The bridge of Macragge's Honour seemed to have been seized by the throat by an invisible, colossal hand.
Guilliman stood before the tactical table, with a vast nexus of dozens of helm, navigation, and fire-control stations behind him, yet the entire bridge was so quiet that he could almost hear the hum of the vacuum beyond the hull.
In truth, there was only absolute silence out there, but that silence was more deafening than any sound.
The void beyond the bridge was a vision of the apocalypse.
Countless shattered warships drifted through the Five Hundred Worlds of Ultramar.
There were blue wrecks of the Ultramarines and black fragments belonging to the enemy, but most were twisted masses of metal whose allegiance could no longer be identified.
Broken keels stretched beneath the starlight. Blasted bows still burned, their flames slowly rolling through the vacuum and illuminating patches of fixed heraldry and paintwork.
They had once been the Imperium's proudest creations. Now they were nothing but masses of scrap slowly drifting apart.
Guilliman watched the scene, the corner of his mouth twitching slightly, but no sound came out.
He had never been willing to admit defeat. Even with the outcome of the battle written across the sea of wreckage beneath him, he still searched the depths of his mind for some way to turn it around.
But the bloody truth remained before him.
The Iron Hands had turned traitor too.
That thought was a red-hot iron spike, driving slowly and inexorably into his spine.
He remembered Ferrus Manus standing beside the Emperor. He remembered every word that brother had spoken.
He remembered Ferrus Manus's stolid silence, the look of concentration on his face as he swung his hammer before the forge, absorbed in his craft.
Yet now that name had become a