Oll Persson's thoughts on the Athame

Oll’s not so sure. Nothing and no one has ever changed the Emperor’s mind, or persuaded Him to reconsider His plans. But there’s a chance, a minuscule one worth all this risk, a chance to stop the Emperor leading mankind to what Oll always warned would be the inescapable consequence of His ambitions.

Not glory. Not the ascension of the human race. Just the dark and hopeless bonfire of the Triumph of Ruin.

The knife shivers in his hand. The lapped-stone thing is old, Neolithic old. It’s played its part in history: the instrument of the original murder, splashed with the blood of Abel, the executioner of Gog. It’s lain on the painted top of a great round table, and passed from daemon to man and back again. Oll took it from the Word Bearers, who had come to understand the potency of such objects, and had taken to collecting them. A blade like it, similarly cursed by fate, initiated this cataclysm. Perhaps, as a mirroring ritual, the athame can end it.

Perhaps. The athame’s just stone, just old stone, but its past has created a resonance in the immaterium, the staining shadow of murder. It’s tired of cutting time and space. It has killed seven times. It’s been promised an eighth death.

If that’s what it takes. Oll will do it if he has to. Plunging that blade into...

It wouldn’t be the first time.

-The End and The Death: volume one, chapter 1: xvi