I. Descent onto the Dead Star
The dropship cut through the ash-flecked sky like a blade through oil. Winds howled across the planet's cracked surface, screaming against the hull as magnetic storms surged through the upper atmosphere. Beneath them, the world churned—a decaying graveyard of collapsed temples and obsidian spires, circling a lifeless star that barely pulsed.
Inside the armored shuttle, tension sat thick as iron.
"Touchdown in thirty," the comms pilot barked. "System readings are all over the void. Gravity's pulsing like it can't make up its damn mind."
"Let it try," Lord Varyn Solari replied, standing unshaken near the main ramp. "Manual override only. Prep exo-deployment. I want boots down in under sixty."
Beside him, a tall figure in crimson robes held a flickering dataslate in one gloved hand. High Templar Saedra's eyes moved slowly over the readouts, her lips tightening.
"This world bleeds silence," she murmured. "Not emptiness. Silence. Something was sealed here."
The landing hit hard. As the ramp hissed open, troopers poured out into whipping black winds, their exo-armor glowing faintly with House Solari's crest—a lion eclipsed in gold. Their boots crunched against charred stone as drones zipped overhead, scanning the crater ahead.
The monolith towered at the center—matte black, etched with faded symbols, as tall as a siege crawler. It stood untouched by time, untouched even by dust.
One trooper leaned close to another.
"This place… smells wrong. Like rusted stars."
"Keep that talk to yourself," the squad leader growled. "Bad nerves spread faster than spores."
II. The Fenrir Emerges
As perimeter scans hummed to life, engineers knelt to place signal beacons around the dig site. Then, the tremors began.
"Sir," a field engineer said, face pale behind his visor, "void pressure's spiking again—beneath us. Something's… moving like a muscle twitch."
"Deploy seismic drones, now," Varyn ordered.
"Drone feeds cutting—" the tech's voice clipped off. "They're going dark. Something's eating the signal."
Then came the silence. A vacuum stillness. And then the sound.
A howl.
It tore through the air like a blade through skin—low, guttural, and infinite. The earth split in a deafening rupture. Dust became fog. Light bent. A rift opened in the crust, and from it rose Fenrir.
Twenty meters tall, its massive form resembled a lupine predator, but wholly alien—forged from collapsing stars, stitched with void-flesh and cosmic scars. Its hide pulsed with unstable energy, fractured by glowing runes that healed even as they tore. Eyes blinked across its entire body, no two alike—some wide and reptilian, others narrow like slits. They tracked movement with terrifying intelligence.
Its roar again—this time it shattered three soldiers' armor just by force of sound. The gravity around its maw distorted, warping space with every breath.
"That's not a creature," one soldier gasped. "It's a singularity with teeth."
"Open fire!" screamed another.
Lines of magnetized gunfire and energy bolts cut the air—but dissolved before they landed, drawn into a field around the beast like water vanishing into sand.
Fenrir lunged.
The forward squad never stood a chance. One was bisected by a swipe of void claws. Another turned to flee—only to be crushed beneath the beast's hind leg as it landed, the impact cracking the terrain in a forty-meter radius.
One soldier activated a stasis shield.
Fenrir's roar bent the shield in on itself like foil.
"By the rite of Everflame—I bind this evil. Circle of the Phoenix, awaken!"
Saedra's voice rang like a bell in the storm. She plunged her flame-blade into the ground, and light erupted around Fenrir's position. A burning ring of ethereal fire encircled the beast, who thrashed and snapped in fury.
"Defensive class, form up!" Varyn barked. "Lock phalanx three! Keep it contained!"
Three squads moved in, forming a triangular wedge around the circle. Shields flared, deflecting debris and void mist. Their formations were perfect—but Fenrir was faster.
A blast of gravitational pressure surged from its chest, and one squad was thrown fifty feet. Two landed wrong. Their suits sparked. One's helmet cracked, and blood spattered the inside as his skull fractured from the shock.
Varyn surged forward.
