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The Dark Coil: Ascension – Extract

A Black Library Publication

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I

Towards the Within

The snow was falling heavily when the traveller found the dead village. He stumbled upon it with the sudden, dislocating strangeness of one dream slipping into another. One moment he was battering a path through a tangle of thorny bushes, the next he was out in the open, blinking in the sunlight. After the forest’s perennial murk it was dazzling, though the day was already waning towards dusk.

With a sigh of relief the traveller raised his face to the light. He was slight of build and his shoulders sagged under the weight of his backpack, lending him the stooped look of a much older man. His hooded greatcoat was woven from white synth-leather, the fabric augmented with rubbery black thermo-pads that stored the wearer’s body heat. It was an expensive garment, but filthy and frayed, speaking of great misfortune or too long in the wilderness.

Leaning on his staff, the traveller squinted at the sallow smear of the sun.

It’s ailing. The notion saddened him. It wasn’t his sun, for this was not his world, but what did that matter? The yearning for light was a primal truth that transcended the confusion wrought by interstellar travel. Some things were constant, even in this most inconstant of places. The sun – any sun – was life.

‘There’s nothing wrong with it,’ he told himself, recalling the bright disc that had greeted him when he’d disembarked at the planet’s majestic space port. Like Malpertuis’ marble-clad capital city, the sun had been glorious and vital, afire with potential. The sickness wasn’t in the sun or the sky, but in this land – a malaise so complete it tainted the light itself.

‘Perhaps you were right, my lady,’ he murmured, picturing the woman who had revealed this path. So much had become hazy since his descent into the woodland valley, but not her. Never her…

‘The Reverie is no place for old souls,’ the woman in blue warns.

‘I am not old, my lady,’ her visitor protests, taken aback.

‘Too old to outrun yourself,’ she judges. ‘Far too old to rise above yourself.’ Her azure irises are surely too vivid to be entirely natural. Lenses perhaps, or bio-tinting? Such contrivances are common in this city of dreamers.

It has taken the traveller much longer to locate his contact in the capital city than he anticipated. The directions he’d been given proved to be a riddle couched in seemingly plain language, for none of the places he sought existed. Their names were shrewd metaphors for the reality, relying on intuition rather than intellect to unravel. It was a test, of course, and neither the first nor the last on his long journey. Which was as it should be.

‘I am only twenty-three standard years old,’ he presses.

‘In this flesh, perhaps,’ the woman answers, ‘but your soul says otherwise, Seigneur Olba.’

‘That isn’t my name.’ Nor has he offered her one, for anonymity is the custom of those bound for the Reverie. They are simply ‘travellers’ until they reach their destination. After all, they are seeking themselves. Old names are meaningless on the Mirrored Path, though they might prove burdensome.

‘Another lie then,’ she observes obliquely. ‘No matter.’

He senses recognition in her regard, though that isn’t possible. He is certain they have never met before. This woman is not someone he would have forgotten. She is extraordinarily tall and slender, her body wrapped in overlapping fronds of shimmering blue silk. Silver bangles encircle her velvet-sheathed arms in serpentine coils. Her scalp is smoothly shaven save for a braided topknot that blooms out to cover her ears and shoulders in an indigo cascade. A web of fine black lines covers her face, weaving a ‘third eye’ upon her forehead, its spiral iris framed by widespread wings. The traveller cannot tell whether the pattern is tattooed or incised into her alabaster skin, nor decide upon her age, for she seems suspended between youth and maturity, but her allure is unquestionable. Timeless. The name he knows her by is Euryale, though he suspects that is only one of many and not the truest.

She is, among other things, a painter. Her studio is secreted in the helical labyrinth of the Spyndryft, far below the city’s sunlit streets. This is where the most introspective of Charlemagne’s myriad dreamers reside, along with the lost souls from which they draw inspiration – and, occasionally, it is rumoured, sustenance. They are an exclusive clique in a city abundant with artists, their work a dark mirror of the idealised splendour on display elsewhere.

