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Apostle – Extract

A Black Library Publication

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Chapter 1

Vox-casters boomed the cardinal’s recorded homily up and down the gloomy depths of the Lower Glyphs of Legitur. The voice from the Upper Glyphs descended into the realm of endless, choking fog, of snowing ash and drifting paper.

‘Longing is heresy,’ the ancient rasp of Cardinal Mazarine intoned. ‘To wish for what one does not have is to express ingratitude. It is to forget one’s duty to the Emperor. Duty and obedience are the only true callings. To know one’s place is an act of holy submission. To desire otherwise is to rise up against the will of the Emperor. Awake to duty. Punish the malingerer.’

Overlapping echoes made the homily hard to make out. The cardinal’s words collided with each other, turning the exhortation into the sound of an old man shouting at himself. Palura Wrack knew what he was saying, though. The homily had been played many times in the last year. She knew it by heart.

When the homily was done, the bells would ring, the summons to chapel. She imagined that everyone residing in the sun-bathed Upper Glyphs would be flowing into the great churches and cathedrums. All the residents of the Lower Glyphs who could attend would. Many could not.

Most could not.

The sound of the cardinal’s voice made her parents stir in their bed. It was too small, too old. The pallet sagged in the middle. The sheets, threadbare, had turned grey from exposure to the air of the Lower Glyphs.

‘Ah,’ said Heret Avial. ‘Finally.’

The Administratum serf had been trying to get Wrack’s parents to rise for the last fifteen minutes. Wrack kept telling them to stay put while she pleaded with Avial. They had done as she said. They didn’t have the strength to do otherwise.

Avial had come to evict them from their home. It was miserable enough. It consisted of a single room. It could almost have been a cell, a hollow nodule midway down the height of the hive tower. It had a window, though, a mark of Wrack’s achievement in providing them with a dwelling. Filth had rendered the window little more than translucent, but it did let in a sense of the deep twilight that pervaded at this altitude of the Lower Glyphs. Twilight, not full darkness.

Her parents had a window, a bed, and they did not dwell in the night. Wrack had done this for them. She had taken pride in it. Now Avial planned to take it all away.

‘Thank you for doing your duty,’ he said to the old couple.

‘They’re just trying to get to chapel,’ Wrack said. ‘Mother. Father. Please. Lie down. I’ll get you to chapel after this man leaves.’

Her mother coughed. Her malnourished frame shook with the grating hack. She sounded as if she had slurry instead of lungs. Her husband started coughing a moment later. They staggered to their feet and then swayed, leaning against each other.

‘I’m not going anywhere,’ said Avial. ‘Your parents are.’ His pinched features looked pleased with his turn of phrase, as if he had said something interesting.

‘But they have nowhere to go!’

Avial shrugged. ‘That is not my concern. The rent has not been paid. Residents who will pay are waiting. There is no space for those who will not do their duty.’

‘They can’t work any longer. You can see what state they’re in!’ They had spent their entire lives in the Lower Glyphs. Its air had aged them decades, and it would not be long before it would suffocate them.

‘Again, that is not my concern. What matters is the rent, not who pays it.’ He gave her a significant look. ‘That was you, I believe.’

Wrack’s parents shuffled to the open doorway and into the hall. They turned right, into the breeze blowing in from outside.

‘Wait,’ said Wrack.

Her parents kept moving. The recording would be over soon. Their dull eyes stared forward with the all-consuming need to obey. They moved out into the corridor and towards the archway in the hive tower’s outer wall. Beyond it, a narrow ledge wound up and down towards the walkways that linked it to the other towers. The faithful trudged along it, making for the nearest chapels.

‘Just a minute,’ Wrack said to Avial. He shrugged, and she hurried after her parents.

She caught up to them near the archway. Wind buffeted them, and they wavered, brittle twigs. Sheets of paper blew past the opening.

Wrack took each of her parents by an arm. They stopped walking at the threshold. They looked at her without hope.

‘What do you want?’ her father asked, almost as if he did not recognise her.

‘Just… just stay here a moment. I’ll take care of things.’

Her mother made a sound, a cancerous sob. She stroked Wrack’s cheek. Dark resignation suffused the gesture.

‘Please,’ said Wrack. She let go of their arms and held up her hands, pleading for patience. ‘I’ll be right back.’

