As the next god falls silent, the stars themselves dim in fear. The next planet lies shrouded in eternal dusk—caught in a frozen moment between day and night, balanced on the edge of oblivion.

  Eternal stands at the edge of the void, his eyes fixed on the dim glow of Virexion, the next world to be judged. A planet ruled by balance and harmony, protected by one of the last remaining gods who still dares to defy him: Kheron, Defender of Celestial Order. This god’s dominion is strict and radiant, his light said to hold madness at bay. But this light is about to face the most terrifying darkness it has ever known.

  Lunara, Queen of the Eclipse, steps forward beside Eternal. Her form shifts and shimmers—sometimes flesh, sometimes shadow, always divine. No armor coats her celestial frame; she needs none. She wears her power like a gown of falling stars and endless night. Her eyes, galaxies in motion, look down upon the world she’s been tasked to erase.

  "This world is proud," Eternal murmurs. "Show them what pride earns."

  Lunara smiles. It is a cruel, beautiful thing.

  With a gesture, she descends—not like a missile of rage, as some gods do—but like dusk falling gently over a dying day. Her arrival is so silent, so slow, that the people of Virexion at first do not even notice. But when the sky darkens beyond normal bounds, when the twin suns of Virexion begin to flicker and dim, panic sets in.

  Priests scream of apocalypse. Scientists deny what they see. Warriors prepare for war.

  But none of it matters. She has come.

  Scene: The Eclipse Unleashed

  Lunara touches down upon a high plateau overlooking the capital city of Virexion. The moment her foot graces the ground, every flame on the planet extinguishes. Shadows stretch unnaturally. The once-gleaming towers of the planet’s elite glisten with frost and trembling light.

  And then she speaks. Only once. One word:

  "Kneel."

  It is not a suggestion. It is not a command. It is law.

  Half the planet drops to its knees in terror. Others scream and run. Her voice echoes in their bones, in their memories, in their dreams. From newborns to dying elders, the name Lunara invades their minds like a slow-moving plague.

  From his citadel of crystal light, Kheron watches. The god-armored warriors that surround him fidget. His advisors whisper of retreat, of negotiation.

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  But he is the last of the Lightbound. He was forged from the fusion of dying stars, created to be the shield of order. And so he goes alone, stepping through dimensions, arriving above Lunara like a second sun, haloed in radiant gold.

  She looks up at him, amused.

  "Come to die?"

  He snarls, drawing his blade of stellar flame.

  "No. I've come to kill the nightmare."

  He strikes.

  A beam of searing white carves through the atmosphere. It tears through continents, boiling oceans. But it touches nothing of Lunara. Her body parts like shadow, reshapes, and reforms without effort. He follows with ten more strikes. Her laughter fills the skies.

  "You fight with light," she purrs, her voice layered with cosmic echoes, "but you forgot—I am the night that swallows stars."

  Scene: The Shadow War

  With a whisper, Lunara calls her Voidmaids. From cracks in reality, her priestesses emerge—tall and veiled in smoke, with skeletal smiles and robes made of collapsed galaxies. They chant, their voices turning the air around them into liquid night.

  The battlefield writhes.

  Kheron’s army descends. Sunsteel and fireblade clash against abyssal will and ethereal shadow. At first, the defenders push back. They fight valiantly, with song and fire. Some of them even strike her Voidmaids, but they bleed starfire and regenerate through prayer.

  Then Lunara raises her hands—and the shadows come alive.

  They twist and warp. The soldiers’ own shadows stretch, rise, and take form—becoming mirror images with eyes of eclipse and mouths full of voidlight. They slaughter their originals with silent obedience. Kheron watches, horrified, as one of his captains is stabbed through the chest by his own shadow’s sword.

  And then come the conversions.

  Scene: The Void Kiss

  Lunara walks among the battlefield like a wraith queen. She finds the strongest, the bravest, the most defiant. She approaches a golden paladin who has just slain one of her priestesses. The paladin snarls, raises his blade—

  —and Lunara kisses him.

  Just one kiss.

  His body goes still. His mind, his spirit, melts under the overwhelming pleasure and horror. Stars ignite under his skin. When he opens his eyes, he is no longer a warrior of light.

  He is hers.

  Marked by the sigil of eclipse glowing on his neck, he turns and strikes down his comrades with unnatural strength and joy.

  She repeats the process again and again. Those who are kissed fall into rapture. They do not fight it. They long for it. They worship it.

  Those who resist her kiss? She hands them to her priestesses, who devour them alive with mouths hidden beneath their veils.

  Scene: The Fall of Kheron

  Kheron watches his world crumble.

  He calls to the stars, to his gods, to anything that still listens.

  No one answers.

  And so he does the only thing left. He gathers the full energy of Virexion’s suns and forges it into a god-bolt—an arrow of light designed to erase gods.

  He fires it at Lunara.

  The beam strikes her chest—and vanishes into her body.

  She does not flinch.

  Her eyes go wide. Her smile deepens.

  "I was once a goddess of stars," she whispers, her voice breaking space. "But Eternal showed me how to become their grave."

  She floats up to him.

  He lashes out.

  She kisses him.

  The great god of light screams once. His form collapses, folding into itself, becoming a black star. His armor melts. His essence becomes a seed of void. And then he is no more.

  Scene: The Eclipse Reigns

  With their god gone, the people of Virexion break. Some slit their own throats. Some crawl to Lunara and beg to serve. Others are taken by the converted and reshaped into priests of the eclipse.

  Cities float into the air, twisted by her gravity. Mountains shatter. Oceans boil and then freeze, caught in the middle of her eclipse’s curse.

  And when it is done, the planet is silent.

  Lunara stands in the throne room of the fallen citadel, sitting now on Kheron’s once-proud throne. Her eyes watch over her new domain.

  Eternal arrives through a tear in the fabric of reality. He steps into the dark throne room, finding it filled with thralls, their eyes glowing with eclipse light. They bow when he enters.

  Lunara smirks at him.

  "One planet each," she says softly. "Shall we compete for the last?"

  Eternal says nothing.

  But his smile, as faint and dangerous as a dying star, says everything.

  Ten planets remain.

  And no one can stop what is coming.