Mark Grayson merged into the sun's brilliance, like a stellar core plunged into a furnace, undergoing a stellar-level metamorphosis in silence.
Earth, temporarily bathed in the false light of tranquility, yet no one dared to relax their vigilance.
The atmosphere in the Earth GDA Headquarters Command Center was as heavy as lead.
A colossal holographic star map dominated the center, with the azure Earth resembling an isolated island amidst raging waves. Surrounding it were vast, dark-red areas signifying spatial structure anomalies and critically high Old One's Echo indices.
Like spreading cancerous tissue, it was extending across the Milky Way Galaxy's spiral arm at a heart-stopping pace.
Cecil stood before the star map, his back as straight as a spear, but the shadows under his eyes and the new gray hairs at his temples silently spoke of the immense pressure.
Debbie sat in a corner, clutching Nolan's standard-issue glove, her gaze firm yet tinged with deep sorrow.
Eve and Rudy were immersed in torrents of data, their Collapse Research Group having become the core brain of the Earth GDA.
Just then, Allen's first-hand news from the front lines arrived via an encrypted channel.
Immediately, a deluge of urgent messages erupted on the screen, swiftly translated by monitors using a language conversion system.
"Report! Deep Space Array Node Seven has lost contact! The last data transmitted before contact was lost… shows an exponential distortion in spatial curvature in that area, and observable shifts in physical constants! Consistent with… Law Collapse characteristics!"
A monitor's voice trembled slightly.
"The Solan Empire has issued a highest-level warning! Large-scale starship petrification has occurred in their border asteroid belt sector!"
"All organic crew members instantly converted into silicon-based crystals! Suspected to be due to high-concentration Old One's Law erosion!"
"Aethera Elder Council emergency communication!"
"Mental plague detected in the nebula surrounding their homeworld, Emerald Dream. A large number of their people have fallen into an un-rouseable collective nightmare, filled with… indescribable geometric structures and whispers!"
Each alarming piece of information was like a cold dagger, continuously piercing the air of the command center.
The cosmic collapse was no longer a theory, but a brutal, galaxy-spanning reality in progress.
Panic, like an invisible plague, spread within the Planetary Alliance. Trade stagnated, border conflicts intensified, and countless refugee fleets scurried like headless chickens between relatively safe star sectors.
"The Planetary Alliance High Council… is in an uproar."
Allen's voice came through the encrypted channel, his massive figure appearing on the secondary screen. In the background was the stark steel jungle of the Viltrum fleet. Trigg seemed to have been safely delivered, but Allen's face showed no relief.
"The warmongers demand to rally the fleet to eradicate the source of the contamination, the doves advocate for shrinking defenses, and the scientists are clamoring for more data… It's inefficient!"
"The Viltrum remnants, however, are acting swiftly, but their power can only establish defensive lines in the fringe star sectors, merely delaying the spread of the contamination."
"We can't wait any longer."
Cecil's voice was resolute.
"Allen, share the Earth GDA's collapse model and preliminary response plan with all civilizations willing to cooperate! We need… an alliance!"
The information Allen brought back and the Earth GDA's model were like a massive stone thrown into a chaotic mire, creating huge ripples and bringing a faint sense of cohesion.
In the face of absolute annihilation, suspicion and short-sightedness were temporarily suppressed.
Countless human and material resources were frantically mobilized.
For a time, they truly found a glimmer of hope.
The Imaginary Equation Project.
It was a project developed overnight by countless scientists across various planets, who spontaneously dedicated themselves to it.
It was ultimately decided that the Earth GDA would lead, concentrating the most brilliant theoretical physicists, mathematicians, cosmologists, and fragments of Titan theory provided by Allen.
Their goal was no longer to understand the Old One's power, but to predict and mark the precursors and weak points of Law Collapse.
Giant computational arrays hummed day and night, attempting to capture the mathematical loopholes in the chaotic data stream that led to shifts in physical constants and spatial distortions.
Eve was the soul of this project; her intuition and keen perception of anomalous energy repeatedly corrected deviations in the model.
The Law Anchor Project.
Led by the Planetary Alliance Scientific Research Council.
It brought together multi-civilizational elites, including Cybornite synthetics and Aethera psionic masters.
They attempted to use highly compressed, stable spacetime bubble technology to establish temporary order anchor points at the edge of collapse zones, like anchors dropped into a stormy sea, trying to slow the rate of Law Collapse erosion into reality.
Each deployment was like dancing on a knife's edge; failure meant the anchor itself would become a catalyst for collapse.
The Broken Spear Task Force.
Centered on Viltrum remnants, supported by the Solan Empire's heavy fleet.
Remotely commanded by Regent Trigg from a life support pod.
Their mission was not to directly attack the Old One's source, but to execute the most dangerous scorched-earth strategies and intelligence gathering.
At the forefront of contamination spread, they used high-energy weapons to forcibly destroy star systems about to be completely eroded, creating massive energy turbulence and material barriers, trading space for time.
