

‘One last test, Anathema’s son,’ said another, similar to the first, but somehow flawed. It was as if a botched cloning had lightly scarred the voice’s timbre.

The primarch hauled himself over, blinking bloody eyes up at another winged figure. This one was grotesquely avian, with stinking, withered wings and two vulture’s heads. While it would have towered above a mortal man, it was a hunched and decrepit thing by the standards of its daemon kin, closer in size to Ingethel.

‘I am the one sent to judge you,’ both heads said at once.

‘I am tired of being judged.’ The primarch lay on the sand and laughed, though he couldn’t think what was funny.

‘I bring the chance for a final truth,’ said one of the creature’s heads, in a corvidian caw.

‘I bring the final lie you will hear,’ its second head croaked, just as sincere as the first. No shade of amusement shone in any of the four pebble-black eyes.

‘I am done with this,’ the primarch grunted. Even rising to his feet was a trial. He could feel his bones sliding awkwardly together, jagged pieces of a puzzle that no longer fit cleanly. ‘That,’ he breathed, ‘is most unpleasant.’

‘Lorgar,’ said the creature’s right head.

‘Aurelian,’ said the left.

He didn’t answer them. Limping, he moved to retrieve his crozius from the sand. Its active power field had scorched the ground to black glass. When he lifted it, it had never felt so heavy.

‘Ingethel,’ Lorgar sighed. ‘I am done with this. I have learned all I need to learn. I am returning to my ship.’

There was no answer. Ingethel was nowhere to be seen. The bland desertscape offered no hope of determining direction.

He turned back to the two-headed creature.

‘Leave me be, lest I destroy you as I destroyed the Unbound.’

Both wizened heads bobbed in acknowledgement. ‘If you could banish the Unbound,’ the first said, ‘you could easily banish me, as well.’

‘Or perhaps I am more than I appear to be,’ the second hissed. ‘Perhaps you are weaker now and you would fall before my sorcery.’

Lorgar shook his head, seeking to tame his swimming senses. The air was so painfully thin, it made all thought difficult.

‘I bring you a choice, Lorgar,’ both heads spoke at once, sharing the same serious, watery-eyed expression.

He limped over to his overturned helm, lifting it from the ground and shaking sand from its interior. Both eye lenses were cracked.

‘Speak then.’

The daemon fluttered its wings. Vestigial, skinny things – Lorgar doubted the creature could even fly. Small wonder that it squatted on the sand, leaning upon its bone staff as a crutch.

‘I am Kairos,’ both heads said at once. ‘The mortal realm will come to know me by another name. Fateweaver.’

Lorgar’s desire to show respect for the gods’ agents had faded somewhat in the last hour. The words came through gritted teeth.

‘Get on with it.’

‘The future is not entirely unwritten,’ both heads spoke again. Their wrinkled features were strained by effort, as if speaking with unity was a great challenge. ‘Confluences exist as sureties. There will come a time when war breaks out across the Imperium of Man, and you will once again face the brother you despise.’

Lorgar’s kindly eyes, already weary, now grew cold. ‘I do not despise my br—’

‘You cannot lie to me,’ one head said.

‘And if you try, I will always see through to the truth,’ said the other.

The primarch forced himself to nod, before placing his helm back on. It took a moment for the cracked eye lenses to flicker into clarity, but a grainy picture materialised soon enough. Curiously, Lorgar couldn’t see the daemon through his left eye lens, merely the horizon beyond. In his right eye, the creature sat in hunched repose.

‘Get on with it,’ he growled this time. Three of his teeth were loose and bleeding.

‘It will happen at Calth,’ the right head said.

‘Or it will happen, yet not at Calth,’ said the left, though its placid tone wasn’t one of argument.

Lorgar still tasted blood in the back of his mouth. His eyes wouldn’t stop watering, and he suspected the pain in the bridge of his nose was a mashing break that would need resetting.

‘What will happen?’

‘You will face Guilliman,’ both heads squawked in eerie unison. ‘And you will slay him.’

Lorgar hesitated. To consider it, truly, was almost beyond him. Even if there was no way to avert the coming crusade, did it truly have to come to such measures as fratricide?

His own selfishness was a surprise. With a shake of his head, he considered the other side of the coin. Was fratricide worse than genocide? The loss of life would be immense on both sides of the divided Imperium, among the faithful and the ignorant.

He had to focus.

‘Go on.’

‘I am Kairos, the Oracle of Tzeentch,’ said both heads. ‘I am bound to always speak one truth and one lie.’ The creature rattled its withered wings. Several blue-black feathers, the colour of ugly bruises, drifted from its pinions. ‘But this is a moment of great divinity. A nexus of possibility. A fulcrum. The Great Gods have bound me to speak only the truth, in this moment of moments.

‘I am sworn now to stand before the chosen of the pantheon, and offer a choice. Now, and never again, I may speak with one mind. No lies. No words of deceit from one mouth, and words of truth from another. This, now, is too important. The gods are in alignment for the first time in an eternity.’

‘And the Unbound?’

Both heads regarded Lorgar with impassive, unblinking eyes. ‘Kharnath violated the accord. But the Blood God is still bound by it. Still oathed to it. The pantheon of heaven is kin to the primarch pantheon of your species. They wage war amongst themselves, just as you will wage war against your brothers. Existence is strife.’

‘To strive,’ the second head added, ‘is to live.’

The thought chilled Lorgar’s blood. A convocation of warring gods. ‘I understand.’

‘No,’ the first head said. ‘You do not.’

‘But you will,’ the second nodded, ‘in the decades to come.’

‘I bring you a choice,’ added the first head. ‘Face Guilliman and slay him.’

‘Or let him live,’ finished the second. ‘And taste the shame of defeat.’

Lorgar wanted to laugh, but the creeping sense of unease held the mirth back. ‘How is that a choice?’

‘Because of Calth,’ both heads replied. One was silently weeping now, the other grinning with beakish malice. Could a bird grin? Somehow, this one did. Lorgar couldn’t help but stare.

‘You must choose whether you walk a path of personal glory, or one of divine destiny,’ said the first head.

The second spoke through its crystalline tears. ‘You must choose whether you will stand among your brothers as an equal, with vengeance as your goal, or work in the name of the gods, tasting shame for a greater victory.’

‘I am not a vain man.’ Lorgar felt his broken ribs aching as they slowly re-knitted beneath his armour and flesh. ‘I seek enlightenment for the species, not self-glorification.’

‘You will end this war with many scars,’ the first head lowered in bizarre respect.

‘Or you will end it dead,’ nodded the second, ‘in one of a thousand ways.’

‘Get,’ Lorgar forced the words through a barricade of teeth, ‘to the point, creature.’

‘Calth,’ the first head intoned. ‘You will be given one chance – and only one chance – to shed Guilliman’s blood. It is written in the stars, by the hands of the gods. If you face him at Calth, you will slay him.’