Ultimate Destroyer

Darkness stretched endlessly beyond the shattered hull of the derelict starship, an infinite abyss where time had no meaning, and existence itself felt like a fading memory. A lone figure drifted in the cold vacuum, his body wrapped in the remnants of a battle-worn exosuit, the dull metal scratched and scarred by a conflict he could not recall. His breath came in slow, measured intervals, the rhythmic sound of his oxygen supply the only reminder that he was still alive. But alive for what purpose? That answer eluded him.

Varos Rael opened his eyes to the void, his gaze distant, unfocused, as if the sheer emptiness of space was consuming him from the inside out. He did not know how long he had been floating, nor could he remember how he had ended up here. The memories that should have defined him were fractured, scattered across his mind like broken glass, each fragment offering only glimpses of a past that refused to coalesce into something tangible. He reached for a thought, a name, anything that might serve as an anchor, but all that came was silence.

The suit's heads-up display flickered erratically, struggling to maintain function in the absence of a stable power source. A red warning flashed across his visor—oxygen reserves: 12%. Beneath it, another message scrolled in jagged text, corrupted by whatever damage the system had sustained: unknown gravitational anomaly detected. Trajectory unstable.

Varos exhaled slowly, adjusting his position with the faintest pulse from his thrusters. The ship—if it could even still be called that—loomed behind him, its skeletal remains barely holding together. It had once been a vessel of war, its thick plating reinforced to withstand the horrors of deep-space combat. Now, it was nothing more than a graveyard, its corridors reduced to lightless tombs, its crew long since lost to whatever catastrophe had befallen them. And yet, Varos had survived.

Why?

That question burned at the edges of his consciousness, its weight pressing down on him with an intensity that rivaled the crushing silence of the void. He clenched his fist, the servos in his suit responding with a whir of strained mechanics, and for the first time, he truly became aware of himself. He was not just some drifting corpse, lost to the endless black. He was alive, and that meant something.

He turned toward the wreckage, searching for anything that might offer answers. His thrusters engaged with a subtle burst, propelling him toward the exposed interior of the ship. The outer hull had been torn apart, jagged metal stretching outward like the ribs of some colossal beast, the edges glowing faintly from residual energy discharges. He maneuvered carefully through the wreckage, his fingers trailing along the twisted remains of bulkheads and shattered conduits. There were no bodies. No blood. No signs of struggle. Just emptiness, as if the crew had simply ceased to exist.

His boots touched down inside what had once been the command deck, a vast chamber dominated by a massive observation window that now looked out upon a dead sector of space. Cracks splintered across the reinforced glass, light from distant nebulae bleeding through like fractured veins of dying stars. Consoles flickered weakly, their systems barely holding on, displaying indecipherable streams of data. One screen, however, pulsed with a faint blue glow, drawing his attention.

He approached cautiously, his fingers hovering over the terminal before finally pressing down. The screen stuttered, then stabilized, revealing a single message—one that sent a shiver through him despite the vacuum-sealed insulation of his suit.

Varos Rael. If you are reading this, then you were never meant to wake up.

He staggered back, his breath hitching as a rush of fragmented memories surged through his mind. Images of fire and steel. A battlefield that stretched beyond the limits of sight. The sound of voices—screaming, commanding, whispering secrets he could not yet grasp. And then, a name whispered like a dying echo.

The Nihil Engine.

A jolt of recognition struck him, not in the way one recalls a forgotten detail, but as if something had been forcibly buried within him, only now clawing its way back to the surface. The Nihil Engine. A force of destruction beyond comprehension. A machine older than the stars themselves, drifting through the cosmos, consuming all in its path. The thought of it sent a sharp, primal fear through him, but he did not know why.

The ship lurched suddenly, an unseen force dragging it further into the abyss. The terminal sputtered, static distorting the message, but a final line broke through before the screen died completely.

They are coming.

The moment the words vanished, a presence filled the void.

Varos turned sharply, his instincts flaring with an urgency that defied rational explanation. Outside the observation window, space itself began to twist and fracture, tendrils of inky darkness unfurling from nothingness. They moved like liquid shadows, seeping through the fabric of reality, coiling around the ruins of the ship as if tasting its remains. And then, from within the shifting black, a form emerged.

The Eclipse Legion.

Their armor was obsidian, their forms sleek yet unnatural, as if sculpted from the very essence of the void. Their eyes—if they had eyes—burned with a sickly blue radiance, devoid of warmth, devoid of anything resembling life. They did not move as men moved; they drifted, weightless yet purposeful, silent hunters closing in on their prey.

Varos felt a pulse in his chest, a deep resonance that spread through his limbs like wildfire. Something within him stirred, an energy he could not explain, yet it felt as if it had always been there, waiting beneath the surface. His body reacted before his mind could process it. The moment the first figure lunged toward him, he shifted—

And the world shattered.

Time fractured. One second became a thousand, then none at all. The Legion warrior's approach slowed to an agonizing crawl, the glow in its visor flickering as though struggling to remain anchored in the flow of reality. Varos moved, his actions guided by instinct more than thought, stepping through the frozen moment as if walking between raindrops. He reached out, his fingers brushing against the Legionnaire's helmet, and then—

The fracture reversed.

Time slammed forward. The figure collapsed inward, its form disintegrating into nothingness, erased from existence. The remaining warriors hesitated, sensing something beyond their understanding, but hesitation was weakness in the void. Varos turned toward them, his mind reeling from the impossible act he had just performed, and yet his body knew.

He had done this before.

He had wielded this power before.

And the Nihil Engine had feared it.

The Legion regrouped, moving in calculated formation, but Varos was already gone, his thrusters igniting as he propelled himself toward the shattered hull of the ship. The universe twisted around him, the remnants of fractured time bleeding into the present, and as he escaped into the endless dark, a single thought echoed in his mind.

This was only the beginning.