In the universe of 001, the Zerg Queen awoke from a deep slumber forced upon her by the blinding pulse of the Oracle Drive.
Although she was quick to evade the light, it attacked her through her karmic link with Lex.
She cocooned her injured body in a living chrysalis in the hive core, suspending it in a vat of regenerative biomass.
Using cosmic energy, she slowly regenerated herself. For ages, she lay there, her bones knitting together, her carapace reforming, and her mind slowly stitching itself back together from the brink of cosmic oblivion.
She had survived only because of her bond with Lex and her ability to enter the Cosmic Door Zone at the right time.
After thousands of years, she finally woke up.
Immediately, her consciousness spread and scanned the planetary hive mind.
After the scan, her mind swept through the remains of what was once a cosmic swarm. Only seven broodmothers responded.
"Where are my soldiers?" she screeched, her thoughts ripping through the hive's remains.
Silence. No one answered her mental question.
Seven surviving brood mothers stood in a ragged line before her. Five of them drooled uncontrollably, ichor leaking from their cracked mandibles.
Their limbs shook from fear, and starvation so deep it bordered on madness.
And yet, the moment they felt the full force of her awakening. One by one, they collapsed to their knees, slow and reverent, their bodies overwhelmed by her presence.
Their once all-consuming hunger was smothered beneath the crushing weight of her will. She was awake now. Her command was law.
Without saying a word or asking where the others were, the Queen shot out a dark tentacle with the speed and ferocity of lightning.
It struck one of the brood mothers in her dark, cracked carapace. The creature let out a strangled hiss, but didn't resist. She knew better.
A surge of vitality moved through the tentacle and into the queen's body, especially her brain.
Then, the Queen tore into the Broodmother's memories, and violent, chaotic scenes soaked in blood and betrayal flashed through her mind.
Once, the swarm numbered in the hundreds of millions, with thousands of brood mothers.
But now, seventy percent of the broodmothers and all those below them had been incinerated in an instant by the Oracle Drive's cosmic light through the karmic link.
The rest: Those who survived turned on each other.
Driven by madness, hunger, and instinct, the survivors devoured their sisters one by one until only seven remained.
They consumed the flesh, essence, and power of their fallen kin. They were no longer ordinary broodmothers—they had transcended.
Each of them now possessed the combat prowess of the fallen Supreme of this nascent universe. Their combat power alone, without fancy techniques, rivaled that of Vorex and the ancient robot.
The Queen withdrew from the memory. Her eyes were still closed, but her rage was fully awake.
The hive had not survived. It had evolved, and she sensed that some of them were trying to escape her control by surpassing her limits while she slept.
Without hesitation, the Queen gave a silent, absolute mental command.
Three of the wounded brood mothers twitched. No resistance. No questions. Though they had shown signs of independence, they could not override her control.
With a shriek that shook the hive walls, they tore into themselves. They ripped their flesh, cracked their bones, and willingly spilled their essence.
The hive's fleshy ground pulsed as their flesh liquefied and mingled with their blood, creating luminous, golden pools of raw evolutionary energy.
She raised her claws.
The hive pulsed in sync with her will as she guided the boiling, luminous, living essence into the remaining four.
The moment the essence touched them, they convulsed violently. Their bodies cracked, twisted, and reshaped under the force of evolution.
Blinding light flooded the chamber, drowning all detail in its raw, searing brilliance.
Their carapaces split open. Muscle and chitin tore and reknit in real time. Legs fused. Spines stretched skyward. Mandibles receded and were replaced by armored jaws and razor-sharp facial ridges.
The transformation was not painful. It was exaltation.
When the light faded, the four stood tall before their queen, not as beasts but as towering humanoid warriors.
Each one elegant. Each one terrifying. Each one radiated a power that warped gravity itself.
Their auras surged outward, bending space and shaking the hive walls.
They were no longer brood mothers.
They were the four Heavenly Zerg guards.
Each one surpassed the fallen Supremes that once ruled the stars.
The Queen's will pulsed again. No words were spoken.
The four knelt and accepted her mental command. Then, they each launched toward a different quadrant of the universe.
