The silence in the deep tomb was a living thing, a pressure of ancient, sleeping time. For days, Amira and her Eidolon team had been meticulously mapping the subterranean structure, a place that defied all known history. The link with Neb-Hathor, the warrior spirit, had become a familiar presence, a ghost of combat skill that now lived in her own muscles. But Amira knew he was just a gatekeeper. There was a deeper consciousness here, a more profound power sleeping in the stone.
She found its focus in the central burial chamber, before a sarcophagus carved not from granite, but from a single, massive, light-absorbing crystal. This time, she did not seek a warrior. She sought a mind. A priest. A knower of secrets.
She placed her palm on the cold, smooth surface and reached out with her will, not with a request, but with an offering of her own consciousness.
The connection was not a flood of memories, but a silent, terrifying fall into a star-filled abyss. She was in the presence of a mind so vast, so ancient, so utterly alien in its perspective that it had no name, only a title: the High Priest of the Falling Star. He did not show her the past. He showed her the now. The almost-now.
The vision was not a story. It was a scream.
She saw the sky over a land she did not recognize—a place of red earth and sprawling plains. The sky was not blue. It was a bruised, sickly purple, and it was tearing. It was a lesion in the fabric of reality, a bleeding wound, and from that wound, things began to fall.
They were not ships as she understood them. They were metallic, insect-like things, all barbed angles and predatory grace. They did not fly; they bled from the rift in space, their forms streamlined for a single purpose: predation.
Then the vision shifted, and she was looking down at a heavily fortified compound. She recognized the unique energy signature of a stellar nucleus reserve, one of the largest on the planet. The alien ships descended upon it, and their weapons were not explosions of fire and light. They were siphons. Beams of what looked like pure darkness lanced out, striking the crystalline storage units. And the crystals did not shatter. They went dark. Their internal, crimson light was leeched, devoured, drawn up into the waiting maws of the ships above.
They were not conquerors. They were not invaders. They were harvesters. And the Earth, with all its newfound power, was nothing but a field of ripe grain to them.
The vision shattered.
Amira gasped, stumbling back from the sarcophagus, her body trembling, a cold sweat drenching her clothes. The psychic whiplash was a physical blow. The High Priest had shown her the truth. A new, terrible player had just entered the game.
As if on cue, a klaxon began to blare from the surface, its shrill, urgent cry a shocking violation of the tomb's ancient silence. A moment later, the Colonel in charge of her military escort came running down the ramp, his face pale with shock.
"Dr. Khan! Global alert!" he yelled, his voice echoing in the vast chamber. "It's the LAAU! Their primary stellar nucleus reserve in South Africa... it's gone!"
Amira stared at him, her heart a block of ice in her chest.
"A fleet of unknown vessels appeared out of nowhere," the Colonel continued, his voice shaking slightly. "They didn't even fight. They just... drained it. The entire reserve, hundreds of tons of high-grade crystals, gone in under five minutes. They just took it and vanished."
Amira looked from the Colonel's terrified face to the dark, silent sarcophagus. The vision was not a warning of the future. It had been a live feed. And she was the only person on Earth who understood the true, horrifying nature of the vultures who had just descended from the void.