Kira gasped as her eyes snapped open, her body jolting upright as the remnants of the dream clung to her mind like fading embers. The echoes of divine battle—the clash of power beyond comprehension—still roared in her ears. Her heart pounded against her ribs, her breath coming in ragged gulps as she tried to ground herself in the present.

Sweat chilled against her skin despite the artificial heat of the research post’s climate controls. The reinforced walls of the small outpost offered no comfort, their sterile metal surfaces a stark contrast to the raw, visceral energy of her vision. She clenched the fabric of her thermal blanket, forcing her hands to still. It had felt so real. More than just a dream—a memory of something ancient, something lost.

A deep voice pulled her back to reality.

“That dream again?”

She turned toward the familiar sound, blinking against the dim glow of flickering overhead panels. Her grandfather sat in a rusted chair near the sensor terminal, pipe in hand, the ember at its tip pulsing like a dying star. Even in the faint light, she could see the years of hardship carved into his weathered face. He was broad-shouldered, built like the old war veterans of Eldast, but age had worn his strength down into something quieter, something tempered.

Kira hesitated before nodding. “It felt… different this time,” she admitted, her voice quieter than she intended. “Like I was there, witnessing it.”

Her grandfather exhaled a slow stream of smoke, watching it curl toward the ceiling before speaking.

“You spend too much time with the old texts.” He tapped the pipe against a metal tray, scattering embers like tiny, dying stars. “Even if you are the shrine maiden, what good does it do to dwell on battles lost? The Arks fell seventy years ago. They’re not coming back, Kira.”

She flinched—not from surprise, but from the familiarity of the words. He had told her this before, in different ways, on different nights. But tonight was different.

“The moon will emerge from the darkness tonight,” she said, urgency creeping into her tone.

Her grandfather sighed, rubbing a hand over his face before taking another slow drag from his pipe. There was something heavy in his expression—pain, old and buried deep.

“There’s nothing left up there,” he said finally. “Just a crater and his tomb.”

Silence stretched between them, thick with unspoken thoughts. Then Kira took a breath and spoke the words that had been clawing at her mind for weeks.

“But he’s an Ark.”

Her grandfather’s grip on the pipe tightened ever so slightly. “They say they removed his name.”

Kira shook her head. "The archive was made by the creator it can't be tampered with; not even by them and Faust's name is not there; he has to be alive!"

Her grandfather remained still; his face unreadable.

A long silence fell between them, broken only by the quiet hum of the research post’s systems. Her grandfather took a deep pull from his pipe, the ember flaring briefly before dimming. The weight in his expression deepened, his gaze distant—trapped somewhere far beyond this cold, lonely station.

“I was there that day, Kira.”

Her grandfather’s voice was quieter now, rougher, the weight of old wounds pressing against every word. His gaze, once distant, now burned with something darker—grief, perhaps, or the kind of sorrow that never truly fades. “There is hardly anything left of that moon. I saw it with my own two eyes.”

Silence settled between them like a thick fog.

Kira watched as his brow furrowed, as though he were wrestling with the past, debating whether to drag it back into the present. This was a story he had never told her, a truth too terrible to put into words. But she needed to hear it—needed to understand why he was so certain, why he knew Faust was dead.

His fingers tightened around his pipe, knuckles turning white. Then, at last, he spoke.

It began with a shadow.

The sensors picked it up first—an anomaly at the edges of the system, a disturbance in the fabric of space. At first, they dismissed it. A malfunction, perhaps. A ghost signal. Some interference from the Abyss. The object was simply too large.

But then the deep-space scanners adjusted.

And the truth became undeniable.

A fleet.

Not a mere invasion force, not even the kind of armada that had devastated entire worlds before. No, this was something else. Something beyond reason. The numbers were impossible. It was a tide of darkness stretching across the void, an unending sea of vessels pouring in from the black, like locusts spilling from a shattered hive.

The smallest were the frigates—sleek, jagged things, their twisted black frames glinting like the shattered bones of something long dead. They moved ahead of the main fleet, darting through the void in coordinated swarms, probing, testing, waiting for the signal to strike.

