In the underground bunker at United Nations headquarters, the glow of the Holographic Projection screen reflected off the grave faces of leaders from every nation.
The footage transmitted from the North M Air Defense Command was still looping.
In the footage, the outline of the Star-Devouring Beast flickered in and out amid the folds of turbulent spacetime. It had no fixed form, seeming to be made of countless rotating clouds of dark matter. Its edges continuously devoured glowing belts of starstone. Every "breath" it took triggered violent distortions in the surrounding spacetime; even light turned into spiraling ribbons near it, no longer able to travel in straight lines.
"This is not an existence that any weapon we currently possess can fight."
The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the M Military spoke with a rare tremor in his voice. The screen behind him switched to the final footage from the Moon Observation Station.
The orbital defense system that had once circled the moon crumbled like toy blocks beneath the spacetime-wave impact caused by the Star-Devouring Beast. The fragments did not scatter outward, but instead collapsed in reverse and were sucked into a distant spacetime rift, without even a flicker of explosive fire left behind.
Even more chillingly, the moon's once-clear craters now overlapped with the landscapes of Earth's Jurassic era. Several dinosaur-like projections ran between the craters, only to be torn apart by suddenly appearing spacetime turbulence the next second.
Panic spread across Earth like a virus.
First, the official websites of national aerospace agencies were overwhelmed by traffic. Countless people frantically refreshed their browsers, trying to obtain the latest news from space.
Then came waves of panic buying in city supermarkets, where bottled water and compressed rations were swept clean from the shelves.
Parents clutched their children