Euryale’s paintings are particularly unsettling because they find beauty where it has no place being, spinning glamour from squalor or mystery from the banal – a cadaverous beggar with gentle eyes who proffers a bowl that spills radiant gems… The desiccated carcass of a rat that sprouts luxuriant orchids filled with teeth… A winged child perched atop a heap of rusting machinery as she plays with the severed head of a cybernetic beast…

Among these grim-bright flights of fantasy are a handful dedicated to the planet’s reclusive custodians. None are depicted as the traveller imagines them. None are heroic, at least not in the conventional sense. And yet they are still magnificent and otherworldly. His attention keeps straying to them as he converses with the painter.

‘You’ve seen them?’ he asks on impulse.

‘I have. Once I sought to frame them in verse, but words proved too narrow for the endeavour. Too absolute.’ She shuts her eyes and lays her gloved hands on the table between them. It feels like the beginning of a ritual. ‘Why are so many visitors to this world bound for the Reverie?’

‘So many?’ The traveller cannot conceal his surprise, or a flash of covetousness.

‘So many of the few who find me,’ she elaborates. Though her eyes are closed he can still feel her gaze, as though her painted eye sees more than its fleshly counterparts. ‘Why are you all so eager to embrace your unravelling?’

‘We rise on burning wings,’ he quotes boldly. Above all else, it is those valiant words that have drawn him here. ‘And I do not plan on dying, my lady.’

‘So say they all.’ The tattoos around her lips writhe as she smiles, twisting the expression into sorrow. ‘I cannot persuade you to renounce your intent, traveller.’ This is spoken as a statement rather than a question, but he answers regardless. Her smile saddens further at his inevitable reply.

‘So it goes,’ she says gravely. ‘You have the toll?’

He pays the agreed fee, both the material and the symbolic offerings, wincing when she draws a measure of his blood then tattoos the Winged Eye onto his left palm. He has always feared needles, though he has rarely felt their sting, and never intensely. Truthfully, he has felt little real pain in his life, either in body or spirit, though he would never admit this, even to himself. Indeed, if pressed, he would proclaim himself a tortured soul.

The final part of the ritual is altogether more pleasurable, yet its mark cuts deeper.

Afterwards Euryale makes the arrangements, emphasising the importance of discretion throughout his quest. While his course is not forbidden, it would be unwise to speak of it outside their select circle. Like many esoteric societies, theirs is best kept secret.

‘Perhaps we shall meet again, my lady,’ he says, offering a graceful bow.

‘On some paths perhaps, but I will not remember you.’

Unable to decide if this is a slight, he turns away then hesitates.

‘Will I find them?’ His eyes lock on the painting behind her. It portrays an armoured figure shattering into many-coloured fragments from its abdomen, as though its body is formed from crystal. The warrior’s helmeted head is thrown back and his arms are outstretched, seemingly exulting in his own disintegration as rainbow light spills from his visor. ‘Will I find the Resplendent?’

‘If they seek you.’

‘They’re close,’ the traveller assured the enfeebled sun, though he was really speaking to her, as he so often did. ‘I’ve felt them watching me, Euryale.’

His journey to the planet’s northern reaches, where the not-quite-forbidden territory lay, had been long. Air transport was restricted so he had travelled overland, first aboard the sleek maglev trains connecting the cardinal cities, then with a variety of wheeled vehicles and finally – astonishingly – a cart drawn by indigenous animals. With each phase of the journey he’d felt himself slipping further into the past, disentangling himself from mankind’s excesses and the guilt of his own – reaching for something finer.

Like Malpertuis itself…

The planet was a verdant jewel, free of the monolithic manufactoria or continent-spanning nutri-farms that despoiled so much of the Imperium. So many worlds existed only to serve mankind’s perpetual wars, like cogs in a voracious machine that devoured itself to feed its own expansion, blind to the absurdity of the endeavour.

