Earth-like planets, gas giants like Jupiter, interstellar matter—even the stars themselves had been swallowed, absorbed as components of the machine.
This was a world utterly ruled by mechanical order.
The scale of this mechanical metropolis was proportional to the scale of the universe itself.
The universe continued to expand without mercy, its growth racing at the speed of light, stretching across immeasurable eons. And just as there existed regions of space inhabited by human survivors, this world too expanded—its growth accelerating in tandem with the cosmos.
Such expansion should have been impossible for any technology born of humanity.No machine should have been capable of keeping pace with the universe itself.
And yet—it existed.
At its core lay a singularity born at the very moment of the universe's creation. From that point, space and time, stars and interstellar matter were drawn inward, consumed, and integrated—all becoming part of the machine.