••••
On a moderately sized planet, in the outer zones of a large city, a classroom buzzed with the soft hum of holograms.
Students sat in neat rows while their teacher, a woman in her mid-thirties, stood in front of a glowing holo-board displaying an assortment of ancient and modern starships.
"It's been thousands of years since the Silence of the Supremes," she said in a calm but firm voice that echoed slightly in the high-tech classroom.
"Since then, the universe has known nothing but war. Countless factions, great and small, have fought to become the next dominant cosmic empire—to take the place once held by the fallen Vereti Empire."
She moved slowly between the rows with her hands clasped behind her back.
She paused here and there to answer a student's whispered question or correct a mispronounced system name.
But then, she stopped when she noticed a boy near the window wasn't paying attention.
His gaze was fixed on the sky, his face slowly contorting in confusion and something else.
"Is there something out there more fascinating than the collapse of a civilization that harnessed supermassive black holes?" the teacher asked, her tone both playful and lightly scolding.
The boy didn't respond verbally. Instead, he lifted his trembling finger and pointed toward the sky outside the dome.
His mouth opened, but no sound came out.
The teacher's brow furrowed. Curious, she crossed to the window.
"Let me see what's got him so shaken," she thought, brushing past the rows of wide-eyed children.
More students turned their heads. Some crowded closer to the window.
"Is that a meteor?" one boy asked, squinting.
"Don't worry," the girl said with a bright smile, completely sure of herself. "The dome is super strong! Nothing from space can break through it. And if it's bad guys, the Space Army will stop them like always!"
But even as she spoke, the object in the sky grew larger—too large and too fast. The room fell silent. Panic began to creep in, like static in the air.
The teacher squinted, her breath catching in her throat.
"That's not a meteor," she whispered. Then, her voice breaking, she said louder, "That's a Cosmic Beast!"
Gasps rippled through the class. Some students stood up. Others ducked instinctively, as if that would help.
The teacher turned her gaze downward through the window. Below, people in the city streets had already taken notice.
They tilted their heads upward. Cars screeched to a halt. The towering figure in the sky loomed ever closer—a vast, alien humanoid shape descending like a god of war.
It was getting closer to the moon with each passing second.
Meanwhile, at the Moon Station... Alarms blared. Red lights spun. The command center wain chaos.
Inside the monitoring room, soldiers wearing reinforced mechanized suits rushed to their stations.
Massive orbital laser arrays began to rotate toward the threat.
"Why didn't we receive a report from any of the neighboring kingdoms?!" barked the station commander, his voice sharp with disbelief.
"We don't know, sir!" a soldier shouted from behind him, his voice muffled by his layered battle armor. "No comms, no warning. It just appeared!"
"Ready the laser cannon!" the commander ordered.
"We're locked and primed, sir," replied a soldier seated at the targeting console.
His eyes were fixed on the feed where the colossal figure now filled the screen.
"Fire! Now."
The button was pressed. A deep, thunderous vibration ripped through the station.
The massive cannon fired a blinding white beam—pure condensed energy—slicing through the void and lighting up the starry night sky.
The sound of it echoed down to the planet itself, a booming signal of retaliation.
Back at the School. "They fired! The laser cannon!" shouted a student, his voice trembling with excitement.
The beam struck the figure dead-on, illuminating the void and turning night into artificial day.
For a moment, awe replaced fear in the classroom.
"So cool! So powerful," one student whispered, eyes wide with wonder.
"I want to join the Space Army," said another student, clutching his piloting trainee badge with renewed pride. "Someday, I'll defend the planet, too."
But the teacher's eyes never left the sky.
Back on the moon station, the soldier who had launched the shot said, "Sir, the firing period will end in thirty seconds. Should I dispatch retrieval ships to collect the Cosmic Beast's corpse?"
The commander nodded stiffly, staring at the display.
But then, exactly thirty seconds later, the room changed. The figure was still there. Untouched. Unfazed. It floated ever closer, its massive form eclipsing the stars behind it.
A choking silence fell over the command center.
"Fire again!" the commander barked.
He knew it wouldn't accomplish much now, but he still had to do something.
