Earth Time, Year 19,694 CE.
Beyond the Milky Way.
The endless war between the Tyranids and the Eldrazi had by now raged for nearly twenty thousand years.
What began as scattered battles had swelled into a conflict of cosmic proportions. The Eldrazi, once besieged on all fronts, had grown to match the Tyranids blow for blow. They could now engage the swarm on equal footing across the stars.
Their war sprawled across more than a hundred stellar systems at once, stretching over ten million light-years.
Stars and entire civilizations were casually erased in the crossfire, leaving not even ripples in history. Neither side bothered to count the dead. To them, the annihilation of "lesser" species was a trivial detail.
---
On one battlefield, vast numbers of Sire-Class Eldrazi Spawn gathered, weaving their powers together to create a controlled, mobile black hole. Their aim was to collapse an entire Tyranid-held system, erasing the swarm within along with the stars themselves.
The Hive Mind, however, immediately sensed the danger. Vast Tyranid broods surged to intervene, their interference clashing against the Eldrazi ritual.
The void filled with apocalyptic struggle. Swarms blotted out starlight. Spawn the size of continents clashed fang to talon with bio-titans, their numbers in the tens of billions.
Warp-born powers crackled. Eldrazi psyonics collided with the Shadow in the Warp, each side jamming and counter-jamming, amplifying their wills through countless vessels.
Even the fabric of space buckled.
Small pocket-dimensions flickered into being and collapsed in seconds. From afar, the void rippled like waves, each crest and crash marking the birth and death of a temporary world.
This was but a fragment of the war. Just one battle group, in one theater, in a conflict spanning eternity.
Over twenty millennia of constant bloodshed had accelerated their evolution to an exponential pace. Both sides grew stronger, more numerous, more terrifying. Compared to their earliest forms, they had advanced a hundredfold.
War itself had become their forge. The crucible of slaughter pushed them to ascend ever higher.
By comparison, the talents of species like humanity or the Aeldari were pitiful — crippled, frail, and slow.
---
As for the third power once observed between them — Aeon, the avatar of Orsaga's devouring aspect — its presence had not been recorded for over ten thousand years.
The last sighting told a tale of horror:
An arm stretching across billions of kilometers.
A finger large enough to cradle planets.
A single beam of light triggering supernova across a hundred light-years.
A single bite devouring trillions of living ships as though they were mere plankton.
Unlike the swarm-hive of the Tyranids or the collective spawn of the Eldrazi, Aeon focused all its growth into one colossal body.
It consumed relentlessly, evolving at a pace beyond comprehension. Its size and strength swelled like an ever-expanding balloon, reaching truly extranormal proportions — a lifeform beyond classification, an aberration of the material cosmos.
By now, no mere multitude could threaten it. It drifted across distant galaxies, devouring as it pleased.
---
Meanwhile, humanity faced its own peculiar dilemma.
In the mere thousand years since the invention of the Warp Jump Engine, the Federation had expanded its territory dozens of times over.
They now held more than 5,000 colonies. Their population was measured not in billions, but in trillions.
They saw themselves as strong, prosperous, ascendant.
Yet one question gnawed at them:
"Is the universe truly this empty? Why have we not encountered a single alien civilization?"
Seventeen thousand years had passed since humanity set sail among the stars. They had prepared themselves for dialogue, for war, for alliances or extermination.
But the galaxy remained eerily silent.
Life-bearing worlds were absurdly rare. Often, predictions indicated a fertile planet — yet when explorers arrived, they found nothing. Not a barren husk. Not even a dead rock. Nothing.
The anomaly drove experts to madness.
Some tore their hair out, insisting the universe was mocking them, hiding its children in a cosmic game of hide-and-seek.
Others declared with confidence that the fault lay in the Life-Bearing World Coordinate Prediction Algorithm — claiming it was deeply flawed, and promising to find the error.
Many spent lifetimes chasing the mystery, only to die at their desks, equations unfinished.
The algorithm became a professional abyss. Once an academic fell into it, they never escaped.
---
Only Ra knew the truth.
The algorithm was sound. The missing worlds had indeed once existed. But they had been deliberately erased — along with their inhabitants — by none other than Orsaga.
Manually. Silently. Completely.
Thus, the "errors" were not errors at all, but the shadow of a god's intervention.
At first, Ra thought this was good. A hidden blessing, buying humanity precious time to grow without external threats.
But as centuries passed, he saw the rot it fostered.
With no adversaries, humanity grew arrogant. They began to believe themselves the sole intelligent species in the galaxy.
And now, as Orsaga's contract approached its end, Ra knew the barrier would fall. Humanity would soon face the universe's malice head-on.
If they remained this blind, disaster was inevitable.
After long contemplation, Ra's figure turned toward Earth.
He had a decision to make.
_____
T/N:
For readers who would like early access, my Patreon is available for just $4 per month. You'll unlock 140+ advance chapters and help support ongoing works.
🔗 patreon.com/user?u=79514336
You may also search Translator-Sama directly on Patreon.