She returned to Avial. ‘I’m going up again in a few hours,’ she said. ‘I’ll have the credits when I get back.’

‘And when would that be?’

‘When the salvage run is done! I can’t say exactly.’

Avial snorted. ‘There hasn’t been a lot to salvage in-system recently, has there?’

‘No,’ Wrack admitted. ‘There’s always something, though. And maybe this time–’

Avial pointed an officious finger at her, cutting her off.

‘Later. Maybe. Possibilities are not rent. They are wishes. Did you not hear the words of the cardinal? I will not join you in heresy.’

‘That is not what I’m asking!’

She wanted to strangle the little man before her, puffed up with the sense of his tiny authority and the thrill of righteousness that authorised his writ of cruelty. How dare he imply she lacked faith? How dare he question her loyalty to the Emperor?

But at the core of the sick rage she felt, something vibrated, something that felt horribly like truth. It wondered why she should be faithful to a cruel and absent god.

She suppressed the thought and the urge to violence.

‘All I’m asking,’ she said. ‘All I’m asking–’

‘Is the impossible. You cannot pay. Your parents must leave.’ His small mouth smiled thinly. ‘And so they have.’

The bells began to toll. Her parents would respond to them.

‘One more minute,’ Wrack pleaded.

She ignored Avial’s shake of the head and ran back out of the apartment.

The archway gaped empty.

‘Oh no,’ Wrack breathed.

She ran to the walkway. She looked up and down. The near reaches of the walkway were empty, the closest of the faithful a hundred yards away now, no more than fading silhouettes in the fog. Her parents were nowhere to be seen.

She gazed into the darkness below, the darkness she knew had swallowed them. Had they fallen, their balance destroyed by a gust of wind?

Had they jumped?

‘I see the issue has been resolved,’ Avial said. He had followed her, and stood at her shoulder, his expression sadistically smug. ‘I commend your parents’ sense of responsibility.’

This time, she didn’t suppress the urge. She seized Avial by the shoulders and hurled him into the abyss.

In the cold of death’s night, Cerastes had the vague sense of movement. Something had hold of him. Something pulled him. The sensation of movement pulled at him too. It held him from the edge of total, final unconsciousness. It jolted him and grated at his mind, denying him rest, reminding him of his oath. There was a host to lead. There was vengeance to seek. And a task to be fulfilled.

Like dream fragments, the thoughts barely cohered. They did not stay, flitting in and out of the night like sparks of silver. Still, they did not vanish entirely. They were the dancing embers of an extinguished fire, too weak to kindle a new flame, yet not to be ignored. Flash and vanish, flash and vanish, the little stirrings of life and thought and faith. They promised nothing. They were the very essence of promises.

Then ignition, the flame taking hold, and Cerastes’ thoughts came together, grew strong, and became whole once more. He opened his eyes, fully conscious.

He was lying on a slab in a medicae centre. Emergency lumen strips lit the chamber, dim amber fireflies at the level of the deck. Orthaon leaned over him, watching him intently. The Apothecary’s few strands of lank hair growing from the reptilian hide of his skull hung down in front of his deep-set eyes. He stepped back out of the way as Cerastes sat up.

Cerastes took a breath, testing the pains in his frame. His battle wounds were healing, and nothing was broken. The flesh of his face burned as it woke from the freezing grasp of the interstellar void.

‘How long have I been unconscious?’ he asked.

‘A few hours, First Aco–’ Orthaon stopped himself. His eyes went to the great crozius that Cerastes still clutched, and he bowed his head in acknowledgement. ‘Dark Apostle Cerastes,’ he finished.

‘And where are we?’

‘Aboard the Obeisance.’

The freighter that the Epiphany’s Flame had seized. ‘It broke away from the Flame, then?’ Cerastes asked.

‘It did,’ said Orthaon. ‘I was able to get aboard as our ship died. I saw you fall from the wreck, and was able to reach you in time.’

‘And the rest of our brothers?’

‘We are alone,’ said Orthaon.

A host to lead. Quite the Legion. Two warriors.

‘Were you able to harvest the gene-seeds at least?’

‘I have fifteen. I do not know if all are viable.’

At least that harvest offered hope, Cerastes thought. The Eightfold Bane was not extinct yet. ‘What of the Sisters of Battle?’ he asked.