By decree of its elusive custodians, Malpertuis was governed with a benign but firm hand by a council of mortal delegates who’d lived and learned amongst the Resplendent from childhood. Vast tracts of land were left wild and population levels strictly regulated, seemingly without incurring the displeasure of the people, who were as varied as they were vibrant. Off-world visitors were required to prove their aesthetic sensibilities before being granted passage, which ruled out most with the means to undertake the journey, for the Chiaroscuro System was remote and difficult to find, hidden deep in the Veil Radiant on the easternmost fringes of the Imperium, where interstellar navigation became an art rather than a craft. No doubt this had played a part in its custodians’ attraction to the world. Fortunately payment had been no obstacle for the traveller and he had delighted in the tests set before him, as he’d delighted in the world they warded.

Shining Malpertuis… The Painted World… Reve le Sangre… The Planet of Dreamers…

Creativity was celebrated across its thirty-one realms, from the glittering capital to the humblest rural townships. Those with talent or simply raw passion were supported in their endeavours, for the Resplendent regarded aspiration as the equal of excellence. Artistry lies in the soul, not the hand, he was told wherever he went. And dreams are the highest currency.

By the time he reached the frigid northern wilderness of the Hinterwylds he’d come to love this world, and somewhere along the way his fascination with its guardians had crystallised into reverence. It was remarkable that such a utopia could exist within the Imperium. Oh, there were countless safe, even beautiful worlds far from the front lines of mankind’s perpetual war – sanctuaries and pleasure retreats for the wealthy and the powerful – but he doubted there was another haven like this, where genuine idealism flourished. It was the exception that proved the grim rule of the wider reality.

Nevertheless, when he’d first looked upon the Reverie the traveller had wavered…

The final leg of his journey is a climb into the glacial mountains bordering his destination. His guide, a local woman with a face as stern and weatherworn as her land, takes him as far as the summit. There she points at the valley below then departs without a word. She has said nothing during their entire six-day trek. He wonders how many other seekers she has led here before him. Doubtless she thinks them all fools. And perhaps she is right.

Gazing down into the valley, the traveller feels the first stirrings of doubt. A forest fills the lowlands, vast and dense, its canopy wreathed in a fine mist that stains the vegetation a sickly yellow. The trees extend in an unbroken swathe to the distant plateau of the Severed Ridge, beyond which lie the Otranto Fjordlands, where the planet’s custodians reputedly reside. The northerners call them the Shining Ones, a name dating back over three thousand years to the warrior-artisans’ arrival on this world. Nothing is recorded of the planet’s history prior to that. Like its name, Malpertuis’ story begins with its custodians.

The Resplendent have been magnanimous in their stewardship, but they remain apart from their subjects, their souls turned towards a higher purpose, for they are descended from a demigod, who was in turn the brightest of the God-Emperor’s nine true sons. It is rare for mortals to draw their attention, let alone their approbation, so only a fool would approach their citadel uninvited. But invitations cannot be requested. They must be earned. That is the purpose of the Reverie.

And yet, though he believes all this fervently, the traveller still hesitates.

The forest below is unquestionably where his path lies, as it does for all mortals who seek an audience with the Resplendent – and those who aspire to join their ranks – but crossing it appears hopeless. His sophisticated nav-auspex began playing up during the ascent, its readings jumbled into nonsense. The more primitive instruments he carries have fared little better, the needle of his gyrocompass spinning wildly and his tri-gauge indicating a void. Once he enters the forest and loses sight of the sun and the stars he will be lost. He could wander that tangle for a lifetime and never find a way out.

‘The Mirrored Path is navigated by ideals, not traversed by steps,’ the traveller quotes from the sublime treatise that set him on this course. The words steady him. This is his test and the Resplendent will be watching.

Trusting in destiny he descends, and the Reverie swallows him.

‘Reality is only superficially reasonable,’ the traveller confided in the bilious sun. ‘Nothing is what it seems, yet also nothing more, for semblance is all there is.’