His spear—a weapon older than most noble bloodlines—hummed with condensed starfire. He leapt over broken rock, landing hard beside Saedra.
"Draw its wrath," he ordered. "I'll finish it."
He charged, aura igniting. Every step resonated through the earth.
"Starfall Dominion—unleash!"
Light bled from the sky as if responding to his words. Arcs of compressed energy rained down, weaving into his spear. Each strike sent ripples through Fenrir's hide, burning away one eye, then another.
But Fenrir adapted.
It moved low, faster than expected, crashing into Varyn's flank. His shield barely held—cracking under the force.
"Commander down!" a voice crackled over comms.
"I'm up," Varyn growled. He spun under Fenrir's next lunge, driving his spear into a joint in the beast's left forelimb. It shrieked, bucking into the air—and landed atop two soldiers still forming a flank. They vanished beneath its mass.
One dying trooper screamed as a fang pierced through his chest and lifted him off the ground, blood boiling from internal gravitational collapse. He locked eyes with another soldier as he died—then imploded into dark light.
Another squad tried to regroup behind it, planting seismic disruptors meant to destabilize planetary rock—but Fenrir twisted space, reversing the flow. The devices exploded, taking three men with them.
"Saedra," Varyn called through grit teeth, "I need more time."
"Buy it," she spat. "And I'll burn the stars down."
She raised her blade, eyes glowing, and shouted a prayer in a language older than the Empire. Flames erupted from her back like wings—coalescing into a phoenix-shaped barrier, pressing in on Fenrir from all sides.
Varyn drew the last of his core reserves, eyes narrowing.
"Starfall Dominion—final arc."
He became a comet. Light and mass compressed into one final strike, a vertical spiral of power driving down from the heavens.
Fenrir roared one last time—a howl that echoed across dimensions—then crumpled. Its body didn't fall. It unraveled, unraveling into motes of void-touched starlight.
It did not bleed.
It was unwritten.
And then there was silence.
III. The Voice in the Monolith
The monolith glowed softly now, veins of silver light crawling across its surface. It hadn't moved—but it had changed.
"Is it… breathing?" a trooper asked.
Saedra stepped forward, staring. "It fed on the beast. That's what it was waiting for."
Varyn approached it slowly. "Scan it. Every particle."
A tech complied. His scanner exploded. He screamed as blood steamed from his eyes and dropped dead.
"This isn't tech," Saedra said, stopping Varyn with a hand. "It's aware. It's older than we are."
"If it's older," Varyn said, stepping past her, "why did it call me?"
The symbols began to shift. Lines curved into patterns—a figure formed. A humanoid, heart exposed, split into two colors: black flame and silver light. A fractured core pulsed within.
The monolith flashed.
Varyn stood in a void of stars and shadow. Before him stood a figure cloaked in flame and void—holding a blade shaped like a screaming soul.
"You are not the Heir," the voice said—calm, ancient.
"But you will hold the line until they come."
"The gate must remain closed… until the spark ignites."
Then Varyn saw him.
A teenage boy.
"Kael" whispered Varyn.
Standing in front of this very monolith. One eye glowing with starlight. Behind him, a storm of fire and galaxies.
Then it was gone.
"Sir?" a trooper asked. "You were… glowing."
Varyn turned toward the monolith. "Lock this site. Erase all sensor data. File the expedition as failed—complete ecological collapse."
"But the relic—"
"This is not a relic." His voice lowered. "This is a message. And I won't let the Empire read it before its time."
The monolith pulsed gently—like a sleeping heart.
"Let the Empire believe we found nothing," Varyn said. "This… this belongs to something greater."
Hours later, far from the dig site, a fractured relay drone limps out of orbit—its hull scorched, one eye-camera blinking.
Inside the data logs, a single corrupted clip loops endlessly: static, then the moment Varyn stands before the monolith.
A figure in shadows—unseen by all—plugs into the feed.
They pause, watching the image of the boy from the vision.
"…Kael," they whisper.
"So it begins."