The void between realities writhed with hunger. What Reed had mistaken for darkness was something far more insidious—the collective death wish of a trillion murdered souls, given form and terrible purpose.
The Entropy Collective materialized before them not as beings, but as absences. Shadows that consumed light, silence that devoured sound, and at their center sat a throne carved from crystallized despair. Upon it lounged a figure that hurt to perceive—Nihil the Unmaker, whose form shifted between the faces of every soul Reed had failed to save during the Harvester War.
"Commander Reed Thorne," Nihil's voice was the whisper of dying stars, the last breath of murdered children, the sob of widowed mothers. "We meet at last. Though we have known you intimately—through every life you've taken, every world you've 'liberated,' every choice that led to this moment."