The favoured verse brought a smile to his cracked lips. Hunger had hollowed out his once handsome face and his complexion had faded from burnished copper to beige. A scrappy beard clung to his chin, flecked with snow. He suspected he looked twice his age now, almost the old man Euryale had seen in him. Once that thought would have been mortifying, but he was long past such vanity. The flesh was only an illusion. The Arc Resplendent was as emphatic about this point as it was ambiguous about so much else, though its obscurities were doubtless a failing in him rather than the treatise, or due to the incomplete transcript in the society’s possession. Someday soon he hoped to read the complete work. Then everything would become clear.

His smile became a frown as his gaze settled on the village ahead. It was huddled in a shallow dip in the land and bordered by a patchwork of fields, their crops long overrun by hardier vegetation, though even that looked lifeless. A conical building rose from the nearest field, its tall frame draped in withered vines. Four fans jutted from its apex, forming a cross against the sky, like a massive grave marker. A mill. He had seen similar structures across the northern territories, though never in such a dilapidated state.

Beyond its outskirts the village was a muddle of ramshackle wooden dwellings, many only standing because they leant against their neighbours. A stone steeple loomed over the sullen, snow-piled rooftops, hinting at a more substantial structure at the community’s centre, probably a temple, though they were rare on Malpertuis. The Resplendent discouraged conventional worship, even if they didn’t overtly suppress it.

Looking past the buildings, the traveller saw the forest completely encircled the place, yet kept its distance, like a besieging army wary of a trap. He narrowed his eyes, unsure what he was looking for. The village was obviously long dead, yet its decrepitude felt evasive. Sly. It was the first sign of civilisation he’d seen since entering the Reverie – the first sign of anything really – but it was nowhere he wanted to go.

Are you certain? he asked himself. Night was fast approaching and it was already bitterly cold. Why not take shelter here? Surely it was better than–

Something glinted fleetingly in one of the broken windows, as though a bright form had flitted across the room behind.

No, the traveller decided. Better the cold and the darkness than the ghosts those blighted dwellings might harbour. Something very bad had happened here and the stain lingered. Briefly he considered making camp in the fields then shook his head. It was still too close. He wanted to be as far from this place as possible when night fell.

‘It’s poisoned, Euryale,’ he said, nodding to himself, quite certain she would sense the taint too and approve of his decision.

Casting a last glance at the sun, he turned away. As he entered the trees he imagined the town shedding its sham stillness and reaching after him with claws of splintered wood, its windowed eyes glowering beneath shrunken-browed rafters, furious at being cheated of its prey.

The traveller didn’t look back. Some things were better left unseen.

A Black Library Publication

‘Nightfall’ first published in Heroes of the Space Marines in 2009.
‘The Crown of Thorns’ first published digitally in 2013.
‘The Walker in Fire’ first published digitally in 2015.
‘The Thirteenth Psalm’ first published in Inferno! Volume 2 in 2018.
Requiem Infernal first published in 2019.
The Reverie first published in 2020.
‘Nightbleed’ first published digitally in 2020.
‘The Sins of My Brothers’ first published in The Successors anthology in 2021.
‘Aria Arcana’ first published digitally in 2022.
‘Nightshift Nineteen’ first published digitally in 2024.
This eBook edition published in 2025 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Represented by: Games Workshop Limited – Irish branch, Unit 3, Lower Liffey Street, Dublin 1, D01 K199, Ireland.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Jodie Muir.
Map by Daniel Havardi.

The Dark Coil: Ascension © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2025. The Dark Coil: Ascension, GW, Games Workshop, Black Library, The Horus Heresy, The Horus Heresy Eye logo, Space Marine, 40K, Warhammer, Warhammer 40,000, the ‘Aquila’ Double-headed Eagle logo, and all associated logos, illustrations, images, names, creatures, races, vehicles, locations, weapons, characters, and the distinctive likenesses thereof, are either ® or TM, and/or © Games Workshop Limited, variably registered around the world.
All Rights Reserved.

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978-1-83609-063-2

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

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