The Starlord Imperator's fortress shuddered. On the main viewscreen of his command deck, a dozen of his most elite commanders stared in dumbfounded horror. Their leader, a being of pure plasma and cosmic dust, was vibrating with a silent, furious energy.
"Impossible," one of them finally whispered.
"The Ebon Nova Blast… it's a universe-ender. No living thing can absorb it."
The Imperator's voice, no longer a booming roar but a guttural hiss, filled the deck. "He's not a living thing. He's a parasite, a leech who preys on power." His ethereal form coalesced into a more solid, humanoid shape, two miniature galaxies swirling where his eyes should be. "He will learn that my power is not a meal to be consumed, but a fire that burns all it touches."
Outside, I held the concentrated energy of his attack in my palm. It pulsed with a violent heat, a self-aware force of destruction. But I had faced and defeated beings who were entire universes in and of themselves. This was just a firecracker.
"Your fire is weak," I said, my voice now carrying a resonance that shook the stars around us. "It's the fire of a child playing with matches."
I clutched my hand into a fist, crushing the energy into a marble-sized sphere. Then, with a casual flick of my wrist, I launched it back at him. The sphere didn't travel like a normal projectile. It was a spear of pure potential, a single point of causality that sped faster than light.
It struck the massive fortress. But it didn't explode. It began to unravel the structure. The outer hull, the internal systems, the very atoms of the planetoid began to turn into pure, undifferentiated energy, which then flowed toward me, as if drawn by an invisible current.
The Imperator's voice screamed in the void.
"What have you done?!"
"I'm tasting you," I replied, a smirk on my face. "I'm consuming your power at its source. Arrogance has a bitter aftertaste, doesn't it?"
From within the dissolving fortress, the Imperator burst out, a supernova of rage and desperation. He was no longer a being of form and structure, but a chaotic storm of cosmic force. He lashed out, sending tendrils of pure energy to ensnare me, to crush me, to rip me apart molecule by molecule.
But he was fighting with his fear, not his strength.
I reached out, and with a single gesture, I bent the very fabric of his attack. The chaotic storm of energy became an ordered spiral, a beautiful helix of light. And I began to absorb it.
The process was slow, methodical, and utterly humiliating for him. I felt the rush of his raw power, the knowledge of his conquests, the emptiness of his core. I could feel his final, pathetic thought: I was supposed to be the First.
As the last of his energy flowed into me, I felt a familiar shift. The gauntlet on my arm glowed brighter, humming with new-found power. The void where the fortress once was was now just a silent, empty space. Another whisper was silenced. Another universe was now just a step on my path.
I turned my gaze outward, to the silent, swirling expanse of stars. I could feel the next claim, the next boast.
"I am the Unbroken, the Lord of a thousand minds. None can enter my domain and escape with their sanity intact."
I smiled. "Then I'll just have to leave with all of it, won't I?"
My body began to shimmer, the process of dimensional travel starting once more. The Echo would answer the call. The search for the next strongest had already begun.
Where will Kaelen's next journey take him, and what new kind of strength will he face in the Lord of a thousand minds?