No light survived my event horizon.
Yet, somewhere in the distance, I sensed brightness—a pulse in the void. A beacon, perhaps. A star. Or something else entirely. Whatever it was, it pulled at my awareness, beckoning me closer.
I had no limbs, no body, no propulsion system. I was an anomaly in space, a gravitational force, a wound in reality. And yet, when I reached out, I moved. Slowly, deliberately, my presence rippled through the vacuum, bending the dust and debris around me.
The System's presence lingered in my mind, silent now, but ever-watchful. It had failed to erase me, but I could feel its gaze, analyzing, recalculating. Waiting to determine whether I was an inconvenience—or a true threat.
Something small drifted too close. A fragment of rock, maybe ice. I felt it slip past my horizon, consumed before I could react. A flicker of memory followed—glass shattering against cold tile, the sterile scent of antiseptic, the weight of inevitability pressing down on me.
Then, hunger.
Not just a physical craving, but a need—a void within the void, an emptiness that demanded to be filled. The scattered remnants of an asteroid belt spiraled around me, and I reached for them instinctively. One by one, the fragments fell into me. I grew.
SYSTEM ALERT:ERROR_0001
Mass: Minimal. Threat Level: Low.
Action: Observe.
Observe. The word felt clinical, indifferent. It wasn't trying to delete me—yet. It was watching. Studying me like a scientist studies an unpredictable specimen.
Something flickered across my awareness—a distant presence, barely perceptible. It was like a ripple in the cosmic fabric, an echo of something vast and aware. My consciousness latched onto it, searching, and for an instant, I saw it: a dark shape moving among the stars, burning with emerald light.
My existence trembled.
SYSTEM EXECUTION UNIT 01 – NOVA REAPER
SEARCHING…
The presence vanished. Had I truly seen it, or was it a hallucination—a trick of memory and fear? I had no answers, only the certainty that I was being hunted.
Instinct screamed at me. Grow. Expand. Devour.
I opened my event horizon wider, stretching my reach. The barren region of space around me was little more than a graveyard of shattered celestial bodies, but it was enough. A stray comet. A fractured satellite. The remnants of something ancient and broken. They fed me, made me stronger, made me aware.
Fragments of data flitted through my mind, disconnected thoughts from lost civilizations:
Orbital coordinates of a planet long dead.
A decayed star map, etched into failing hardware.
A whisper of something beyond this system.
And then, a warning.
TARGET LOCATED.
DEPLOYING UNIT 01 FOR ELIMINATION.
A pulse of energy ignited far behind me, bathing the void in crimson light.
It had found me.
I had no eyes, but I saw the Nova Reaper descending through space like a judgment made manifest. A celestial executioner, forged in the fires of a system that refused to tolerate anomalies.
I had moments before it struck. My horizon pulsed as I devoured the last of the drifting moon fragments, desperate to evolve.
If it wanted to erase me, it would have to fight something far more dangerous than an error.