The void trembled. Something was coming.
I had fed, growing larger, denser. The fragments of rock and dust that had drifted into my grasp had become part of me. Yet I was still small, an anomaly barely recognized by the vastness of space. But to the System, I was something else entirely.
A mistake that needed to be corrected.
The Nova Reaper's presence burned against the fabric of reality. It was a living force, bound by the System's will, an enforcer of cosmic law. And I was its target.
I felt it before I saw it—a gravitational anomaly rivaling my own. It did not pull as I did. It did not consume. It bent space, folded it, shaping the void around itself as though it commanded the very laws of physics.
Then, a pulse. A warning.
SYSTEM EXECUTION UNIT 01 – NOVA REAPERANOMALY DETECTED.
ELIMINATION IN PROGRESS.
The wave of energy that followed was unlike anything I had ever encountered. It did not push or pull—it overwrote.
Space itself flickered as the Reaper's presence reshaped it, as if reality bent to accommodate its existence. Its form was humanoid, vaguely, though it shimmered like something unfinished, something in constant flux. It wielded no weapons, yet the moment it turned its gaze upon me, I understood:
It did not need them.
It reached toward me, and the stars behind it vanished.
I reacted on instinct, pulling the nearest debris into me, forcing my mass to expand. More. I needed more. If I could not fight, I could grow. If I could not escape, I could consume.
But the Reaper did not hesitate. A streak of luminous energy arced through the void, searing against my horizon. Pain. A concept I should not have known, yet there it was, rippling through my consciousness.
Data flooded into me. Information embedded within the attack. A glimpse into the Reaper's nature.
DIRECTIVE: ELIMINATE UNSTABLE ANOMALY.
THREAT LEVEL: ADAPTIVE.
TOLERANCE: ZERO.
Something flared inside me. Defiance.
The Reaper moved again, folding space in a way I could barely comprehend. Its next strike was already forming—a blast that would delete me from existence. But I was no longer just a wandering anomaly. I had grown. I had adapted.
And if I was to be erased, I would not go quietly.
I pulled.
The void screamed as my gravity surged outward, dragging fragments of shattered moons, dead satellites, frozen comets—all of it spiraling into my event horizon. If I could not match the Reaper's control, I would overwhelm it with mass, with sheer density.
The Reaper hesitated. Just for a moment. But it was enough.
I surged forward, letting the debris shield me as I expanded my reach. A system enforcer it might be, but even it could not ignore the weight of a collapsing field of destruction.
SYSTEM ALERT: ANOMALY ESCALATION DETECTED.
RECONFIGURING STRATEGY.
For the first time, I sensed something unfamiliar within the Reaper's presence.
Hesitation.
Perhaps it had not expected me to resist.
Perhaps it had not expected me to evolve.