Within the star-spanning dragon eyes of Starforger Dragon Lo Quen, the frightened crimson planet was reflected as it lay trapped in his palm.
Now that he had found it, it was time to bring this chase across the starry sea to an end.
Lo Quen no longer needed to use his dragon claws.
At his level, will itself was law.
The colossal dragon head, formed from countless galaxies, lifted slightly, as though listening to some silent call from the depths of the cosmos, or sensing a pull that ran through dimensions themselves.
His will spread in an instant, reaching the unknown edges beyond the known universe, piercing veils of nebulae and crossing folds of time and space.
He was summoning a constellation entity, condensed from ancient stars, star clusters, nebulae, and the cosmic wrath contained within them.
Within the Outer God's perception, steeped in absolute terror, it saw the void before the Starforger Dragon begin to twist in ways it could not comprehend.
Space rippled violently like water. Light was seized and distorted in wild arcs.
Then, a devastating stellar domain, burning with billions of colors and forcibly compressed from innumerable stars, was torn free as if dragged out of another dimension by an invisible giant hand.
It was not a meteor. Not an asteroid.
It was an entire constellation, imbued with a will of fury, its diameter spanning millions of light-years.
The constellation burned as if with the flames of vengeance, carrying all its energy as it locked onto the Outer God and crashed down in a single, overwhelming strike.
Starfall: The Skies Descend!
"No—!!!!!!!"
The chaotic collective consciousness of Ghroth let out its final, ultimate scream.
It tried to draw upon every last scrap of power. Across the planet's surface, the crimson eyes erupted with chaotic ripples, attempting to twist the rules of reality itself. Countless blasphemous runes flared to life, striving to form a barrier.
But all resistance was meaningless before Starfall: The Skies Descend.
The sheer mass and energy embodied by the constellation's wrath already constituted absolute suppression.
Escape?
The very space Ghroth occupied had long since been sealed by the will of the Starforger Dragon.
This Outer God was like an insect trapped in amber, where even struggling was a luxury.
In the next instant,
the wrath of the constellation slammed directly into Ghroth's eye-covered crimson planetary body.
BOOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
No language could describe even a billionth of this collision.
It was an explosion on a cosmic scale.
Time and space lost all meaning at the point of impact.
First came light, an extreme brilliance. A sphere of radiance, billions of times brighter than a supernova, was born in an instant, illuminating the vast starfield as if reenacting the birth of the universe itself.
Then followed unimaginable gravitational tides and energy radiation, expanding outward in all directions at speeds beyond light.
Asteroid belts in the vicinity were reduced to fundamental particles in an instant.
Distant star systems shuddered. Nebulae were torn apart and twisted beyond recognition.
Ghroth's consciousness, scoured by this universe-level destructive force, flickered like a dying candle in a storm.
It felt every fragment of chaotic matter and every strand of evil will that made up its existence being forcibly broken down by the absolute power contained within the constellation's wrath.
"Why… why did it come to this…"
"I am the Star of Judgment… I was meant to bring destruction…"
Countless fragmented thoughts flashed through its fading awareness.
It had once delighted in watching civilizations and Old Ones alike dance madly beneath its celestial sound until their annihilation, never imagining that it would itself be erased so completely.
The Outer God's struggle grew weaker and weaker, its crimson glow swallowed by pure, annihilating white light.
Under the relentless burning and impact of the constellation's wrath, the massive planetary body first shattered into countless blazing fragments, and those fragments were then further reduced into rivers of molten ruin.
In the end, even the molten torrents were completely vaporized, reduced to a cloud of interstellar dust and fundamental particles, flickering with faint, dying embers.
The once fearsome Outer God was utterly erased from the universe.
Starforger Dragon Lo Quen watched coldly as the still-roiling, expanding nebula of destruction slowly calmed, sensing the violent energy within it gradually subside.
He knew that the traces of Ghroth's existence had been dismantled at the root by absolute force.
At the heart of that annihilation nebula, a fragment of consciousness carrying the last remnants of Ghroth's information appeared alongside the manifestation of the Dragon's Soul. Unlike the Dragon's Soul, which merged into Lo Quen's body, this fragment drifted like a ghost, slowly dispersing.
Lo Quen's dragon eyes flickered slightly. A thin ray of starlight shot out and captured that wisp of lingering soul.
He scanned the Outer God's memories, instantly reading and parsing all the information contained within.
Countless fragments of chaotic knowledge flooded into Lo Quen's perception.
He saw the name of this Outer God.
Ghroth!
He saw the Outer God's birth.
He saw how it had been rejected by the other Outer Gods, expelled from the central temple of the cosmos, and forced to wander the universe by pure instinct.
Wherever it went, the Old Ones danced in madness.
Civilizations came to an end, yet Ghroth remained utterly unaware, feeling only a warped sense of satisfaction.
He also saw how Ghroth had been guided by Nyarlathotep's schemes, drawn in by the Sh'ga'i's attempt to summon an avatar of Azathoth, and thus diverted from its original course toward the birthplace of Nug and Yeb.
"So it was you, Ghroth."
Lo Quen understood.
This Icefire World was indeed part of the Cthulhu Mythos, and merely a spare piece casually tossed out by Nyarlathotep, one of several decoys meant to draw Ghroth's attention.
And the Outer God he had destroyed, Ghroth, was the dreaded "Star of Judgment," also known throughout the cosmos as the "The Harbinger."
Unlike the Outer Gods that circled the palace of the Blind Idiot God Azathoth, playing their mad melodies, Ghroth was an outlier among them.
It had not been born from ordered laws, but had condensed directly from Azathoth itself.
Its celestial sound, capable of driving Old Ones into frenzied dance and plunging civilizations into ultimate madness, could not be perceived or controlled by Gehros itself.
This innate "noise" led to its rejection by the other Outer Gods, and in the end, it was driven out of the Chaos Temple at the center of the universe.
Yet the long exile and solitary wandering did not bring Gehros any pain.
Driven by instinct, it roamed from galaxy to galaxy. Wherever it passed, dormant Old Ones would twist and dance uncontrollably, marching toward destruction in a blasphemous rite.
The civilizations along its path were instantly dissolved.
This "spectacle," built upon endless ruin, instead brought a twisted pleasure to Gehros's chaotic core.
However, during its aimless travels, the birth of a pair of special beings caught its attention.
Nug and Yeb.
These blasphemous twins were born from the union of Shub-Niggurath, the Great Mother of the Woods, and Yog-Sothoth, the All-Knowing and All-Seeing God, conceived at the suggestion of Nyarlathotep, the Thousand-Faced God.