Above the galactic astrolabe, Nimrod, the Fallen Count, looked down from a detached perspective as the second brilliant pillar of light continuously collided with scarlet radiance.
Tens of thousands of scarlet shark swarms howled and tore at it, ripping away streak after streak of brilliant motes.
The starlight scattered. Each shattered fragment trailed a path across the galactic astrolabe, sketching a route from east to south.
The light swept across thousands of star systems like the tail of a comet.
Reduced to only a third of its original size, the pillar of light descended from nowhere upon Varia Superior, the Forge World in the southern galaxy.
Nimrod swung the Flagpole for the third time. The pillar staggered amid the scarlet swamp, painfully carving a path across the galactic ecliptic plane.
The third pillar of light hanging over the western galaxy dwindled to a fifth of its size, illuminating Shana II in the west.
Beyond the galactic rim lay only endless darkness.
A few lonely stars in the cold night, countless worlds long dead, and fragments from galactic collisions billions of years ago drifted in solitude.
Past probes launched by extinct races beyond all record, past everything, it was about to reach the abyssal ocean dotted with brilliant islands of light from distant star clusters.
Though vast and unfathomable, that abyssal ocean was not pure void. The Great Beasts of the swarm lurked there.
In the eternal night, an energy fluctuation many times faster than light suddenly flared.
An explosive flash burst from an unnamed stellar vortex. It lasted only a few microseconds, yet that faint gleam did not go unnoticed.
In the darkness, the ancient, eternally slumbering thing of infinite hunger stirred.
A million cold, vigilant eyes noticed the light and initiated the process of relaying the stimulus.
The entity