The transition to the "Cold War" era didn't take years. It took weeks.
Across the galaxy, the news of the "Arbiter's Fall" spread like a plague. On distant worlds—forest planets, ocean moons, and gas-giant cities—the "Feeder-Gene" began to activate. It was as if Kane's victory had been a signal to the very DNA of the universe that the old rules were dead.
But the Hegemony was not the Consortium. They didn't send diplomats. They didn't send fleets.
In the deep void between stars, a single ship drifted. It wasn't made of marble or chrome. It was made of bone—the bleached, fossilized remains of a creature that had been dead since the birth of the first galaxy.
Inside, the First Reaper sat in a pool of liquid shadow. He was a being of Rank 10, an entity who had deleted ten thousand civilizations before the Earth was even a rock. He didn't have a name, only a function.
"The 'Void-Archon' has awakened," the Reaper whispered, his voice sounding like dry leaves skittering over a grave.
He looked at a projection of the Citadel of the Void. He saw Kane, sitting on his throne, trying to balance the Tier-10 logic in his soul. The Reaper didn't feel anger. He felt a professional curiosity.
"A predator has grown in the nursery," the Reaper said, his hand stroking a blade made of "Anti-Matter." "He has tasted the starlight of an Arbiter. He thinks he is a God."
The Reaper stood up. His body was thin, draped in rags that seemed to be made of captured nebulae. "I will go to this 'Sol System.' I will see if his hunger is truly endless, or if he is just another spark that needs to be snuffed out before the Great Dark."
The bone-ship didn't use a Warp-drive. It simply ceased to exist in one location and appeared at the edge of Earth's Oort Cloud.
The Reaper didn't attack the Citadel. He didn't attack the Earth. He looked at the moon—a cold, dead rock that had watched the humanity grow for eons.
"A fitting stage," the Reaper murmured.
He tapped his staff against the lunar surface. Instantly, the moon began to change. Huge, jagged towers of bone erupted from the craters, and a dark, suffocating fog began to spill across the grey plains.
He wasn't invading. He was Inviting.
On the Citadel, Kane's eyes snapped open. He felt a pressure on his soul that made the Arbiter's power feel like a breeze. It was a cold, absolute certainty of death.
"He's here," Kane whispered, his Rank 9 senses screaming.
He stood up, his obsidian armor forming around him in a swirl of violet smoke. He didn't look at Sully or the Artificers. He walked to the airlock and looked at the moon, which was now glowing with a sickly, pale light.
"Vance, Doc, Sully," Kane's voice echoed through the ship. "The first test is here. If I don't come back from the moon... destroy the Dyson-Ring. Don't let them have the sun."
He launched himself into the dark, a black spear aimed at the bone-towers of the moon. The Reaper-Arc had begun.