Deep in the Great Empyrean Void, three hundred light-years beyond the mortal star cluster, hovered the Star-Devouring Citadel.
It was neither a planet nor an ordinary space station. It was the dead body of an ancient supergiant star, hollowed out over sixty million years by the Sovereign Harvester Sect. A black-glass throne room fifty miles wide occupied the space where its core had once burned. Cold embers from drained stars glowed inside black-crystal spheres, providing the only light.
Grand Elder Mo Fan sat on the central dais.
His dry, ancient flesh looked like parchment left too long in vacuum. His eyes burned with stolen stellar fire. In his skeletal hands, he held a three-pronged golden trident called the Sovereign Star-Siphon. Condensed essence from five thousand dead star systems dripped from its points.
Around his throne hung hundred-foot tapestries woven from captured magnetic fields. They recorded every planetary realm the Harvesters had destroyed during the current cosmic epoch.
Twenty Celestial Harvesters knelt below the dais. Each was an immortal capable of extinguishing a world with a sweep of one sleeve.
“Report,” Mo Fan rasped. His voice echoed through the hollow star like grinding stone. “The Grand Void Array detected a strange vibration along the southern star-sea spur. Has an ancient sky dragon awakened? Or has an Abyssal Sovereign broken free?”