‘They departed soon after the destruction of the Flame.’

‘So, they have left the Obeisance intact.’ He stood up from the slab and marched out of the medicae chamber, taking the dimly lit halls to the bridge.

‘Intact is a bit of a stretch,’ said Orthaon, keeping pace. ‘I believe they simply considered it a hulk beneath their notice, now that it had served its purpose. The ship has only the most minimal power, not even enough to replenish the oxygen.’

‘Getting the engines started is out of the question, then?’

‘They are too badly damaged to function even if there was power for them.’

‘So just enough energy for the distress beacon.’ A pitiful expenditure of power that had spelled doom for the Epiphany’s Flame.

They reached the small space of the freighter’s bridge. The ship was a modest hauler, designed to take its cargo only between neighbouring systems, and needing a minimal crew. A few of the screens still flickered with activity.

Cerastes glanced out the viewport at the cold and distant stars. To the galactic north, the Cicatrix Maledictum was a faint ribbon of bruised light. He stared at the immensity of nothing.

You do not impress me, he told the void. The gods have plans for me, and they do not end here.

‘I can gain us a bit of time,’ said Orthaon, busy at another terminal. ‘If I shut down the beacon, that will give us enough energy to produce perhaps another day of oxygen.’

‘No,’ said Cerastes.

Orthaon looked up. ‘Dark Apostle?’ he said. ‘We have no more than four days of air otherwise.’

‘Four days during which the beacon continues to transmit,’ Cerastes told him. ‘Precisely how close are we to the Legitur System?’

‘At its edge.’

‘So Legitur itself is within range of the beacon.’

‘Yes.’

Cerastes smiled. ‘The hands of the gods guide us,’ he said. ‘Though the handmaidens of the False Emperor assail us, they have not thrown us from our path. Our grand purpose lies before us.’

‘What purpose?’ Orthaon asked.

‘Legitur. I have long been called here, and now it appears you have been as well.’

‘I do not understand.’

‘You will in time. Rejoice, Apothecary Orthaon, and let the beacon do its work.’ He sat down in the bridge’s modest, functional throne. ‘Our task now is to wait. I do not think we will have to for long.’

In the end, they waited for two days before a salvage ship arrived. Though Orthaon grew restless, Cerastes did not move from the throne, or become weary of the wait. He barely stirred, certain in the inevitability of rescue. When the ship appeared, Orthaon watched for its transponder readings to be picked up by the near-dormant sensors of the Obeisance.

‘The Witness to Duty,’ he said.

‘Out of Legitur,’ said Cerastes without looking away from the viewport. Starlight glinted on the hull of the vessel, its shape gathering definition as it drew closer.

‘It is,’ Orthaon confirmed.

‘That is well,’ said Cerastes.

‘What is the significance of this world?’ Orthaon asked.

‘It was my home,’ said Cerastes, his voice dropping to an anticipatory growl.

Orthaon started. ‘Your home?’

‘The gods have sent me back, and you with me.’

‘By what chance–’ Orthaon began.

‘No,’ said Cerastes. ‘Not by chance. There is no chance in destiny.’

Nor had there been in his long and careful manipulation of Eurybios, one little nudge at a time, bringing the Epiphany’s Flame closer and closer to Legitur. The work of more than a century.

Orthaon nodded, his expression hard to read. He drew his bolter and made for the exit from the bridge.

‘Where are you going?’ Cerastes asked.

Orthaon looked back, puzzled. ‘To meet the boarding party,’ he said. ‘It will be a simple matter to kill the officers and force the crew to do our bidding.’

‘No,’ said Cerastes. ‘That is not how we shall greet them. We shall await them here, and they will not be harmed. We are going to Legitur, brother, and we are going there to take it from the Imperium.’

Orthaon’s expression became one of concern. ‘Dark Apostle, we are but two. An entire planet…’

‘Exactly. Which is why this first encounter will not involve battle. This is not a mission of conquest. It is one of conversion.’

Understanding washed over Orthaon’s face. His eyes glittered at the thought of the holy task that awaited them. ‘I should have realised,’ he said.

Yes, he should have. He should have remembered the true calling of the Word Bearers. They were not the World Eaters. Conquest and destruction were not ends in themselves. They were means to conversion, but not the only ones.