Behind them came the destroyers—heavier, predatory shapes bristling with weapons, their surfaces pulsing with unnatural energy. Their hulls bore the scars of a thousand battles, patches of writhing darkness crawling along their metal plating like living wounds. Each one was a fortress in its own right, a harbinger of ruin.

And beyond them loomed the dreadnoughts.

Titanic war machines, their silhouettes swallowing the starlight, vast enough to blot out entire sectors of space. Their forms defied reason—twisted, shifting, unnatural. It was as if the Abyss itself had sculpted them, their surfaces rippling and writhing as though alive, as though watching. Along their spines, weapons bristled like cruel, jagged teeth—massive cannons, cruel spikes glowing with an eerie, pulsing light, veins of abyssal energy crackling through their frames like lightning frozen in time.

But it was not just metal that came for Eldast.

Scattered among the fleet, clinging to the exteriors of the ships like parasites, were the Fallen.

They skittered over the hulls in the open void, moving without hesitation, without fear. Some clung to the sides of the dreadnoughts like insects on the body of a dying beast. Others leapt freely from ship to ship, impossibly fast, their forms barely resembling the creatures they had once been. Some were little more than husks—empty-eyed remnants of those who had once lived, their bodies hollowed out and filled with darkness. Others had become greater abominations, twisted beyond recognition, their shapes a mockery of flesh and metal, their very existence an insult to the laws of reality.

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Then the bombardment began.

Great energy weapons lanced forward like arcs of living lightning, the void illuminated by the fury of a million warships unleashing their wrath. Beams of searing light, pulses of abyssal fire, and swarms of annihilation missiles screamed toward Eldast, the sheer force of the onslaught capable of scouring entire continents to dust.

But Eldast was no ordinary world.

She was the crowning jewel of everything the Arks had ever achieved—a city of legend, an eternal bastion against the Abyss.

As the first waves of fire rained down, the great defenses of Eldast awoke.

The planetary shields flared to life, titanic domes of shimmering energy engulfing the world and its moons in an unbreakable embrace. The barriers were not merely shields; they were the final testament of a civilization that had warred against the Darkness since time immemorial. Woven from the very essence of Creation itself, they did not buckle, did not flicker, even as the fury of a million ships raged against them.

And then, Eldast answered.

The ancient automated defenses roared to life—colossal gauss cannons, their barrels the size of towers, began hurling tungsten slugs at relativistic speeds, each impact capable of tearing through even the massive dreadnoughts like paper. Missile systems ignited, sending volleys of warheads screaming through the void, detonating in brilliant bursts of devastation.

And from the great spires of Eldast, the drone swarms emerged.

Wave after wave of relentless machines flooded the sky, an unyielding tide of sleek, razor-edged death. They tore through the enemy's advance ranks, carving through frigates, latching onto destroyers, detonating in precise, ruthless strikes. The sheer scale of Eldast’s counterattack was breathtaking—an entire world’s worth of defenses, a battle system designed to resist the unthinkable.

Yet, despite the overwhelming firepower, the Fallen found their way to the surface.

The twisted frigates and blackened carriers that managed to break through the planetary defenses struck the ground like dying beasts, their hulls cracking open like ruptured cocoons. From within, nightmares poured forth—twisted figures wreathed in shadow, some still bearing a mockery of their former humanoid shapes, others grotesque abominations of writhing limbs and abyssal hunger. The air grew thick with their presence, a suffocating wave of malice and corruption spilling onto the soil of Eldast.

But we were waiting.

Beneath the fire-lit sky, the Knights of Eldast stood unshaken, our armor gleaming in defiance of the darkness. Our blades hummed with raw power, our gauss rifles primed and ready. We did not hesitate. The moment the Fallen set foot upon our world, we charged.

With shields locked and weapons raised, we met them not with fear, but with fury. Steel clashed against claw, light against shadow, will against oblivion. Every strike was measured, every movement honed—this was what we had trained for, what we had been born for. We were the last line, the final wall between the Abyss and everything that still remained.

We fought like demons. We tore through the Fallen, cutting them down in the streets of our beloved city. Their twisted forms writhed and screamed, but we did not falter. We could not falter.

Yet even as we fought, we knew.

We knew what was coming.

