Ten Years After the Foundation The First Crack in Paradise
The screams began at 14:27 Galactic Standard Time, piercing through seventeen dimensional barriers with the raw, primal terror of a child's nightmare made manifest. In the command center of Arbiter's Legacy, Admiral Lyralei Morgenstern—now bearing the scars of a decade's worth of impossible victories—felt the sound in her bones before her enhanced hearing processed it. The graviton blade at her hip hummed in sympathy, its crystalline core resonating with frequencies that should not have existed in stable reality.
"Report," she barked, her voice cutting through the chaos erupting across the bridge. Officers from twelve different species worked frantically at their stations, their faces illuminated by the hellish crimson light now bleeding through the observation windows. Outside, the stars themselves seemed to be weeping blood.