‘The gods have brought me back to my home world,’ Cerastes said. ‘And it is the nature of Legitur that is truly important, Orthaon, as you will see. To convert it to Chaos would be a great victory, and a greater offering.’ He paused, then corrected himself, envisaging the wonders he would yet unveil. ‘No, our project is not as simple as conversion. It is something deeper, and more profound. But you will see, brother. You will see.’

‘I am eager to receive the revelations, Dark Apostle.’

Orthaon returned to a position near the viewport. He mag-locked his weapon to his thigh. Together, he and Cerastes awaited their guests.

The Witness to Duty passed the viewport as it pulled up alongside the freighter. The salvage ship seemed an act of salvage itself. Its hull was ancient, filthy, and ugly with patchwork repairs. A small vessel, it looked barely large enough to tow even a freighter as minor as the Obeisance. The Duty had the appearance of a vessel whose captain was driven to take risks, to try for salvages that were beyond the capacity of ship and crew. That smacked of desperation. A useful trait.

The hull of the freighter vibrated with the clunks of magnetic clamps grabbing hold. A few moments later, one of the bridge screens lit up to indicate an airlock had been opened.

‘They have arrived,’ Cerastes said, pleased.

Wrack and her crew moved quickly through the silence of the Obeisance. She was pleased with her prize, a dead ship with just enough power in its hulk to make the salvage easy. She was calculating what it might actually be worth when they arrived at the bridge and found the nightmares waiting.

One sat in the command throne. The other stood behind him. They were huge, terrible creatures of armour and darkness, phantoms that had stepped out of the depths of forbidden rumour to blast the soul.

The seated one turned his head to look at Wrack. He smiled in awful welcome.

Wrack had a laspistol strapped to her side. Her hand trembled against the weapon for a moment, then fell away in futility.

The nightmare held her gaze a moment, then spoke. ‘I am Cerastes, Dark Apostle of the Eightfold Bane. With me is Apothecary Orthaon, for whom the flesh holds no secrets. What is your name, captain?’

‘Palura Wrack,’ she answered, because silence would have meant instant death. Her eyes jerked back and forth across the bridge, searching for anything that would give her the chance to save her crew.

Cerastes stood. Everan, a little man at the back of Wrack’s party, whimpered and ran away. The others jerked, as if ready to run too, then held their ground, knowing they had nowhere to go. Wrack felt herself on the verge of a fugue state, terror separating her mind from her body to leave her motionless, a statue.

‘You are well met, Palura Wrack,’ Cerastes said. ‘You and your crew need not fear harm. Not when the gods have decreed that this encounter should come to pass.’

Wrack said nothing, but her lips moved in automatic response to Cerastes’ words, a reflex that had nothing to do with her conscious will.

Cerastes read the word she had mouthed.

‘Heresy?’ Cerastes asked. ‘It is natural that you should think so. That is what has been ingrained in you. But look at me, and know that I am from Legitur. I know your world and its teachings more profoundly than any of you. Can anyone in your company say that they have lived in the Upper Glyphs and studied at the Collegium Sanctificatus?’

Shock froze Wrack’s vocal cords. No one said anything.

‘No,’ he continued. ‘No, I think not. You gaze upon me, but do not understand what you see. Yet I see you very clearly. In you, Palura Wrack, I see a woman of hardened middle age. I see a face lean with hunger, craggy with labour. I perceive eyes that have seen too much. I see a mortal who has had to struggle to ignore or forget half of what she knows to be true.’

Wrack trembled. She felt sick that this horror could anatomise her at a glance.

And yet…

No one had ever seen her before. No figure of power had ever deemed her worthy of observation.

Cerastes held out his left hand, palm open. His right lifted the crozius, drawing Wrack’s gaze to the unholy icon. ‘Let us speak together,’ he said.

‘What do you want?’ Wrack croaked.

‘Exactly what I said. To speak. Gather your crew, captain. I shall come aboard your ship and speak with all of you.’

‘And then?’ In spite of her terror, she was trying to think about the survival of her crew.

‘What happens then,’ Cerastes said, ‘is up to you. If you so choose, my brother Orthaon and I will leave your ship. I will abide by your decision.’ He smiled as if he already knew what her decision would be. ‘Do you accept?’

She did, of course. He spoke as if she truly had a choice. She knew that she did not.

