[The Golden Epoch of Nihili-Temis: 50000 Years Ago]
"Master Dakein, the Paragon Resonance scans are impossible."
The acolyte's hands trembled as she aimed the crystal scanner at the enormous construct hovering menacingly over their world. The System Core throbbed with a malevolent hunger, its once golden light now tainted by a blood-red hue.
Dakein's fingers traced the void-gentled wounds on his meridians—war scars from three fruitless days of combat.
The Grand Assembly of Nihili-Temis, which encircled him, lay in shambles. The bodies of the galaxy cluster's finest cultivators were strewn across the broken jade floors, their life force already extinguished.
"Tell me plainly, Xiaoli," his voice had the heft of a thousand dead. "How long until our world dies?"
The scanner's holographic display blinked with readings that defied all known cosmic principles of cultivation. "At the current rate of consumption, six hours, Master. Possibly less."
Through the shattered crystal panes of the Assembly, they watched their planetary patron—the entity to whom they had sworn service for millennia—peacefully consuming their outer colonies.
Every life consumed sent shockwaves of plundered qi through the System grid, nourishing something immense and ravenous in the cosmic ocean.
"The other worlds?" Dakein asked, though he already knew the answer.
"Shangri-Seven was destroyed two days ago. The Jade Monasteries of Tianshan-4 fell silent this morning." Xiaoli's cultivation base trembled with fear. "Master, we're the last."
Dakein closed his eyes, sensing the rage of the Arthrion Core against his dantian.
Of all the System's fragments, his was the deadliest: unbridled entropy given form and purpose. The Sect Elders had implanted him with it as a child, hoping he could master destruction and guide it toward creation.
They had miscalculated the authority. They had properly forecasted the destruction.
"The emergency protocols," he whispered. "Have they been triggered?"
Xiaoli paled. "Master, you can't be saying—"
"Speak!"
"Yes," she whispered. "All remaining Core Disciples are standing along the planetary nexus lines. But Master, if we destroy our System shard, the backlash will—"
"It will kill our guardian before it can digest us whole." Dakein rose, his robes billowing with energy that caused existence itself to wink. "Maybe some of our people will survive the shift."
"Or maybe we'll all die for nothing, and the guardian will just move on to the next cluster!"
The accusation hung in the air like a guillotine. Dakein had done the math countless times on his prosthetic meridian matrices.
The likelihood of success was… improbable.
The likelihood of survival without acting was nonexistent.
"Call in the Core Disciples," he commanded. "Initiate the resonance cascade on my signal."
Xiaoli's fingers trembled as she cycled up the communicational array. Static intermixed with the screams of the guilty hissed through dimensional space:
"⟨⟨—Eastern nexus point taken, cascade start ready—"
"⟨⟨—Western sectors reporting major entity movement, request immediate—"
"⟨⟨—Southern array broken! They're breaking the defense works—"
"⟨⟨—Master Dakein, Northern point waiting, but our sentinel... it's looking at us—"
Dakein felt each of his disciples' terror as clearly as his own pulse through his planetary cultivation network. Forty-three of Nihili-Temis's finest young cultivators, about to perish for his hopeless gamble.
"All points, listen well." His voice came through quantum-entangled meridian channels. "What we do here and now will determine if consciousness itself will have a future in this cluster of galaxies. Our guardian has been taken over by something that turns planetary protectors into devourers. If we don't stop it here—"
A bone-deep shudder wracked the Assembly as their guardian's hunger accelerated. Through the shattered windows, they felt entire cities tumble into rivers of raw life force.
"—it will spread this hunger to every System-protected world until all that's left is nothingness."
"Master," Xiaoli's voice cracked. "The cascade energies are approaching critical resonance. If we're going to do this—"
"I am aware." Dakein placed his hand on the Arthrion Control Matrix, as entropy vibrated through his bones. "All points, stand by for System Core detonation in three... two..."
The planetary guardian's attention abruptly shifted to their position with overwhelming force. Dakein sensed its alien awareness through their world's dying cultivation network, inquiring into his purpose.
"You would condemn your kin to rescue foreigners?" The voice in his mind held the resonance of centuries of patiently-borne hunger. "I give them immortality as part of myself. You promise them nothing but death."
"I promise them the opportunity to die as they are," Dakein ground out between his teeth. "Instead of living as your prey."
'Foolish boy. You understand nothing of cosmic need.'
The mountain-range-sized feeding tentacles that the guardian evoked, closing in on the Assembly, warped reality around their arrival. Space-time bent like origami to allow them passage.
"NOW!" Dakein shrieked.
Forty-three young cultivators simultaneously severed their link to the System network, generating a cascading feedback through every nexus point on their planet.
The ensuing explosion of uncontrolled qi wasn't focused outward—it imploded toward the planet's center, attempting to annihilate the hidden matrix that permitted their guardian to exist in normal space.
For a single eternal moment, Dakein felt the technique start to take hold. Their guardian's feeding halted as it fought to retain coherence against the cascade collapse.
Something went awry then.
Rather than merely annihilating their System fragment, the cascade began to resonate with fragments across their entire galactic cluster.
One by one, far-off worlds shrieked through quantum space as their own System cores began dissolving in a sympathetic collapse.
"Master!" Xiaoli's frightened voice barely reached him amidst the tumult. "The cascade is expanding! We're ripping the whole System network apart!"
Dakein felt it happen through his link with the Arthrion Core—every System-augmented world in their local reality cluster began to tear itself asunder as the resonance cascade spread faster than light through quantum cultivation channels.
But their guardian was not dying. It was feeding faster, gorging on the chaos energy released by each collapsing world.
"Thank you," its psychic voice echoed in contentment. "I could never have scattered out such a feast myself."
The awful realization hit Dakein like a bucket of ice water. The cascade wasn't killing their guardian—it was giving it precisely the colossal energy release needed to reach its next level of evolution.
As Nihili-Temis descended into its final spiral of dissolution, reality began to wink out at the edges.
Through chinks in space-time, Dakein saw what lay beyond their cluster of local universes—an eternal blackness infested with beasts that made their guardian look like a minnow.
And they were all turning their gaze on the massive energy signature of a galaxy-sized System collapse.
"Xiaoli!" He gestured toward his sole remaining disciple as tears in the fabric of the dimensions tore the Assembly apart. "The emergency translation protocols—initiate them now!"
Her fingers danced across crystal controls as reality started to unravel around them. "Master, there isn't enough stored qi to—"
"Don't debate! Do it!"
The translation beam homed in on his quantum signature at the very moment their guardian's feeding was building to a critical mass.
In the final moment before Nihili-Temis was devoured whole, Dakein caught a glimpse of something that would plague him throughout the eons—his guardian's true form beneath its parent-like guise.
It wasn't a planetary guardian that had been warped.
It was something else, something that had been impersonating their guardian since their civilization had just begun.
The shift of dimensions pulled him into the interworld void as his homeworld howled its destruction behind him.
And in the quantum resonance of the tear, he caught something that sent a chill through his veins—the titanic, waiting boom of laughter from the intergalactic blackness.
Something had been waiting for this precise moment.
Something that had guided each step of their downfall from the start.
And now, as the System broke apart like seeds under the influence of the cosmic winds, something set out upon its long search for the next harvest worlds.
'The game is played once more,' a voice whispered across the desolations. 'And this time we shall be ready for any resistance.'