Humanity had been thriving for the past two centuries.

  There had been wars, of course. Divisive ones, brutal ones. tradition demanded nothing less. But each conflict pushed technology forward, sharpening industry and accelerating humanity’s spread beyond Earth.

  Three massive citadels floated at key points throughout the solar system. Once little more than relay stations meant to shorten travel between colonies, they had grown into worlds of their own. Mars bustled with life. The moons of Saturn and Jupiter burned with industry. True interstellar craft were only a matter of time.

  It was the dawn of a new age.

  Until six years ago.

  The heavens shattered.

  What looked like every star in the universe began to bleed.

  Astrophysicists armed with humanity’s most sophisticated telescopes could only watch in disbelief as points of light warped and ruptured. It defied every model. Light and time did not behave that way. The stars should not have all fractured at once.

  But they did.

  What appeared to be countless creatures spilled out from cracks in the stars.

  Rational voices rose quickly, desperate to contain the panic. Even if these things – these Starspawn – were moving toward us, they said, it would take thousands of years for the nearest to reach Earth. There was time. Humanity could prepare.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  Then someone asked a simple question.

  “What about our Sun?”

  Panic turned into action overnight.

  Detection systems were built in record time. Within two years, they found it: a hairline crack stretching nearly a hundred feet across the Sun’s surface, barely visible against the rolling inferno.

  A blockade was formed. A wall of battleships stationed in the burning void.

  Three weeks later, the first Starspawn slipped through.

  For four years, the fleet held the line. Railguns tore through millions of Starspawn, reducing them to ash before they could escape the Sun’s gravity. Humanity fought back.

  Until four months ago.

  A new variant appeared.

  It was rarer by orders of magnitude, but larger, faster, stronger in every measurable and immeasurable way. Worst of all, it could survive battleship railguns.

  And what does rare mean in an infinite cloud of Starspawn?

  The blockade burned.

  On one shattered battleship, soldiers in exo-suits opened fire on a centipede-like Starspawn nearly forty feet long. Its carapace gleamed like molten glass, its legs bladed and white-hot, its face disturbingly human.

  The micro-railgun rounds never touched it.

  A thin field rippled into existence two inches from its body, deflecting every shot. The creature turned that same field inward, using it as propulsion through the ship’s failing gravity corridors.

  It carved through the squad like a hot wire through foam, lingered amid the slaughter for a moment, then burrowed deeper into the hull.

  There was little hope left for the fleet. Humanity had no idea how to fight what it couldn’t even touch.

  As a final act of service, emergency signals were broadcast to every colony.

  None were received.

  Like a sick joke, humanity’s warning vanished into the void. Unheard, unanswered, and too late.