Deep within the cold, abyssal void of the Pax solar system, a shadow of impossible proportions blotted out the distant stars.
It was the Deship.
The planet-sized dreadnought was a terrifying monument of industrial malice. Its jagged, obsidian hull stretched across tens of thousands
of kilometers, laced with thousands of atmospheric tethering hooks and colossal
extraction drills. Powered by the stolen core energies of a dozen dead worlds, the mobile fortress drifted silently, its massive prow pointed directly at the greenish-red pearl of Torol.
Inside the central command spire of the Deship, an eerie silence reigned. Thousands of Duplict crew members—massive, muscular humanoids
built for war and capable of living for three millennia—stood frozen at their bridge consoles. Their eyes were vacant, fixed in a glassy, catatonic stare.
They moved only with a jerky, uniform precision, their brilliant tactical minds completely subjugated by a foreign psychic frequency.
They were puppets dancing on invisible, necrotic strings.
And at the center of the web sat their master.
Suspended in a levitating, gravity-defying throne of dark matter was the Undead King, Zoran.
Zoran was a creature of pure horror. Centuries ago, a curse by a primordial cosmic entity had stripped away his mortality while locking him
in a state of eternal, agonizing suspension. He had no skin. He had no muscles, no organs, and no blood. He was nothing but a floating, animate skeleton of ancient, yellowed bone, held together by a swirling aura of dark, miasmic energy.
But the truest cruelty of the curse lay within his jaw.
Zoran possessed an eternal, compounding hunger. Because he had no stomach to
fill and no tongue to taste, he was doomed to starve forever. For thousands of years, this unyielding agony had warped his mind into a vortex of absolute madness.
Yet, as the Deship drew closer to Torol, Zoran's jaw cracked open in a silent, horrific grin.
He could feel it. Through his massive psychic mind-link with the Duplict, he could sense the vibrant, overflowing lifeforce of the trillion souls thriving on the planet below. He could taste the immense, pure energy of the 30-kilometer-tall Gaia tree. But most of all, his soul craved the Element-Infinitix buried in the planet's sub-core.
He knew that if he could harvest that indestructible element and somehow fuse it into his skeletal form, he might finally break the curse.
He would achieve true, unyielding physical immortality and silence the hunger forever.
Suddenly, a massive holographic projection flared to life in the center of the bridge.
The three-meter-tall form of a corrupted Enigma scientist appeared. The humanoid's eyes were pitch-black, completely warped by the black
radiation of Canceriam.
"Great King," the Enigma spoke, kneeling deeply
before the floating skeleton. "The planetary defense grids in Sector 14 have been permanently severed. The blind giants of the Nedom race suspect nothing. The path to Torol's atmosphere is completely open to your fleet."
A low, scraping sound echoed through the telepathic frequencies of everyone aboard the Deship. It was Zoran laughing. The sound was
like dry bones grinding together in a tomb.
Zoran didn't care about the Enigmas' grand ambitions to rule. He didn't care about the rich history of the Nedom civilization. To him, they were all just firewood for his grand furnace. The greatest satisfaction his cursed existence ever received was the raw, unadulterated ecstasy of
watching innocent worlds get tortured, stripped to the bone, and pulverized into space dust. The sheer terror of trillions of dying minds was the only
thing that could temporarily numb his eternal hunger.
"Deploy the Vanguard," Zoran's telepathic command blasted directly into the minds of his Duplict commanders, bypassing the need for spoken words. "Anchor the Deship above the Oros continent. Let the clouds rain fire. I want to hear the screams of this world before we crack its
core."
With a synchronized, terrifying motion, the brainwashed Duplict crew slammed their hands onto the control arrays.
The planet-sized starship groaned as its massive sub-light engines ignited, burning with a sickly purple flame. Ahead of them, the majestic, silhouetted forests of Torol loomed closer.
The Arch-Genocide was no longer a distant threat. The executioner had arrived.