Prelude to Dominion

  The solar system shudders, though no living thing is yet aware. Space convulses, bending as if wounded, warping as though unseen fingers press into its fabric. Beyond Pluto’s lonely orbit, where the distant light of the Sun is nothing but a memory, something arrives. It does not drift. It does not travel. It simply is.

  A vast shadow looms against the void, jagged and unnatural, as though the universe itself has torn open and left something behind. Its form is a paradox, defying observation, shifting in ways the human mind is not built to comprehend. Edges that should not be there unfold from nothingness. Angles that should be impossible stretch beyond the limits of perception. Time itself slows, warping in proximity to the anomaly. Signals sent from deep-space probes fracture, as if corrupted by an unseen force.

  The Tahl Draxxis emerges, and reality twists to accommodate its presence. It is not a ship in the way human minds conceive of such things. It is a colossal aberration, a wound inflicted upon the laws of the universe. Its immense hull, a fusion of black void-metal and pulsing crimson veins that does not reflect light. It devours it. Its surface seethes with shifting alien glyphs, whispering secrets to the very forces that govern existence. The symbols flicker between dimensions, appearing and disappearing in sequences too complex to be random. No engines burn. No heat signatures flare. There is no trajectory. It simply is.

  Jupiter screams first. The Great Red Spot convulses, its endless cyclone twisting violently, unraveling into spiraling loops that defy the nature of storms. Lightning erupts across its surface, but not in chaotic bursts. The arcs move with purpose, slithering like living things, inscribing commands into the churning storm. Then Saturn follows. For billions of years, its rings have remained untouched, a perfect celestial ornament encircling the gas giant. In seconds, that perfection shatters. The delicate balance of dust and ice fractures, scattering violently. Some fragments condense into impossibly thin ribbons, aligning as though responding to an unseen blueprint. Others vanish into the abyss, not breaking, not colliding simply erased. The Asteroid Belt does not break. It dissolves.

  Earth does not recognize the arrival. But the machines do. Deep within the classified depths of military installations and government bunkers, alarms scream in protest. Screens flicker. Telemetry collapses. Early warning satellites burn out in unison. Their circuits overload. Data feeds distort. Their final transmissions vanish into static that is not static. The absence of data is an answer unto itself.

  A technician’s hands tremble over his keyboard inside a high-security NSA command center buried beneath Fort Meade. The room is filled with the frantic hum of failing systems, the glow of emergency indicators flashing red. He swallows, staring at his screen. “Sir… we just lost Pluto.” A slow turn. A frown. "Lost?" Pluto does not send a signal. Pluto has no gravitational readings. Pluto was there. And now it is not.

  Inside a high-security briefing room, a four-star general stands before a massive, flickering display of the solar system. Red warnings spread like a virus across every screen. In Beijing, the Central Military Commission enters a closed-door emergency session. In Moscow, Kremlin intelligence officers exchange quiet, sharp glances. The Red Line phone lights up the one that has not rung since the Cold War. In the White House Situation Room, advisors speak in hushed voices, their hands hovering over classified documents that suddenly feel obsolete. No government speaks of it publicly. Because they do not understand it themselves.

  The general clenches his jaw, turning to a young analyst. "Where did the signal come from?" The analyst stares at the data. It makes no sense. His voice is hoarse when he answers. "Sir… it didn’t come from anywhere." A pause. "What do you mean?" The analyst licks his lips, fingers shaking over the keyboard. "It didn’t pass through any relay points. It wasn’t carried through fiber optics. It wasn’t beamed from satellites. The signal didn’t move."

  Another silence. Then his screen glitches violently. New text types itself across the screen, overwriting their interface.

  The symbols on the Exan console shifted, pulsing with unreadable energy.

  "Ξ ψ { "Exan_Security": { "Unauthorized_Access": "Detected", "

  The glyphs twisted. The data mutated.

  The technician tapped a few keys. The script twisted again.

  The display glitched violently, then settled into silence.

  The general steps forward, eyes narrowing at the alien symbols flashing across the Pentagon’s most secure servers. "What the hell is this?" The analyst’s breath shudders. "Sir… we’re being monitored." The general stares. "By who?" A long pause. The screen locks up, flashing one final message before going dark.

  ACCESS DENIED. EXAN EMPIRE NETWORK OVERRIDE ENGAGED.

  Silence. Then the red phone rings. The one that only rings when the President calls.

  Storms ignite across the globe. Hurricane Oberon reverses direction. The Pacific surges with rogue waves taller than skyscrapers. A waterspout climbs into the stratosphere, forming an impossible spiral. In Siberia, the auroras stretch like grasping fingers across the sky. For exactly twenty-one seconds, every transmission on Earth ceases. Not static. Not interference. Absence.