At the same time, reconnaissance ships equipped with the strongest mental shielding and physical protection, like moths to a flame, delved into the edge of the contamination zone, collecting first-hand data on Old One's activity patterns and energy fluctuation characteristics. Every mission return was accompanied by heavy casualties and reports of mental contamination.
The Emerald Watch Network.
Led by the Aethera civilization.
Utilizing the Aetherans' powerful collective psionics and empathic talents to construct a mental early warning network covering multiple star sectors.
They were like sentinels of the cosmos, at the cost of their own minds, keenly perceiving the intensity and directional changes of the Old One's whispers, providing valuable warning time for other projects.
Many Aethera Elders fell into permanent mental withering due to prolonged exposure to the edge of mental contamination.
Cooperation was fraught with difficulties.
Technical barriers, cultural differences, resource competition, fear of sacrifice…
Like invisible thorns, they hindered the Alliance's progress.
But after Debbie, in her capacity as Nolan's widow and Earth's representative, delivered an interstellar speech filled with grief and defiance, a tragic consensus gradually formed.
Survival superseded all divisions.
Earth, a planet once considered a fringe cradle, unexpectedly became one of the Alliance's important information hubs and spiritual symbols due to its relatively stable environment and the Earth GDA's cutting-edge research.
However, self-salvation efforts seemed so minuscule in the face of cosmic-scale collapse. The dark-red contaminated areas continued to expand, and star sectors, one by one, extinguished like candles, plunging into eternal darkness and madness. The Alliance's actions were more like injecting painkillers into a dying patient, unable to stop the rot originating from the very foundations of the universe.
Until that day.
The alarms at the Imaginary Equation Project Center reached an unprecedented, piercing intensity!
On the massive main screen, in an ancient star cluster region located at the edge of the Milky Way Galaxy's Perseus Arm, designated NGC-1277, the mathematical model completely collapsed.
The curves representing spatial curvature and physical constants turned into wildly distorted, unanalyzable gibberish!
Almost simultaneously!
The Emerald Watch Network's psychic nodes were struck as if by an invisible giant hammer!
Over a third of the Aethera sentinels instantly fell into brain death, and the information relayed by the survivors consisted only of endless, soul-freezing fragments of terror.
And a constantly repeating, true name syllable, indescribable by any known language!
The last reconnaissance squad dispatched by the Broken Spear Fleet to the edge of that star sector transmitted one final, incomplete image before losing contact.
In the image, at the core of the NGC-1277 star cluster, dozens of stars were… extinguishing in a manner that defied all laws of physics.
It wasn't an explosion, but rather as if all light and heat had been sucked dry by an invisible, colossal maw, instantly collapsing, dimming, and turning into cold, dead cosmic husks.
At the center of these extinguished stars, a colossal structure, whose form defied description, composed of pure non-Euclidean geometric shadows, was forming.
It seemed to exist within the folds of space, yet simultaneously within the depths of all observers' minds.
Merely watching this footage caused several highly psychologically resilient operators in the command center to instantly vomit, faint, and suffer permanent mental trauma.
Even more terrifying, at the center of that distorted structure, a massive eye, formed of swirling galactic dust and solidified mad will, slowly opened, imbued with a cold indifference to all existence!
That was Tavier At Umr.
The Outer God among the Old Ones who presided over doorways, paths, and dimensional distortions.
His first, and most powerful, servant and avatar, had been fully gestated in the collapsing cosmic incubator amidst the desperate struggles of countless civilizations!
His gaze swept across the galaxy.
It was not a physical act of sight, but a declaration and erosion at a fundamental level of law.
All beings that received this gaze, whether carbon-based life, silicon-based life, energy beings, or synthetic intelligences, heard the same irresistible, blasphemous whisper in the depths of their souls.
"I am the Door, I am the Path… All things return to one, ultimately to nothingness…"
With the arrival of this whisper, the expansion rate of all dark-red contaminated areas marked on the star map suddenly increased severalfold! The "Law Anchors" that had barely been maintained disintegrated in violent spatial tremors! More than half of the "Broken Spear" fleet that had ventured into the contamination zone instantly lost signal! The Aethera "Emerald Watch" network was filled with lamentations!
The Old One God had descended!
His very existence was a declaration of accelerated cosmic collapse!
The faint light of hope the Alliance had desperately ignited, under the gaze of this abyssal eye, flickered precariously like a candle in the wind!
Inside the Earth GDA Command Center, there was a deathly silence.
Cecil's fists were white, and Eve's face was ashen, her eyes filled with the helplessness of facing the absolute unknown.
The universe's doomsday clock, in the whisper of the Old God, had been advanced countless times.
--+--
T/N: While I am an inexperienced Translator, I have a Patreon! While it may seem empty as of now, webnovel will get 2 Chapters Every Day, and advanced chapters will be uploaded on Patreon.
It may not seem worth it now, but maybe in the future. Who knows!
patreon.com/TripleCrown07
If you guys wanna check it out.