I set this down at the insistence of my colleague, though I confess I would prefer to let the matter rest. Dr. Talwick maintains that recording these events may prove useful to those who come after – a sentiment I find simultaneously rational and deeply unsettling. But herein I shall attempt to relate what Archdeacon Velles told me during those final hours in the medicae ward, though even now, three weeks distant, I find my hand reluctant to transcribe certain particulars.

I had known Velles for some seventeen years, ever since we both served aboard the Unshakeable Word in the Battlefleet Maelstrom. He was a man of impeccable reputation: utterly methodical in his devotions, unfailingly scrupulous in his scholarship, and possessed of that unshakeable spiritual composure one associates with the very best shepherds of the faithful. When I received word that he had been committed to the sanatorium on Credence Prime, I confess I thought there must be some administrative error. Velles, of all people, succumbing to a nervous collapse? Impossible.

Yet there he lay when I arrived. He was far thinner than I remembered, with a peculiar greyness about the temples that seemed less a matter of age than of… well, I shall come to that.

“Corvinus,” he said, gripping my hand with surprising, wiry strength. “Good of you to come old chap. I haven’t much time, and there are things you must know. Things I should have recognised before I-” He stopped himself, glancing toward the door as one who fears to be overheard, though the attendants had assured me we were quite alone.

I settled myself in the chair beside his bed and adopted what I hoped was an encouraging, sympathetic expression. “Take your time, old friend. Whatever has troubled you-“

“I attended one of Kyne’s sermons,” he said abruptly. “On Meridian Sanctus. Six weeks ago, though it feels…” He paused, and some unnameable emotion flickered across his features; not quite fear, not quite ecstasy. “Longer. It feels much longer.”

I knew the name, naturally. Everyone in and around the Pale Stars sector knew of Erastos Kyne by then. Kyne the prophet, Kyne the heretic, the survivor of the Martyred Hope. The ecclesiastical authorities were in a state of barely controlled disagreement about him, which is to say they were tearing each other apart in increasingly baroque theological disputes.

“I went as an observer,” Velles continued. “Cardinal Orthus had asked me to attend and provide an assessment. He was – well I assume he still is – considering whether to declare Kyne anathema, you understand, and wanted a trusted witness. Someone level-headed.” A bitter smile touched his lips as he enunciated those last words.

“The gathering was held in the lower chapels of the Sanctum Tacitum. You know the place, I am sure. Those old vaulted halls beneath the main cathedral, where they used to inter bishops in the early days of the settlement. Dreadfully cold, even in summer. There were perhaps a hundred souls in attendance, mostly pilgrims who’d come specifically to hear him speak. I positioned myself near the back, took out my stylus and data-slate, prepared to take notes.

“When Kyne entered, I’ll admit I was… underwhelmed. He’s not an impressive figure, physically, you understand. Medium height, pale; everyone in this blighted region is pale, but there was something else about it with him. It was as though he’d been bleached from the inside out. He wore simple robes, he carried no ceremonial items, and he made no grand entrance. He simply walked to the front and stood there, looking at us.

“The silence stretched. I checked my chrono – later, I mean, when I reviewed my notes. He stood there for four minutes and thirty-seven seconds without speaking. But Corvinus, it didn’t feel like four minutes. It felt like… like no time at all, and also like an age of the galaxy had passed. I can’t explain it better than that.

“Finally he spoke. His voice was-” Velles stopped, and I noticed his hands had begun to tremble, and his eyes roved the room. “I can’t quite recall the timbre of it. Isn’t that strange? I was there, I heard every word, but when I try to remember the sound of his voice, it’s like trying to remember a dream. It just slips away. But while he was speaking, oh Throne, it was the most crystal-clear thing I’d ever heard.

“He didn’t preach, not exactly. He told us about the Martyred Hope. About the seven months alone in that dead ship. And he said, Corvinus, he said he wasn’t alone. That Something had been there with him in the dark. Something that sang.

“I should have left then. Every instinct screamed heresy, and should have driven me from that place. But I didn’t leave. Not one of us did, because the way he described it, it sounded like revelation. Like he’d discovered something that had always been there, waiting in the spaces between stars, and that we’d all been fools for not listening.

