To the Vexari, the hunts are not merely bloodshed.
It is a ritual. It is a spectacle. It signifies cosmic truth.
The act of hunting is sacred—a communion between predator and prey that defined the very structure of existence.
To hunt was to dominate, and to dominate was to ascend.
They believed the universe itself was born in conflict, that creation demanded destruction. Thus, every hunt mirrored the first breath of existence.
It was not simply about killing; it was about proving worth in the eyes of the cosmos.
And so their creed was simple and absolute:
"The prey must run. The prey must fall. The prey must never rise."
Every Vexari hunter carried this mantra within their essence.
Each time a soul weapon struck and a runner's life faded, the hunter's being resonated with that final moment of defiance. The essence of the fallen—their fear, courage, despair, strength and hope—flowed into the Vexari, nourishing their body, weapon and soul alike.
They did not feed on flesh.
They fed on the will to live.
The stronger the prey's defiance, the greater the nourishment. Fear was flavor. Resistance was energy.
And courage—courage was transcendence.
Their hunts were designed to draw out these traits.
Runners were drugged with complex neurotoxins before awakening—formulas engineered to heighten fear and amplify instinct while suppressing suicidal impulses.
The prey could not end their own lives, no matter how strong their despair.
For the Vexari, suicide was theft. A stolen essence. A sin against the sacred cycle.
They demanded that prey fight, struggle, and burn bright before extinction.
The more they resisted, the more powerful their essence became.
Each Vexari's soul weapon was a reflection of this belief.
Forged from the shell of their own egg, infused with Zark crystal resonance, it was not a mere tool—it was an extension of identity.
The weapon grew and evolved with its wielder, changing shape and strength with each essence it absorbed.
Every blade, spear, whip, or gauntlet whispered the story of its master's conquests.
A stagnant weapon was a stagnant soul.
A broken weapon meant death—not only of the flesh but of legacy.
The Vexari understood that growth required consumption.
To stand still was to fade.
Their tentacles, too, were living instruments of that creed.
More than biological extensions, they were emotional conduits—a visible reflection of their inner world. Their colors, length, and movement told the tales of hunts survived and prey conquered. They flared in rage, writhed in ecstasy, and shimmered in reverence.
To groom them was an act of sanctity.
Hunters gathered communally in crystal pools filled with liquefied Zark.
There, in silence, they washed and tended their tentacles, tracing every vein and hue that marked their growth. The pools shimmered with radiant light, refracting across the obsidian chambers like starlight.
Each hunter observed the colors of others—comparing, respecting, envying.
The more vibrant the crimson-purple glow, the more revered the warrior.
Among these gatherings, challenges were often made. Rival hunters would test one another, not for dominance alone, but for the validation of worth.
Their clashes were not mere duels—they were performances of philosophy.
Through motion and precision, they affirmed the order of things: that only the strong and cunning deserved to ascend.
At the heart of Vexarian civilization stood the Hall of Triumph—a vast cathedral of conquest where these stories were immortalized.
The hall pulsed with Zark light, the walls alive with glyphs carved from battles past. Voices filled the air—some whispered, others thundered—as hunters recited the stories of their kills in rhythmic chants.
Each retelling was not entertainment—it was scripture.
Every hunt recorded became a sacred verse, another piece of divine law woven into their existence.
It was within this hall that new missions were assigned.
Here, younger hunters were called to the stars, and the veterans—those bathed in the crimson hue of mastery—were celebrated as living gods.
The atmosphere trembled with reverence, the echo of triumphs long past still vibrating in the air.
For the Vexari, the hunt was not about victory alone.
It was about transcendence.
To kill was to ascend.
To ascend was to become Vexari.
And to be Vexari was to live eternally through conquest.
Every drop of blood spilled, every essence absorbed, and every scream that echoed through the void was part of a cosmic cycle older than stars.
They did not hunt for sport.
They hunted because it was the only truth the universe had ever offered them.
The Vexarian arrival on Earth was not an invasion.
It was a return.
They did not descend with banners or fleets of war. They came in silence, cloaked in shadow, slipping between the folds of atmosphere like ghosts of an ancient claim.
For them, Earth was not a conquest waiting to happen — it was a possession long forgotten, reclaimed at last.
The planet became their ranch, their grand experiment.
Across its fractured continents, the Vexari reshaped the landscape into sprawling hunting grounds — labyrinthine cities, scorched plains, and overgrown ruins crafted to mirror both chaos and beauty. These arenas were not prisons; they were theatres of survival, designed to provoke the human spirit into its purest, most desperate form.
Only the chosen were taken — the ones with the deepest resilience, the most volatile emotions, and the strongest will to live.
They were called runners.
Each runner was studied, selected, and transported to a ranch. Once there, they were allowed to exist freely, unaware of the invisible gaze above them.
The Vexari ships hovered high in orbit — unseen, silent — their purpose not to intervene, but to observe. No ground patrols were needed. The walls of every ranch were absolute, impenetrable.
There was no escape. There was only the hunt.
Runners lived under an illusion of autonomy. They could speak, build, rest, or hide — but their every action was monitored from above, every heartbeat, every surge of emotion recorded and analyzed.
The Vexari followed not sight, but feeling — tracking spikes of terror, defiance, hope, and rage. It was emotion, not motion, that drew them to prey.
Efficiency was irrelevant.
For them, hunting was not about completion — it was about spectacle.
Dominion was achieved through display, not speed. Every hunt had to be witnessed, savored, ritualized.
To the Vexari, each runner's struggle was art — the collapse of courage, the bloom of despair, the beauty of resistance before inevitable death.
Every runner had one purpose: to run, to fight, to suffer, and in doing so, to feed evolution.
Their will to survive became the Vexari's sustenance — their essence the foundation of ascension.
The stronger the will, the brighter the feast.
The more desperate the fight, the richer the nourishment.
And so, the hunts continued — endless cycles of pursuit and transcendence, blood and rebirth.
The Vexarian males grew stronger with every essence claimed.
Each victory lengthened their tentacles, deepened the color of their flesh, and filled their soul weapons with new power.
Their biology was a ledger of conquest, a visual testament to their supremacy.
Yet beneath this spectacle of slaughter lay a deeper truth — one buried in their own history.
The Vexari had not discovered Earth.
They had created it.
Long before recorded human history, before the rise of cities and nations, they had come to this world.
Through experiments in essence manipulation, they shaped primitive life — seeding fragments of their own design into its genetic structure. Humanity, in its earliest form, was the echo of their will, the living reflection of Vexarian ambition.
The myths of gods descending from the stars, of divine fire, of creation itself — all were shadows of their first coming.
The Vexari were the architects of that ancient age, and the hunters of this one.
For millions of years, they waited. Watching. Evolving.
They allowed humanity to grow, to develop reason, faith, technology — to reach the threshold of awareness.
And when humankind's spirit burned bright enough to be worth devouring, they returned.
Now, Earth was no longer just a world.
It was a farm of souls, a proving ground for essence.
The Vexari's purpose here was twofold:
To feed their ascension through the will of humankind, and to reclaim what they once made.
The runners were their test subjects, their sacrifices, their mirrors. Each hunt reflected not only human struggle but the truth of the Vexari themselves — that even gods must feed on chaos to remain divine.
From orbit, the queens watched in silence, their ships drifting like stars that never blinked.
The hunts unfolded below — a thousand tragedies playing out at once, all in the name of transcendence.
And though the truth of humanity's origin remained sealed, forgotten even before the written art of history, one certainty remained:
The hunt continues.