They gathered in the mess hall of the Witness to Duty. The two Traitor Marines, towering over Wrack’s crewmates, had to duck when they passed through the doorways. The salvage ship had not been built for giants, or monsters of myth.

Orthaon stood in the background, his face concealed by his helmet. Cerastes presided over the centre of the hall. Looking at him, Wrack felt terror for herself and for her crew, and hatred for the traitor who stood in their midst. She also felt a fascinated awe. She had never seen a Space Marine, and Cerastes’ presence was even greater than his imposing size. Long, curved horns rose from his temples, making him seem even taller. They ended in dagger-sharp points, and though the lengths of the horns were ivory white, old blood had stained the ends black. Cerastes’ flesh was the same unnatural white as the horns, and drawn so tightly over his skull that at first Wrack had thought that it was bone. Intricate runes had been carved into his skin. They covered his entire head, and Wrack was sure she would see the same dense scarification everywhere else on his body. New wounds overlaid the old scars, turning his features into a jagged patchwork.

Spikes covered his armour of crimson and silver, and pipes of iron and brass rose from his power pack, framing him with the image of flaming candelabra and a baleful organ, as if he were a walking cathedrum of darkness. Parchments hung from the spikes, and the runes that covered them squirmed at the edges of Wrack’s vision. Wrack didn’t want to know the nature of the leathery material of the parchments. She didn’t want to know, but her soul guessed, and her skin crawled, as if in anticipation of being flayed from her body and turned into another dark sermon.

The crozius Cerastes held disturbed her greatly. He treated it with reverence, and it had the aura about it of an icon. She didn’t understand how something so manifestly vile could also seem sacred, touched by a power infinitely beyond the human.

When Cerastes spoke, his voice was deep, resonant, and commanding. It hissed too, as if built around a core of serpents. It held Wrack’s attention, gripping with a vice of iron. As frightening as the voice was, it conveyed a charge of wisdom. Wrack didn’t want to admit to that wisdom’s existence, but she couldn’t deny it any more than she could deny her need to breathe.

Wrack’s crew of twenty clustered at the other side of the hall from the Word Bearers, putting as much space between themselves and the giants as they could. She saw her terror and fascination reflected in the faces of all her shipmates. If they could have fled, they would have.

Or perhaps not. Cerastes held their attention. They could not move without his command.

We should fight, said a small, distant voice at the back of Wrack’s mind. But fight how? With what? That was not bravery. It was suicide.

And to her growing horror, Wrack realised that if she raised her hand against the Word Bearers, and Cerastes ordered her to stop, she did not think she would be able to disobey that voice.

‘If I were to ask you whether you are loyal to your Emperor,’ Cerastes said, ‘what would you say?’ His eyes passed over the entire crew, and Wrack took her breath in sharply, as if he had questioned her and no one else.

‘I am loyal,’ she said. She had been given leave to speak, and she jumped at the chance to prove herself faithful. ‘We are, all of us, obedient subjects to the Imperial Creed.’

Cerastes nodded. He looked pleased. He smiled, as a serpent smiles. ‘Why?’ he asked softly. His voice crept around the mess hall, insinuating and knowing. It made Wrack shiver. ‘Why are you faithful?’

Why? The question itself was unthinkable heresy. How could one be anything else? Did one ask why light was bright?

Yet there were so many warnings about heresy. So many exhortations to obedience. So many punishments for transgressors. So very many punishments.

Why?

The very question she had been struggling not to ask herself since she had thrown Avial to his death and fled to the temporary safety of the Witness to Duty.

Why?

‘The Emperor protects.’

Still reeling from Cerastes’ question, Wrack didn’t see who spoke. It might even have been she who answered. She wasn’t sure.

‘The Emperor protects,’ Cerastes repeated, as if examining the taste of an absurdity. The words seemed weak, a rote statement with nothing to support it. ‘The Emperor protects?’ Cerastes said, the interrogative undermining the credo even more. ‘Does he?’

There was silence in the hall, a taut silence, taut as a throat pulled back before being sliced open.

‘Does he?’ Cerastes asked again, and the words were the slicing of the throat. ‘What does he protect you from? From hardship? From disease? From death by misadventure? From your enemies?’

‘From the enemies of the Imperium,’ said Wrack, the words weak and brittle in her ears. ‘From the xenos and the heretic.’