A fire burned in his weary eyes. His voice, though hoarse from the weight of memory, carried the same unbreakable resolve that had once defined us all.

"The Knights of Eldast did not waver. We did not fight for survival—we fought because this land had been entrusted to us, and to abandon it was inconceivable."

Across the stars, countless worlds struggled, their people clawing life from barren rock and poisoned soil. But Eldast was different. Eldast was blessed. For more than ten thousand years, we lived in bountiful prosperity, never knowing hunger, never suffering scarcity. She had given us everything.

To forsake that blessing? We could not. We would not.

For weeks, the war raged. The streets ran red, the air thick with fire and ash. The great bastions that had stood for millennia, the walls that had endured countless storms, crumbled one by one. We knew the cost, we felt the weight of every loss—but surrender was never an option.

We did not fight out of fear, nor out of desperation.

We fought because we owed Eldast our very existence.

As long as one of us still stood, as long as breath filled our lungs, her light would not fade.

The old knight's breath came uneven now, his words barely more than a whisper.

"But in the end… it didn’t matter."

His hand trembled as he exhaled.

"Because then... it came."

A silence stretched between them, heavy with unspoken truths. Finally, his voice returned, softer this time.

“The most terrible of ancient weapons.”

His fingers curled into a fist. “It was never meant for this.”

Kira remained silent, waiting.

“The Arks forged it long ago,” he murmured. “It was meant to purge entire solar systems that had been too steeped in the Abyss’s corruption—to burn away the taint before it could spread further. It was a final mercy, a way to stop the infection from consuming everything.”

His voice darkened, trembling with barely contained anger. “But it had been captured. Twisted.”

He shook his head, his gaze falling to his hands—as if, even now, they still bore the blood of that day.

“We had held out for so long. We had fought so hard. But when we saw it—hanging in the sky like a blackened sun—we knew.

No mortal army could stand against it. No shield, no fortress, no warrior could withstand its power.

It was meant to erase stars.

And it had been set upon us.”

The heavens burned as the Abyss unleashed its fury upon Eldast.

Great lances of abyssal energy, dark as the void itself, crashed against the planetary shields, their impact shaking the very foundations of the world. The sky boiled. The air trembled. Each strike sent cracks rippling through the shimmering barriers, fractures spreading like veins of broken glass.

A warning. A death knell.

We watched in despair as the great shields—barriers that had endured countless sieges—began to falter. The pressure was unbearable. Entire moons trembled, their surfaces fracturing beneath the sheer force of the bombardment.

The once-unshakable walls of light flickered, strained, and then—

A moment of stillness.

And then, I saw it.

An azure beacon against the dark—Excalibur’s radiance did not simply strike back. It ascended.

A surge of overwhelming force tore through the abyssal onslaught. The ground shook. Alune quaked. The very air hummed with divine power.

The darkness met the light in a cataclysmic clash. The abyssal lances, meant to erase Eldast from existence, vanished—swallowed whole by the brilliance of Excalibur’s strike.

And just as the great shields of Eldast buckled, just as they could bear no more—

The light expanded.

It surged outward, a wave beyond reckoning, engulfing the great abyssal fleet in its entirety.

Millions of ships—gone.

Dreadnoughts that once blotted out the stars—erased.

The Fallen, swarming like locusts—reduced to nothing.

The void, once thick with the enemy, was now silent.

Nothing remained but debris.

The counterattack had come from Eldast’s third moon.

Once, it had been a celestial guardian—a steadfast protector of the world below.

Now, it was nothing more than a scar.

A crater beyond reckoning, so vast, so deep, that no eye could see its bottom. As if a piece of the universe itself had been torn away, leaving only emptiness in its wake.

But the devastation did not end there.

The sheer force of the strike had done more than annihilate the abyssal fleet—it had shaken the very heavens.

Alune’s orbit had shattered. The once-stable moon drifted, its surface cracking, breaking apart as it spiraled, slowly, inexorably, toward the Abyss.

And then—

It was gone.

Swallowed by the darkness.

For seventy years, no one has seen Alune.

No signal.

No light.

No trace.

Only the silence of the void—and the memory of the day Eldast defied annihilation.