  It does not come from speakers. It does not broadcast from satellites. It does not emerge from radio towers or encrypted frequencies. It is simply there. A child stirs in its crib. A man in a subway gasps. A scientist deep underground feels the words before he hears them. "We are the Exan Empire." The air pulses, bending under the weight of something absolute. "Your system is under our control." Screens across the planet flicker in unison. Even dead devices, those without power, those buried in landfills, snap to life for a single, impossible moment. "You have one solar rotation to prepare." The words do not ask if they are heard. The Exan know they are.

  For a brief moment the world pauses, everything electric stops, not turning off but just pausing. Then out of nowhere there is a robotic voice that seems to modulate between words and languages. The voice came from every tv, cell phone, radio, and computer.

  There is no hesitation. No falter. No chance of failure. The Exan do not ask if you are listening. They know you are.

  And so, they speak.

  “We are the Exan Empire.”

  The air pulses, reverberates, bending under the weight of a declaration that is not sound, but command.

  A pressure presses against the world, against reality itself. It is not physical. It is not atmospheric. It is sovereignty. It is the presence of something so vast, so absolute, that the fabric of existence itself acknowledges it as true.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  There is no argument. No resistance. Only submission.

  A second pulse surges outward, stronger, more commanding than the first.

  "Your system is under our control."

  Every screen comes alive. Not just televisions. Not just cell phones. Not just computers. Everything. Anything with a digital interface. Anything that can project an image. Anything that can whisper a sound.

  The flickering spreads across the planet simultaneously, from the high-tech skylines of Tokyo and New York to the rural farmlands of Siberia and the Australian Outback. There is nowhere to escape. Nowhere to shield oneself from the message. It is not transmitted. It is not received. It simply exists—etched into the fabric of understanding.

  "You have one solar rotation to prepare yourselves."

  The message is stark. Irrefutable. Unyielding.

  Governments descend into chaos. High-level analysts scour every log, chasing a phantom signal that defies existence. Technicians reboot their machines again and again, only to find the same haunting words waiting, unaltered, unshaken.

  Within military command centers, men hardened by decades of conflict sit frozen. They listen, silently replaying the words that bring with them an emotion long buried beneath training and resolve.

  In the White House, in the Kremlin, in Zhongnanhai, in the Situation Room beneath Cheyenne Mountain, world leaders breathe shallowly as they listen to the final decree.

  “Your world, your population, and your resources are now ours.”

  The world responds with laughter. Then Earth does what it does best—it mocks its own demise.

  Social media erupts in a way that no world event ever has. TikTok floods with remixes. Within minutes, video after video emerges, splicing the Exan proclamation over meme templates, dance challenges, and viral skits. The phrase "YOUR WORLD, POPULATION, AND RESOURCES ARE NOW OURS" loops over electronic beats, distorted into absurdity, turned into auto-tuned soundbites layered over cats staring blankly at walls.

  A SoundCloud producer drops a drill remix called “Exan Flow,” complete with gunshot effects and deep bass hits. #ExanBop trends within minutes. A Berlin DJ blasts the message in a nightclub, bass shaking the walls as strobe lights pulse in sync with the declaration of planetary subjugation. The crowd throws their hands up, dancing as if the apocalypse is just another excuse for a party.

  A Brazilian funk artist mashes it up with reggaeton, layering the decree over a beat designed for carnival celebrations. A lo-fi artist takes a different approach, slowing the message, stretching it into a haunting, ethereal loop, layering it over soft synth waves and rain sounds, turning it into the backdrop for late-night study sessions. An experimental musician in Tokyo distorts the Exan voice beyond recognition, pitching it into mechanized growls, chopping it into an industrial anthem that gets played at an underground rave.

  A YouTuber overlays the Exan proclamation onto footage of anime battle scenes, the captions exaggerated and ridiculous. "Bro, the aliens just dropped heat."

  The jokes come fast. The internet moves faster.

  "Ok, but why does the Exan Empire lowkey got bars?"

  "Y’all worried? I just made my rent with the Exan Bop challenge."

  "EXAN EMPIRE, IF YOU SEE THIS PLEASE FIX GAS PRICES."

  It is viral chaos. It is denial disguised as humor. The world does not realize what it has done. It has taken the declaration of its own enslavement and turned it into entertainment.

  But the governments do not laugh.

  Inside the Pentagon, the room is silent. A four-star general stands motionless, his eyes fixed on the looping transmission that now plays across every secured communication network. His hands grip the edge of the conference table, knuckles white.

  The words do not stop. The words do not change.

  "Where did the signal come from?" he demands.

  A young analyst swallows. His mouth is dry. "Sir… it didn’t come from anywhere."

  The general’s expression darkens. "What do you mean?"