"Sir, the cooldown cycle hasn't finished!" the soldier stammered.
"JUST FIRE THE DAMN THING!!!" the commander roared, slamming his fist on the console. "Do you think we have the luxury of waiting?"
The soldier hesitated for a moment, then pressed the button.
Another blast. Another searing beam of concentrated energy thundered through the void and struck the figure in the chest.
This time, the creature reacted.
Its voice echoed through space itself; low, guttural, soaked in ancient, bottomless contempt.
"Pitiful, inferior creatures… You dare attack me with such feeble weapons?" it snarled.
"How many times must this pattern repeat? They wail, they strike, they believe it matters. I tire of this charade. Perhaps I should end it quickly—can't have the other three stealing all the glory." The heavenly zerg guard thought.
Inside the Moon Command Center, a soldier whispered, barely audible, "Sir, the Cosmic Beast just spoke."
"What did it say?" the commander demanded, his eyes narrowing.
The soldier swallowed. "I think it is angrier."
Every head in the room slowly turned to look at one another. A cold sweat broke out on their backs.
No one spoke. They didn't need to, the horror was clearly written on every face.
The commander stood still for several second. Then, with grim resolve, he turned to the communications panel.
"How long till it reaches us?" He said.
"Three minutes sir." replied the soldier.
"Patch me through to the surface," he said, voice steady but empty. "It's time they know what we are truly facing."
On the Planet Below, all across the Kaldrin Kingdom, holo-screens blinked and shifted.
In schools, on training fields, in clubs, in homes, even in the palace of the kingdom, every channel flickered to the same broadcast.
The image of the commander of Moon Station Alpha flickered to life, lit only by the red glow of the station's emergency panels behind him.
"Citizens of the Kaldrin Kingdom, this is Commander Arven Khelt of Moon Station Alpha," he began, his voice steady and his eyes hollow.
"If you're hearing this, then you've already seen it: The Cosmic Beast."
"We struck it with everything we had—twice. Our most powerful weapon, the pride of our planetary defense, did nothing."
"Our scans confirm what our eyes refuse to accept: This is beyond our control. Beyond our making and beyond our understanding. This isn't war. This is the end."
There was a pause. His breath caught.
"It's been an honor. Thank you for giving me the chance to—"
"SIR! It disappeared!" a soldier screamed, cutting through the broadcast like a blade through silence.
The commander snapped his head around, but it was already too late.
On the Surface, Across the planet, screens went dark. Then screams followed.
People immediately turned their eyes to the sky. They saw a massive, dark tentacle coiled around the moon.
It gripped the lunar station as a dying man clutches his chest: tightly, violently, and unstoppably.
For a moment, time stood still. Then came the second tentacle. It struck the planet with impossible speed. It didn't destroy the continents, but it drained them of all vitality.
In an instant, the green of Kaldrin faded to gray. Oceans evaporated entirely. Cities turned to brittle dust.
Every living thing; every tree, animal, child, and soldierere reduced to a husk.
No screams were heard. There was no time. Only silence remained, the kind that follows when a god decides a world no longer matters.
Then, the tentacles uncoiled from the moon. Only the dried husks of the commander and his soldiers were left behind
The Heavenly Zerg guard—Rakka—shrank into a smaller form. "Destroying them like this is too inefficient," she thought.
She was not alone in this realization. The other three guards felt it, too. At this rate, it would take millions, perhaps billions, of years to purge the universe of life.
"No wonder the Queen Mother deployed the Swarm. Yes, the Swarm. I can use that."
Rakka seized the thought and acted. Immediately, she began weaving a hive mind.
Three years passed.
With the vitality harvested from hundreds of thousands of planets, Rakka birthed hundred Brood Mothers.
From them emerged countless Zerg generals and soldiers, bred in the depths of the hive mind's pulsing core.
Now, they floated in formation—an armada of living nightmares—hovering in silence above the hive mind, awaiting her command.
Rakka ascended above them, the center of a black star of death. She opened her maw and unleashed a screech that echoed through the void.
The swarm dispersed, fanning out into the cosmos like a plague set free.