OpTicTide
The Starvation Protocol
The universe was supposed to be empty. It was supposed to be safe.
Millions of years ago, a catastrophic energy crisis shattered a civilization that had seamlessly fused hyper-advanced technology with their own DNA. Desperate to survive the death of their home star, a corrupted military leader named Malakor engineered a monstrous salvation: the Soul Engine. A planetary matrix designed to strip the bio-electrical currents from living, intelligent beings to power a cold, dead world.
To stop the techno-organic plague from consuming the galaxy, an ancient civilization enacted the ultimate sacrifice: the Starvation Protocol. They systematically cleansed the surrounding sectors of all complex life, starving Malakor's forces into engineered stasis. Over millions of years, the galaxy healed, forgetting the nightmare sealed away inside black vaults.
Now, humanity has expanded into the deep unknown. Driven by corporate greed and reckless curiosity, a heavily armed salvage fleet lands on a seemingly dead world of obsidian plains, towering spires, and rusted mechanical titans. They believe they have discovered the greatest archaeological find in human history.
They are wrong.
They are merely loud, arrogant mice scurrying into the tomb of a starving titan.
The human body is the perfect organic battery. With every human heart that stops, with every corporate fusion reactor siphoned dry, the violent crimson veins of a dead world spark back to life.
The monolithic army is awakening from its millions-of-years slumber. And as a single human survivor makes one desperate act of defiance, she triggers an unimaginable catastrophe. A city-sized orbital carrier carrying more than one hundred thousand people falls screaming out of the sky-straight into the waiting jaws of the machine.
Malakor is waking up.
He no longer seeks survival. He seeks dominion.
Our stars will fuel his kingdom, and humanity itself will become the foundation of his eternal empire.