The first reports came from the Outer Reaches—dimensional monitoring stations screaming their final transmissions before being consumed by something vast and methodical. The Harvester fleet approached the Sovereign Confluence of Realities like a plague of metal stars, each ship the size of a small moon, their consciousness extraction arrays glowing with hungry light.
Reed stood in his command center aboard the liberation ship Fractured Hope, watching his carefully built network of free worlds crumble in real-time. The holographic display showed a cascade of red markers—each one representing millions of minds being processed into pure energy by the advancing fleet.
"Sir," his lieutenant, Marcus Voidstrider, reported with barely contained panic, "the Kelthara Republic has gone dark. Seven billion souls, all processed in under thirty minutes. The Threnody Collective is requesting immediate evacuation, but our dimensional gates can't handle that volume."
