A tremendous shock wave swept through, leveling everything around it.
But this was only the beginning.
The torpedo bored into the crust, plunging down, down, down at astonishing speed.
It pierced the crust, pierced the mantle, and finally reached the planet's core.
Then it detonated.
The energy released by the antimatter reactor ignited the entire core in an instant.
The core of T'au became a miniature sun.
That sun expanded wildly, releasing unimaginable energy.
The crust began to fracture.
From the center of the explosion, enormous cracks spread in every direction, covering the entire planet like a spiderweb.
Lava erupted from the fissures, forming columns of molten rock hundreds of kilometers high.
The atmosphere was torn apart, the oceans vaporized, the continents shredded.
Aun'Va stood beneath the dome of the council chamber, feeling the entire building shake.
The ground split open, and searing light shot through the cracks.
"Farewell, my people," he said softly. "May we live in a better universe in our next lives."
The next second, the council chamber collapsed.
The enormous dome came crashing down, burying Aun'Va beneath the rubble.
But he could no longer feel pain.
Because the entire planet was breaking apart.
The energy in the core finally passed the critical threshold.
T'au exploded from within.
At that moment, the entire star system lit up.
A fireball more than ten thousand kilometers across blossomed in the void, like a flower blooming to its fullest before withering away.
Fragments of the planet scattered in every direction, forming an enormous asteroid belt.
Within those fragments lay countless T'au corpses, the remnants of a civilization, and the dreams of a species.
They drifted through the void, giving off a faint golden glow.
This asteroid belt would become the only proof that the T'au had ever existed.
Throughout the