Location: Inside the Void-Ark 'Beast-Tamer' – Sector 0 (The Stellar Core)
Time: The Moment of Zero
The trigger clicked.
Underneath the floating chassis of the Naglfar, the magnetic rings of the Singularity Cannon lit up in sequence. They didn't glow with light; they pulsed with a deepening shadow.
The Samsara Drive screamed as it dumped 100% of its reactor output into the Shard of the Fallen Star.
Grand Elder Kong, still holding Aris by the throat, looked up. He saw the black barrel pointed directly at him—and the artificial sun behind him.
His eyes, filled with the arrogance of a Dao Severing immortal, widened with a realization that transcended fear. It was the realization of a math error.
"You..." Kong gasped. "That is not a weapon. That is a leak."
The Shot
VOOOOOOM.
There was no explosion. The sound was the air itself being sucked out of the room in a single violent gasp to feed the vacuum of the beam.
A lance of Absolute Nothingness shot from the Naglfar.
It passed inches from Aris's face. The sheer gravitational wake of the beam tore the skin off his cheek and shattered the mask he wore.
Kong dropped Aris. He didn't drop him to fight; he dropped him because he needed both hands to try and hold reality together.
The beam hit the Red Giant Star.
The Collision
When Infinite Mass (The Star) meets Infinite Density (The Black Hole), physics simply gives up.
The star didn't explode. It inverted.
The swirling red plasma stopped moving. The blinding light turned grey, then a bruised purple, and finally, pitch black.
The Shard of the Fallen Star embedded itself in the center of the sun. And it began to eat.
[System Alert: Gravitational Collapse Imminent.]
[Event: Schwarzschild Radius Expanding.]
[Run.]
The gravity in the room shifted instantly. Down was no longer the floor. Down was the Black Sun.
Debris, cooling pipes, and chunks of the golden walls were ripped from their mountings and sucked into the center. They didn't crash; they stretched. They turned into long, thin strands of matter—spaghettified—before vanishing into the event horizon.
The End of an Immortal
Grand Elder Kong floated in the center of the chaos. His golden robes were shredding, pulled toward the anomaly.
He screamed. He activated his Dao of Gravity, trying to create a counter-force to push himself away.
"I am a King of the Stars!" Kong roared, his aura flaring like a dying candle. "I command the weight of worlds! I will not be eaten by a rock!"
He pulled out his Teleportation Talisman. He crushed it.
FIZZ.
Space warped around him, trying to fold him away to safety.
But a Black Hole bends space.
The teleportation tunnel opened, but instead of leading to the Myriad Beasts Mountain, it curved back into the Singularity.
Kong stepped into the light of the talisman, thinking he was safe.
Half of his body appeared on the other side of the room. The other half was sucked into the Black Sun.
"AAAA—"
He looked down. His legs were gone. His torso was stretching, unraveling like a sweater.
"No..." Kong whispered, staring into the void he had dismissed as a parlor trick. "The Abyss... it is real..."
The Singularity pulsed. It swallowed the rest of him.
There was no blood. No ash. Grand Elder Kong, a being who had lived for a thousand years, was simply erased from the timeline.
The Escape
Aris was holding onto a floor grate with one hand. His legs were dangling upward, pulled toward the Black Sun.
[G-Force: 20G.]
[Grip Strength: Failing.]
"Nox!" Aris screamed over the roar of the collapsing room.
Nox was clinging to a heavy support pillar, his claws digging inches deep into the metal. The Eclipse Hound was howling, his shadow-form flickering as the black hole tried to eat his essence.
The Naglfar—the bone ship—was struggling. Its engines were firing max reverse thrust, fighting the pull of its own weapon.
"We have to go!" Aris shouted. "Board the ship!"
He let go of the grate.
He didn't fall toward the Black Hole. He used the Void-Walker's Mantle.
"Skill: Phase-Shift."
For three seconds, Aris became intangible. The gravity couldn't grab what wasn't there.
He floated through the chaos, drifting toward the open airlock of the Naglfar. He grabbed Nox by the scruff of the neck as he passed, phasing the dog with him.
They crashed into the airlock.
Aris slammed his hand on the panel. "Seal!"
CLANG.
The door closed.
Aris crawled to the cockpit. The pilot skeleton had been crushed by the G-force. Aris shoved the bones aside and grabbed the controls.
"System! Dump all power to the Samsara Drive! Get us out of here!"
The Implosion
The Naglfar groaned. The Tiger-Steel hull screamed as it fought the tidal forces.
Green fire erupted from the engines. The ship inched forward, away from the Black Sun.
Behind them, the Beast-Tamer began to die.
The massive golden Pagoda-Ship buckled. The outer hull crumpled inward like a crushed soda can. The towers snapped. The beautiful frescoes of dragons and phoenixes were sucked into the core.
[Velocity: Mach 1... Mach 5... Mach 10.]
The Naglfar broke free of the gravity well.
It shot out of the exploding Pagoda-Ship like a bullet leaving a gun barrel.
Seconds later, the Beast-Tamer imploded.
It shrank. The ten-kilometer-wide city compressed into a sphere the size of an apple.
And then, having consumed all available mass, the Singularity became unstable.
FLASH.
It evaporated in a burst of Hawking Radiation. A shockwave of pure white light expanding across the orbit.
The Drift
The Naglfar drifted in the silence of space.
The ship was a wreck. One of the bone-fins was missing. The armor was stripped bare. The main gun was melted slag.
Inside the cockpit, Aris lay slumped over the controls. His mask was gone, revealing a face covered in scars and violet veins. He was breathing, but barely.
Nox curled up at his feet, licking Aris's hand.
Aris opened one eye. He looked out the viewport.
There was no golden ship. No invasion fleet. Just the empty, starry void and the blue planet turning slowly below.
[Target Destroyed: The Beast-Tamer.]
[Threat Level: Neutralized.]
[XP Gained: Error. Calculation Limit Exceeded.]
[Level Up: 61 -> 65.]
[Level Up: 65 -> 70.]
Aris laughed. It was a weak, wheezing sound.
"We won," he whispered to the dog. "We actually won."
[System Alert: Incoming Transmission.]
[Source: The Myriad Beasts Mountain (Main Sector).]
[Message: "Signal Lost. Elder Kong Deceased. Sector 994 Designated as Hostile Zone. Dispatching punitive fleet..."]
Aris closed his eyes.
"Let them come," he murmured, drifting into unconsciousness. "I have a lot of loot to process first."