Luminous Plauge

"LUMINOUS PLAGUE"

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PROLOGUE:



They found the first one floating in the wreckage.



A body—not a body—too perfect to be real. Its skin held the pallor of dead stars, its hair a nebula frozen in time. The Olgeran boarding party had been trained for corpses, for radiation scars, for the stench of void-rot.



They were not trained for beauty.



Commander Darr watched as his soldier reached out, gloved claws trembling. The moment flesh brushed light—



The man screamed.



Not in pain.



In rapture.



Darr’s comms erupted. Vythex scholars babbling prophecy. Zenth drones humming in unison. His own men, weeping.



And then—



The corpse opened its eyes.



Gold. Liquid gold.



Its lips parted, and the sound that came out was not a word, not a scream, but a drug.



Darr’s knees hit the deck. His mind unraveled in colors he had no name for.



Later, when the Triad burned the ship and scrubbed the records, they would call it "The Luminous Plague."



But Darr knew the truth.



Gods were real.



And they were contagious.



Years will go and kirk the soon to be king of Olregan, will discover the horror of gods and the distruction that they bring, the illumunios beings.





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