The radiance of three stars intertwined in the void, forming a storm of light that would never be extinguished.
This was the core region of the Tentacle Tree Civilization's plane.
The density of stars was so absurdly high that the surrounding cosmic space had been dyed an unnatural, glaring white.
More than a million stars, drawn and torn by one another's immense gravity at such close distances, had their coronae stretched into tongues of flame spanning millions of kilometers. They slowly entwined and licked at one another in the frigid vacuum, like colossal burning beasts testing each other.
Three spacecraft emerged from spatial transit at the same time from different directions, rendezvousing at the outer edge of the three stars' shared gravitational field.
The hulls were pitch-black, without serial numbers or military insignia, not even the slightest unnecessary decoration.
Their outer shells were covered in thick, irregular wave-absorbing material that swallowed the dense stellar radiation around them, unwilling to leak even a glimmer of reflection. None of the three ships were large, each only comparable to a conventional frigate.
Yet within this region of space ravaged by stellar storms, their engines remained suppressed at minimum cruising power, their hulls swaying slightly amid violent gravitational tides.
Like three dead leaves pushed along by the current, so fragile they seemed ready to be torn apart at any moment.
The flagship's encrypted communication channel was established immediately after the rendezvous.
Three light screens lit up at once, revealing three faces of cracked bark, their furrows running deep.
They were the Supreme Governor who had fled in advance, Lu Xin, Governor of the Home Planet, and the former Dean of the Tentacle Tree Civilization Academy of Sciences.
The gazes of all three trees were calm. Even after such earth-shaking changes in their lives, they