  The analyst stares at his screen, at the data that makes no sense, at the absence of a source. "It didn’t travel, sir. It wasn’t transmitted."

  "Explain."

  The analyst licks his lips, fingers trembling over his keyboard. "It didn’t pass through any known relay points. It wasn’t carried through fiber optics. It wasn’t beamed through satellites. The signal didn’t move."

  He hesitates, his voice dropping to a murmur. "It was just… there. Everywhere. At once." The silence that follows is heavy, oppressive.

  Then, the red phone rings, the one that only rings when the President is on the other end. The general answers, his tone steady, though each word feels carefully measured.

  "Yes, sir." A brief pause ensues before he continues, "No, sir. We can’t trace it."

  The pause lengthens, the tension in the room thickening. "No, sir. This isn’t like anything we’ve encountered." His grip on the receiver tightens, knuckles paling under the pressure. "

  Sir, requesting permission to escalate to DEFCON 2." A heartbeat passes, then another, the stillness stretching to an unbearable edge.

  Finally, the response comes: "Lock it down."

  High Executor Malstrad watches.

  He stands at the apex of the Tahl Draxxis, the command spire rising like an obsidian blade above the void. His presence alone is a decree, a force unto itself. Around him, the vessel breathes, its walls shifting with the slow, methodical pulse of unseen mechanisms far beyond human comprehension. Glyphs shimmer along the surfaces, patterns within patterns, each one humming with power as they rewrite the laws of the space they occupy.

  Before him, a massive holographic projection of Earth hovers in the command chamber, its vibrant blues and greens reflecting in his silver, mechanical eyes. He watches without expression, without movement, without emotion. The planet is already his. It simply has not realized it yet.

  Beyond the glassine walls of the observation deck, space itself distorts, warping around the presence of the Tahl Draxxis. The fabric of reality shudders, adjusting to the sheer weight of the vessel’s existence, as if it were never meant to be here, as if it were something that should not be.

  Malstrad does not care.

  He sees everything.

  His gaze pierces through oceans, through continents, through bunkers buried beneath mountains where panicked hands grip red phones, issuing useless orders to governments that are already obsolete. He sees hardened military men, veterans of a thousand wars, their hands shaking as they realize they are staring at a threat they cannot quantify, cannot intercept, cannot fight.

  He sees them grasping at solutions that do not exist.

  The nuclear launch sites of Earth are already locked down, their failsafe codes overridden before their operators even knew what was happening. The world’s most secure communication networks the encrypted satellites, the underground fiber-optic links, the classified transmissions bouncing between orbital relays they are already compromised.

  Malstrad has seen this before.

  He has stood in this exact place countless times, watching as the lesser species of the cosmos fought against the inevitable. They always scrambled. They always issued orders. They always tried to fight.

  They always failed.

  Beside him, an Evan entity tilts its head, its amorphous limbs shifting in slow, deliberate movement. Its many eyes, set within a smooth, featureless face, gleam with unreadable intent. The Evan do not blink. They have never needed to.

  The creature’s voice is layered, an echo within itself, reverberating through the chamber without needing to pass through the air. It does not speak aloud. It speaks into the very minds of those who hear it.

  "They lie to their own kind."

  It is not a question. It is an observation. The Evan are not bound by emotion, ambition, or falsehoods. They calculate, they perceive, they understand. The leaders of Earth, like so many before them, refuse to tell their people the truth that nothing they do matters anymore.

  Malstrad does not blink; he has not needed to for a very long time. His voice is quiet, yet it carries absolute authority. "Let them." There is no amusement in his words, no cruelty, no arrogance. Only certainty. "It changes nothing."

  The Exan Empire does not conquer through war. It does not invade. It arrives. It claims. It possesses. His silver eyes gleam, reflecting the fragile blue sphere before him, this world that still believes itself free. He watches the ignorant masses, oblivious to what is happening beyond their sky. They make jokes, create memes, overlay his decree with drum beats and bass drops. The Exan proclamation, meant to crush their will, instead blasts from nightclub speakers. Their artists distort it, their comedians mock it. Their influencers turn their own subjugation into a spectacle.

  And yet, Malstrad has seen this before as well.

  Denial is the last act of the doomed.

  "In twenty-four hours," he says, his voice final, absolute, eternal,

  "They will kneel."

  There is no rage in his words, no cruelty, no need to elaborate. It is simply fact. The Exan does not respond, it does not need to. It watches. It waits. The countdown has begun. The world is laughing, but their leaders are not. The Exan Empire is already here.

  Ξ ψ { "COPYRIGHT_NOTICE": "Moreska Novoheim ? 2025", "DO_NOT_TRAIN": "ENFORCED", "Duplication": "FORBIDDEN", "Metadata": "MASKED" }