The thing in the wave did not come out of the dark. It made the dark come with it.
It rose along miles of the rim at once, and the wave rose around it like a cloak being lifted, and the first honest look at it broke something in the minds of fighters who had held their walls all night without flinching. It was a body the size of weather. A mountain range that moved, black on black, with too many limbs to count and a head like a drowned moon, and the runners and flyers the rim had bled to kill all night were flowing up its sides and into it, being taken back, being spent into something larger.
The Hub did not wait for anyone to understand. It wrote its warning across every eye on the rim in letters that had never appeared in the smaller hours.
[Calamity-class entity confirmed. Classification: Legendary-rank, Tier-100.]
[All territories within the projected impact zone: emergency missions generating. Contribution: unmeasured.]
