Location: Spiral Throne – Command Deck, Sector 0-Zero
A massive holographic projection displayed Empathion-6 — a universe unlike any other.
In it, emotion was physics. Planets orbited suns based on the joy of their populations. Wars were fought not with weapons, but with feelings, sharpened into blades. Even time advanced only when enough people believed in progress.
Entire cities levitated on the winds of inspiration. Hate could crush moons. Love could heal broken continents. Fear opened wormholes. Grief drowned stars.
Zane stood before the projection, arms behind his back, a smirk carved across his face like a blade wound.
"Emotion given power. Thought as gravity. They built a reality on feeling. How fragile."
Eris flickered into her humanoid projection form beside him.
Eris: "Empathion-6 sustains itself through a web of collective emotional resonance. Reality is maintained through mass psycho-reactivity. Causality is… fluid."
"We've killed gods," Zane said. "We've shattered stories. I've eaten time and pissed on magic. It's time we vivisect love itself."
Eris: "Would you like to initiate a Total Burn or a Gradual Descent?"
Zane chuckled.
"Let's start with a whisper… and end with a scream."
Deployment — Operation: Veinfire Heartbeat
Objective:
Collapse the emotional latticework of Empathion-6 by flooding it with counter-resonant forces: soulless logic, synthetic war-thought, and emotion-proof entities.
Primary Units Deployed:
Phantom Augurs — Null-empath assassins with hearts sealed in void-iron.
Cyberion Sentinels — Machines incapable of emotion, immune to resonance.
Echo Stars Fleet — Ships powered by stolen dream-cores.
Black Halo Corps — Specialists in soul-severance.
New Division: The Bleedforged — genetically designed warriors that absorb emotions like sponges and convert them into viral energy.
Zane watched as the Spiral Throne activated the invasion rift.
Zane:
"Let's drain a universe of its tears."
Empathion-6 – First Contact
The skies over Solasis, the capital world, began to bleed as Zane's fleet ruptured its emotional atmosphere. Rain fell in the form of despair. Screams echoed through the psychic fabric of the planet.
Guardian Empath Vohra, a woman whose soul glowed with golden light, rose from the Temple of Harmony with billions of hearts empowering her body.
Vohra (telepathically):
Who dares come here without kindness in their hearts?!
Zane floated forward, surrounded by floating mechs and veiled in black mist.
"I'm not here to make friends.
I'm here to see what happens when your love runs out."
Vohra:
Then you'll taste every scream, every tear, every fury we've ever known!
She launched forward in a blazing spear of empathy, fueled by the grief of a thousand lost souls.
Zane didn't flinch.
"Eris. Bleedforged. Open your chests."
The Bleedforged, standing in massive formations, unlatched their armored torsos. Exposed inside were emotion engines — vacuums of soul.
WHOOM!
A pulse exploded from their cores, drawing Vohra's fury into them like air into a collapsing star.
She screamed as her body flickered — her rage siphoned, her love drained, her hope crushed into power that fed Zane's army.
Across the Planet – Emotional Collapse
Empathion-6 began to rupture. Cities once suspended by joy fell. Bridges powered by forgiveness collapsed. Temples of unity cracked in half.
Mortality rates skyrocketed as joy-energy hospitals failed. Rage-fueled security bots turned comatose. Births stopped across entire continents as the hope of new life was extinguished.
Admiral Siven (Echo Stars Fleet):
"Emotional tides collapsing across all vectors. We've turned their own hearts against them."
Eris: "Layering counter-empathy fields now. Estimated 94% psychological annihilation in 36 hours."
Deep Inside Empathion's Core – The Final Stand
A final resistance force had gathered beneath the surface, within the Chorus Well, the ancient beating heart of the universe's emotional field. Powered by centuries of accumulated human grief, joy, sacrifice, and love.
Commander Myra Solace, the last Empath Commander, led the charge.
Myra (to her troops):
"We may fall… but our hearts are real. Our bonds mean something. We feel.
And they can never take that."
Zane (descending):
"Feelings are fuel. And fuel burns."
Myra charged, radiating blinding joy, swinging a spear made of forgiveness.
Zane caught it in his bare hand. It seared his flesh — momentarily.
He smiled.
"Not bad."
Then he ripped the spear away, stabbed her through the stomach, and injected a full pulse of null-joy virus into her soul.
She gasped.
Myra: "What... are you?"
"The end of needing to feel."
He tossed her body into the Chorus Well — which reacted violently.
The Chorus Well Dies
The heart of Empathion pulsed once—twice—
Then ruptured.
A final, massive emotional feedback blasted through the system. Zane's armies absorbed it.
Their armor glowed. Their weapons screamed. The Cyberion District pulsed with new psychic shielding.
Zane had harvested emotions into raw weaponry.
Aftermath — Sector Claimed
Eris:
"Empathion-6 is fully neutralized. Emotional flow has been inverted. All psychic structures converted to usable emotional-core generators. Clone output increased by 11.3% using harvested empathy fields."
"Good," Zane said, wiping crimson mist from his armored knuckles.
Eris: "Would you like to erect monuments?"
Zane nodded.
"Build them from the bones of their love. And carve on every one:
Compassion was never enough."
POV: Rick C-137
Location: Drifting Observatory, hidden within temporal fog
Morty: "He did it again. Another universe… another species… g-gone. He weaponized emotions, Rick."
Rick didn't answer right away. He poured two drinks.
Morty: "I-I mean… how do you even fight that? He's like... absorbing what makes people people."
Rick finally looked up.
"Exactly."
Morty: "What do we do?"
Rick downed the drink.
"We don't try to outfight him.
We find what he won't absorb. What he can't touch."
Morty: "W-what's that?"
Rick's eyes gleamed.
"The one thing no empire can calculate. No virus can consume.
A bad idea in the right head."