The body collapsed, its eyes staring into nothing. Whatever intelligence had once existed within was now gone, leaving behind only a discarded shell of biomass to be studied, dissected, and ultimately recycled. With a mental command, my clones moved in, stripping the exo-suit and cataloguing the remains.

  What I had extracted from Frival’s mind reshaped everything. It answered long-standing questions but spawned even more, expanding my understanding while deepening the unknown. Even the rest of the galaxy lacked answers to what I now glimpsed.

  But knowledge was power. I now understood their fleet composition, their influential individuals and the factions vying for control over the moon. Their ambitions, their fears, their weaknesses, I had them all. And with that knowledge, I could refine my strategy.

  Yet, in gaining insight into their operations, I had also identified a flaw in my own. Their science division had been studying me, analysing my evolution. That could not be allowed to continue.

  The next batch of clones would be different, engineered with a self-destruct sequence to ensure their bodies broke down upon death. No remains. No samples. No further study.

  Their nearest mass mobilization was already underway. Clones were being concentrated in the North before deployment to various fronts. If I wished to act before their numbers grew overwhelming, my timetable would need to accelerate.

  I stepped out of the chamber, finding my new agents awaiting my orders. Seven clones, standing motionless, their armour subtly altered to include simulated battle damage. With a simple nod, they departed, heading to the surface to enact the next stage of my plan.

  Aegirarch’s paranoia had played directly into my hands. His orbital resupply had broadcasted new orders across the sector, to eliminate all rogue etheric users. A blanket directive, one that every clone would follow unquestionably.

  That meant I needed only one more key piece to fracture their control, I had to absorb Aegirarch’s mind. With his knowledge, I could disrupt or outright eliminate portions of the fleet.

  The Triumvirate’s forces were vast, but they were not uniform. Factions operated within its structure, the etheric users, the mining consortium, and the science division. Each had its hierarchy, and its leaders. If I could consume their minds, I could unravel their authority from within.

  But as I absorbed Frival’s knowledge, a deeper, more unsettling revelation surfaced, one that threatened to upend everything I had assumed about this galaxy.

  I had expected an infinite sea of stars, a universe teeming with distant galaxies and uncharted worlds. Instead, the abyss stretched endlessly. There was nothing. No distant light. No new frontiers. Only the black void, a silence that should not exist.

  Exploration fleets had been dispatched, scouring the darkness for answers. They found nothing. The only remnants of an explanation lay in the fractured records of civilizations long since erased by time, fractured records of an ancient cataclysm that had consumed the universe.

  The accounts were disjointed, debated, and incomplete. They spoke of fractures in the void, rifts that swallowed entire galaxies. Even Nythora’s Halo had suffered. Billions of stars had vanished, and entire species were lost without a trace. Faster-than-light travel had been rewritten in the aftermath, now constrained to fixed Nexus Points the only safe pathways through the remains of a once-vast cosmos.

  But the proof was undeniable, some species had not originated in Nythora’s Halo. They had fled from elsewhere, emerging from the void through wounds in reality, remnants of the distant cataclysm that had severed them from their home galaxies.

  The rifts had not been kind. Some arrived broken, their fleets shattered, and their civilizations reduced to scattered refugees. Others had come as conquerors, seeking to claim dominion over a new galaxy, only to find themselves stranded as the rifts sealed behind them, their empires lost to the void.

  For decades, centuries, even these displaced species had scoured the reaches of Nythora’s Halo, desperate to carve out a place in a galaxy that was not their own. They built colonies in the fringes, fortresses in the dark, always wary, always waiting. Their survival was proof of their ruthlessness, for only the strongest had endured the transition.

  Then, the Nexus stabilized. Normal FTL travel was re-established. The rifts had closed permanently. Whatever had existed beyond them was now inaccessible, perhaps erased altogether. The newcomers were trapped, cut off from the past they had fled, and forced to kneel before the brutal hierarchies of this galaxy.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  Not all of them had accepted their fate. Some whispered of lost stars, of forgotten paths through the void. Of something still watching from the fractures, waiting for a way back in.

  This galaxy, Nythora’s Halo, was smaller than I had anticipated. Only two million solar systems remained stable for Nexus travel. Another one million were unstable, their pathways too dangerous to navigate. That was all that remained of settled space.

  This region, the Iron Chain, was named for its abundance of high-yield iron, a defining characteristic of every planet, moon, and asteroid within its grasp. It was but one arm of a spiral.

  The Serpent’s Tail (First Arm)

  The Iron Chain (Second Arm)

  The Void Walker’s Path (Third Arm)

  The Ember Veil (Fourth Arm)

  Four arms. Four remnants of what should have been a galactic expanse teeming with life. And yet, beyond them, the abyss loomed empty.

  Among Frival’s knowledge, I found a name of significance to me. The Psionic Union. The largest organization advocating for the acceptance and regulation of etheric users. They sought to establish a structured framework for their abilities, though, like all bureaucracies, they were fractured by internal divisions. Their presence would complicate matters.

  More importantly, I could not allow knowledge of my existence to reach civilized space. Not yet. My priority remained unchanged, to eliminate the Grithan threat and dismantle the Triumvirate’s rule.

  War, as it stood, would not favour me. The Triumvirate held the numbers and the resources. A prolonged conflict would see me ground to dust beneath their overwhelming force. Even with my current data, a direct confrontation would be suicide.

  That left only one path to victory.

  To kill a nation, you do not fight it head-on. You fracture it. You turn its weight against it. Pressure from within, pressure from without, until its foundations crumble.

  For the Triumvirate to fall, all three ruling clans had to be eliminated simultaneously.

  No succession.

  No contingency.

  A collapse so total that no organized resistance could form before I struck the final blow.

  And so, I sent a small portion of the intelligence sub-mind to review everything about the Triumvirate from Frival’s memories and thoughts about the three pillars Clan Abyssis, Clan Thalass and Clan Vortyn

  The first pillar Clan Abyssis does not conquer with fleets or weapons. Each clan had its symbol Clan Abyssis had a spiralling whirlpool with their motto “Control the flow, control the future.”

  They do not need to. Their dominion lies in what sustains empires the veins of trade, the foundations of industry, the endless march of soldiers birthed from vats. Their power is absolute, yet subtle. They dictate who thrives and who withers by controlling the flow of resources.

  Every shipyard, every supply line, every transportation hub, Abyssis sees all, owns all. The armies of the Triumvirate march at their command, for without their endless production of cloned soldiers, Thalass would have no war to wage. Without their infrastructure, Vortyn’s wealth would be nothing but numbers in a dead system.

  The true horror of Abyssis lies in their safeguards. Every clone they manufacture carries hidden loyalty programs deep, embedded commands that ensure unwavering obedience. Not even Thalass's enforcers are immune. Should a faction prove troublesome, the failsafe can be activated, turning entire battalions into lifeless statues or making them turn on their masters.

  Even the great war fleets built in Abyssis shipyards are not truly free. Each vessel harbours remote shutdown sequences, allowing entire armadas to be crippled with a single command should they ever turn against the Triumvirate.

  Waste is not tolerated. Efficiency is their doctrine. Entire populations have been erased, deemed unprofitable and redundant. The calculations are cold and ruthless. In their eyes, species, colonies, and even entire planets are expendable resources, to be stripped or discarded as needed.

  And yet, their power does not end at logistics. They are the watchers in the dark, the whisperers behind every move. Their intelligence network is vast, ensuring that no rival within the Triumvirate rises unchecked. There is no escape from their gaze.