‘And from me?’ said Cerastes. He looked around, as if inviting the hand of the Emperor to strike him down. ‘If the Emperor protects, why am I on this ship? Why are you at my mercy? Your only guarantor of life is my good will, and we all know that. And I ask again, protect you from what? Do you even know what I am?’ He paused. ‘What do you know of the true gods? Nothing. Nothing at all.’ He laughed. ‘If you will hear me, I will teach you many things. One of the greatest lessons you will learn is the nature of irony. Thus, know this – what the False Emperor seeks to protect you from is the gods you are never to know exist. I know the truths of your creed to a depth you can never expect to reach.’

Cerastes began to pace slowly and steadily back and forth. He looked every crew member in the eyes. The intensity of his address struck Wrack like a physical blow.

Do not listen. Do not listen. She mustn’t. Just standing here passively was an act of heresy when such words as these were being spoken. But Cerastes’ voice would not let her cover her ears or turn away. His reason was even more powerful.

‘There is a difference,’ said Cerastes, ‘between faith and revelation, between belief and knowledge. You believe the Emperor to be a god. Is he? Does he protect? Do you feel his eye on you, and the touch of his hand on your heart?’

I do, Wrack tried to say. I do! She couldn’t bring herself to lie.

‘I, too, have faith,’ Cerastes continued. ‘I have faith in the gods’ favour. I have faith in the teachings of Lorgar. I have faith in the Word. But I do not need to have faith in the reality of the gods. I have proof of that.’ He stopped pacing in the centre of the hall again and stretched his arms out to either side. He tilted his head back as if he were staring through the ceiling and the hull of the Witness to Duty, out into the void, and beyond. ‘I am proof of their existence. Once, I was as you are. I was mortal, another of the deluded billions on Legitur. No longer. I am unburdened of lies. I am transformed. I have fought side by side with daemons.’

‘There are no such things,’ someone moaned, begging to be allowed to hold on to the comforting falsehoods of ignorance.

‘Ah, but there are. I have spoken with them, and they with me. I have seen the glories of Chaos Undivided, and I shall see them again. So, if you embrace the truth, will you.’

Wrack shivered – in fear, but also, to her astonishment and guilt, with curiosity. She knew she should only be hearing a threat in what Cerastes said. Yet a part of her responded to the promise.

‘You have been indoctrinated since birth to accept a meaning of faith which is nothing more than belief without thought, an enforced allegiance surrounded by an ornamentation of falsehoods and empty promises. The Emperor protects.’ Now the phrase sounded like a curse. ‘The words would be meaningless, but they are not. Their meaning is a lie. They are a hope that you express in the face of a universe that teaches you at every moment of your lives that the hope is a delusion.

‘The true gods keep their promises. Their reality is beyond question. Faith in them is not a belief in their existence. I do not need to believe in this ship for it to be real. No, faith in the true gods is instead a form of loyalty, and it is rewarded.’ He spread his arms, and the light around him seemed to bend. There was a faint crackle, and wisps of black energy spiralled up and down his horns. ‘It is rewarded very well indeed,’ said Cerastes.

He stared at the crew, and his gaze pulled Wrack in. Her perception of the hall faded away. There was only Cerastes, and the revelations he promised.

‘I am the living proof of myths,’ he said. ‘I am the living proof that the Imperial Creed is a lie. Look upon me, and think of all the lies of the Imperium. Join me. Hear the Word of Lorgar. Hear the Word of Truth.’

As Cerastes spoke, he became more and more impassioned, and it seemed to Wrack that the scarification on his skull squirmed with the beats of his sermon. That could not be, and soon the illusion no longer troubled her. The voice of the Dark Apostle led her to face the lies of her existence, all the falsehoods and hypocrisies she had witnessed, espoused and ignored. She admitted the truth of Legitur. She had breathed in lies all her life. So had her parents, and in the end, the lies had smothered them. Cerastes gave her the courage to see what she had tried to pretend was not the case.

She did not fear his words any longer. She embraced them.

She exulted in an experience she had never known before.

She knew its name, though.

Liberation.

A Black Library Publication

First published in Great Britain in 2026.
This eBook edition published in 2026 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

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Cover illustration by Kevin Chin.

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ISBN: 978-1-83609-424-1

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