The brazier oil hissed, smelling of rendered mutton fat and burnt cloves. It did little to clear the stink of the damp cellar.

Sister Superior Vane did not look up from the parchment roll spread across her desk. Her fingers, encased in ceramite, slowly traced the notes.

‘Seventy-four days,’ Vane said with contempt, ‘Seventy-four days since you turned from the Emperor’s light to preen in the mirror of a daemon’s flattery.’

Sister Yvaine stood in the centre of the room. She did not wear the plate of the Order’s Militant. She wore the burlap, rough wool of the Repentia, hanging loosely from shoulders that had once carried a heavy bolter. 

‘I remember, Mistress,’ Yvaine whispered. Her eyes were fixed on the floorboards between Vane’s boots.

‘Do you?’ Vane finally raised her head. Her face was a map of old shrapnel scars and pale grey eyes. There was no pity in them. Only a cold, clinical disappointment. ‘The records of the Quartermaster’s Office suggest a suspicious reality, Yvaine.’

Vane jabbed a finger at the parchment.

‘On the plains of Gorgor,’ Vane recited, ‘you charged into a mob of thirty greenskins, and not one of them fired. Not one turned its head. The report states they simply continued shooting at the Rhinos behind you.’

Yvaine swallowed hard, her throat dry. She remembered the heat of the green plasma, the way the air had hummed, and how the massive xenos had suddenly scratched its heavy brow and turned its heavy guns away to shred a transport instead.

‘The Emperor’s shield is mysterious, Mistress,’ Yvaine managed, though the words tasted like ash.

‘Indeed,’ Vane hissed, standing up. The sound of her armour servos was a low, angry growl. She stepped around the desk, closing the distance between them. She circled Yvaine like a vulture inspecting a carcass that refused to rot. ‘At Hive Redoubt, a mob of feral xenos beasts trampled the front trenches. They tore through veteran Seraphim, and carved the command squad to ribbons. And you? You stood amidst it all, your eviscerator rising and falling, drenched in xenos blood while an ork warlord ran past you, screaming about empty space that wasn’t even there.’

Vane stopped inches from Yvaine’s face.

‘The sisters whisper in the refectory, Yvaine. They look at your purple rags the very color of the wretched filth that tried to steal your soul and they see a miracle. They see a living saint wrapped in a shroud of her own humiliation.’

Vane’s gauntlets clenched into fists.

‘I wanted you dead on day one. I wanted you left as nothing but a red smear under the tracks of a Rhino. I wanted your name lost so completely that even the scribes in the Basilica would forget you ever drew breath. And yet… you walk through their slaughterhouses like a ghost. Why won’t you die?’

Yvaine stared straight ahead, her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird. She couldn’t explain why. She only knew that every time she stepped into the green tide, the monsters looked right through her, completely ignoring her presence, incomprehensibly vacant from their reality.

‘I am… unworthy of death, Mistress,’ Yvaine whispered, her voice trembling with fear. ‘My sin is too great. The Emperor denies me peace.’

Vane stared at her for a long, agonising moment, searching for mockery and finding only the hollow, shivering despair of a soul trapped by the shame and guilt of her sins.

Vane turned away, walking over to a tall trunk resting against the damp stone wall. With a sharp wrench of her gauntlet, she heaved the heavy lid open.

Inside, resting on a bed of blood-red velvet, lay a Holy Regalia. It was pristine, polished to a mirror like obsidian finish, devoid of heraldry or ornaments. The armour of a Sister who had completed her penance, washed away her sins in the blood of the foes of mankind.

‘Your penance is at an end,’ Vane said flatly, as she turned and faced Yvaine. ‘A strike force departs at dawn for the Ash Wastes of Tartarus Prime. A sacred relic, the Jawbone of Saint Katherine was lost in the orbital wreckage after the greenskin landed forty years ago. Hundreds of martyrs have died trying to reclaim it.’

Vane gestured to the black armour.

‘Put on the armor, Yvaine. Take up your eviscerator. Go into the heart of the warzone once again. If it’s the will of our Holy Emperor that you survive, your slate will be wiped clean. You will become a true daughter of the Emperor once again.’

The silence in the cellar grew absolute. The brazier hissed, a single spark leapt out.

Yvaine looked at the black armour. It gleamed with a heavy, light absorbing sheen, the unmistakable silhouette of ceramite black. It was a masterpiece of Imperial engineering.

Yvaine wondered for an instant if she had truly earned the Divine Emperor’s favour, for her sin was great, and she had seen others, guilty of lesser sins granted the honour of a glorious death.

She raised her eyes to meet the Sister Superior’s scarred gaze, filled with fear still, but beneath it, a dawning certainty. Two miracles. Two times the Emperor had refused her death. He was keeping her for something. Punishment, perhaps. Or purpose. Regardless, to struggle against it was blasphemy.

‘No, Mistress.’ Her voice carried the serene acceptance of someone who had surrendered all control to a higher power. 

Vane froze. Her head tilted slightly. ‘What did you say?’

‘I cannot wear black. It is for the redeemed,’ Yvaine said, her hands tightening into white-knuckled fists. ‘I am not redeemed. Let me wear my shame honestly.’ 

‘You refuse the armour?’ Vane asked, a dark spark igniting in her eyes.

‘I am a wretch,’ she said, as she loosened her grip. ‘My penance must continue. Paint the armour. Paint it violet. Let me wear the blasphemous violet livery of the third legion until my dying breath, it is the will of our Divine Emperor.’