The countdown was over. The Gardener's cosmic alarm clock, the one that was set for "The End of Absolutely Everything," had just gone off. The big, final event that they had all been dreading was here. And it was so much quieter and so much weirder than they had ever imagined.
Across the entire, vast expanse of the god, on a trillion different planets, all at the exact same moment, the Harvest began.
It did not begin with a bang. It began with a dimming.
The sky on every single world, from the bustling city-planets of the Core to the lonely, forgotten moons on the galactic fringe, began to darken. It wasn't a cloud or an eclipse. It was as if the universe's light switch had been put on a dimmer, and someone was slowly, gently, turning it down. The brilliant, fiery light of a million, million suns all began to fade, their power being politely, but firmly, drawn away.
And then, the hum started.