“He said the God-Emperor’s voice isn’t words. Words are too small, too crude, too narrow and ripe for misunderstanding. The Emperor speaks in harmonics, in resonances that echo through the Materium and the Immaterium both. And the Pale Stars are conducting that harmony. Resonating with it, amplifying it. Making it audible to those willing to truly Listen.”

Velles leaned forward, and in that moment, I saw something in his eyes that made me wish I’d brought an attendant into the room after all.

“And then, Corvinus, he made us Hear it.”

“I don’t know what he did. I’ve gone over my memories a thousand times. He didn’t use any device. He didn’t invoke any ritual. He simply… tilted his head, as though listening to something just beyond our perception. And after a moment we heard it too.

“It started as a ringing. High and pure, like the note a fine crystal glass makes when struck. But it grew. Not louder, no, I don’t think volume is quite the right word for it. It grew more present, more real, as though that one note was always there, underlying everything, and we’d simply never noticed until Kyne showed us how to Listen.

“Then came the others. Harmonics layering upon harmonics. The sound, the music, was exquisite. It was terrible. It was both and neither. I found myself weeping, though I couldn’t have said whether from joy or horror. The woman beside me was laughing, and the man in front had collapsed to his knees and was making a sound I can only describe as rapture.

“And beneath it all – beneath or above it, or within it, I truly cannot say – there was a voice. Singing. Corvinus, I knew with absolute certainty that it was Him. The Master of Mankind. I could feel His attention upon us, terrible and glorious, and the music was His will made manifest.

“The sermon ended, just like that. One moment I was drowning in that cosmic symphony, the next I was standing in an empty chapel with my data-slate in my hand and no memory of the crowd dispersing. My chrono showed two hours or more had passed, but I’d recorded nothing. The slate was blank except for one line I’d apparently written in my own hand: “He teaches us to Hear.”

“I reported to Cardinal Orthus the next day. Told him everything I could remember, as I have done with you now. He listened, made notes, then asked me a single question: ‘Would you go again?’ And Corvinus, God-Emperor forgive me, I said yes. I said yes immediately, without thought, and the certainty in my voice frightened me.

“Orthus forbade it, naturally. He had me confined to quarters, then sent for medicae evaluators. But the damage was done, I can hear it now even without Kyne’s presence. Faintly yes, barely a whisper at the edge of perception, but it’s always there now. The music of the Pale Stars.

“But the worst part, the part that condemned me to languished here?” He leaned very close, and I smelled something on his breath – not decay, but something stranger. Like ozone, maybe, or the air after lightning. “I’ve started to understand it. There are patterns in the harmonics, Corvinus. Instructions. A great work waiting to be completed. Sometimes, when I close my eyes and truly Listen, I think I can hear His voice telling me my part in it.”

He released my hand and lay back, suddenly exhausted, looking paler even than before. “You think me mad, and perhaps I am. But answer me this: If I am mad, why have forty-seven other attendees of that sermon been committed to similar institutions across a dozen worlds? Why do the astropaths refuse to enter this wing of the sanatorium?” His voice fell to a strained whisper. “Why did the servo-skull that accompanied you into this room cease functioning the moment I began speaking of the music?”

I confess I had not noticed that last detail, but when I glanced at the servo-skull hovering near the door, its ocular lenses were indeed dark.

“Go to Meridian Sanctus,” Velles whispered. “Find the lower chapels and listen see in the stillness of that place. And if you can, if you hear even the faintest echo of what I heard, then you’ll know: This is His will.”

He died that night, some failure of the enteric system, the medicae claimed, though they seemed uncertain of any details regarding the time and manner of death. I did not go to Meridian Sanctus. I will not go. But sometimes, in the small hours when the ship is quiet and I am alone with my thoughts, I find myself listening to the silence.

I am no longer certain it is silent at all.

Dr. Talwick appended the following note to this account: “Dr. Corvinus submitted this document sixteen days ago and requested immediate reassignment to duties outside the Pale Stars region. His petition was granted. However, as of this writing, Dr. Corvinus has failed to arrive at his new station. His last confirmed sighting places him aboard a civilian transport bound for Meridian Sanctus. I have sent three messages by astropathic relay. He has not responded.”