In the ancient city of Virellen, nestled within the glowing canyons of Iridal Prime, the Lir'thar—last of the unconquered—gathered for their final war council. The chamber was awash in refracted light, cast from iridescent crystal columns that shimmered with sorrow and fury. Their High Seer, Telys'an, stood at the heart of the chamber, his elongated frame wrapped in a robe of living silk, pulsing with psychic resonance.
"The darkness tightens," Telys'an said, his voice echoing like a chime underwater. "But we are not yet extinguished."
Arrayed before him were the last surviving generals of the Lir'thar—tall beings with skin like mother-of-pearl and eyes aglow with inner light. Commander Vireal stepped forward, his slender hands clenched.
"Our people will not go quietly," he declared. "We will die with the stars singing our names."
They knew the Mahasimu could not be defeated—not in strength, not in numbers. But they could wound them, slow them, bleed them one last time before the end.
Operation Iridal Veil
The Lir'thar launched a coordinated assault: fleets cloaked in psionic illusions struck Mahasimu supply lines, suicide commandos infiltrated shadow outposts and detonated void cores, and great storm-beasts bred in the Iridal depths were unleashed across the highlands.
For six days, Iridal Prime burned with the brilliance of the Lir'thar defiance.
Princess Safi personally oversaw the campaign from orbit, her black-armored ships descending in layers. General Kizito led the surface assault, unrelenting in his tactics. He crushed strongholds with kinetic warheads and deployed the Shadowscourge—undead warriors pulled from Saumu's vaults—to sow terror.
In the final hours, the Lir'thar gathered atop Mount El'shara, a sacred peak where their ancestors once communed with the stars. There, Telys'an unleashed the Star-Hymn—a psionic pulse so powerful it shattered Mahasimu minds by the thousands, including a portion of Tano's elite vanguard.
But the cost was immense. Safi, enraged, deployed the Vortex Shard—a weapon of forbidden design—collapsing the peak in a quantum implosion. The mountain was erased from existence, and with it, the last stronghold of the Lir'thar.
Telys'an's final vision lingered in the minds of his killers: a galaxy free from shadow, shimmering with light that would one day return.
Twelve Rotations Later
Twelve full rotations passed.
The Uli system was silent, its skies blanketed in the dark web of Mahasimu control. The screams of resistance had faded to whispers. Cities once radiant with Lir'thar energy now pulsed with Mahasimu blackstone. Halls that sang now echoed with chains. Saumu's empire, like an ink blot, had spread across the sector.
The conquered became compliant. The bold were erased. New temples to Saumu and her eternal shadow had been erected atop the ruins of Lir'thar sanctuaries. Their bones, bleached beneath alien suns, served as the foundations for statues of the empire's might.
Saumu's Departure for Hydro
Six rotations ago, with Uli's conquest complete, Saumu departed for the jewel of the system: Planet Hydro.
A lush water-world of floating cities and bioluminescent reefs, it was sacred, reserved for her most personal and divine purpose—the Egg-Laying Season. Accompanied only by her Royal Guard and the enigmatic Caretaker Caste, known as the Egg Wardens, she vanished into a towering palace grown from living stone and shadow coral.
Beneath the waters, in the Sacred Egg Chamber, her body pulsed with divine energy. Suspended in a matrix of fluid and psionic resonance, she prepared to lay billions of shadow eggs—each a seed of her dominion, her legacy, her empire's unstoppable growth.
The chamber shimmered with biotic light. Shadow spores floated like dust motes. The Egg Wardens moved in silence, bathing her in ritual fluids, maintaining the rhythm of the sacred gestation.
While Saumu was cloistered in divine purpose, the empire endured.
Princess Safi's Descent
Back aboard the Giza Mtuji, Safi ruled with increasing autonomy. But her rule was no longer tempered by reason or strategic clarity.
Her fixation on Kara and Moro, her loyal slave-attendants, had grown into a consuming fire. She watched them constantly—jealous of their closeness, possessive of their loyalty, unable to bear even a glance exchanged between them.
She summoned them nightly to her private chambers. There, beneath the vaulted blackglass ceiling, she would speak of glory and conquest—and linger too long on Moro's eyes, on Kara's voice, on the way they knelt.
She rewarded them with luxuries, then punished them for imagined betrayals. Her mind spiraled, caught between dominance and desire, love and obsession.
Even her closest advisors began to whisper: the Princess was losing her grip.
A Fragile Empire
While Saumu gestated the future, and Safi spiraled in obsession, the balance of power teetered.
Shadow fleets waited in low orbit, ready for the next war. Enslaved systems groaned under the weight of shadow rule. Rogue factions, sensing cracks in Safi's stability, began to stir. Some remembered the Lir'thar's final stand and whispered of resurrection. Others wondered: if one sister could fall to obsession, could the other fall to treachery?
For now, the shadows held.
But the galaxy was watching.
And in the deep places where light still flickered, a new kind of fire stirred—born from the ashes of the Lir'thar, from the cracks in Safi's mind, and the forgotten songs of the stars.