Stellaris Apr 2026

Empress Xira felt the psychic backlash across ten light-years. She severed the connection to Vor, sacrificing his individuality to save the hive. But the damage was done. The Unbidden had a lock on the Sutharian psyche.

Empress Xira of the Sutharian Xylos stood on the obsidian balcony of her Star Palace, her compound eyes scanning a nebula that bled violet and gold. Her hive mind, a chorus of ten billion synchronized thoughts, had just detected an anomaly: a single, dissonant note.

The Korrin, diminished but defiant, joined as a second wave. Admiral Thrakk, his logic circuits scrambled by the Unbidden’s anti-mind attacks, had reverted to primal combat mode. He rammed his flagship into an Unbidden Dimensional Anchor, buying Xira seven minutes.

The Unbidden paused. For the first time, they encountered a flavor of psionic energy that was not power or ambition, but agony . It was poison. Their extradimensional forms began to destabilize. Stellaris

Empress Xira stood again on her obsidian balcony. Her hive mind had shrunk. A billion voices were gone. But the remaining voices were no longer just a chorus of instinct. They were individuals.

As the Unbidden consumed the Korrin fleet (Thrakk’s logic failed against enemies who ate energy, not matter), Xira retreated to the galactic core. There, she found the one thing the Unbidden could not sense: a dormant Shroud Enclave, the remnants of the Cybrex—a precursor machine intelligence that had once purged all organic life, then fell silent in remorse.

“You are loud, little chorus. We feed on the psionic. You will be our first course.” Empress Xira felt the psychic backlash across ten

In the Cygnus Veil, a derelict observation post—pre-FTL, pre-space—had reactivated. Its signal was not a transmission. It was a scream .

She agreed. She had no soul to lose. She was a million souls.

Xira made a deal. The Cybrex would lend her their ultimate weapon: the Null Lance , a device that fired condensed dark matter to collapse dimensional anchors. In return, she would let them upload one percent of her hive mind into their network—so the Cybrex could finally feel regret again. The Unbidden had a lock on the Sutharian psyche

She looked at the silent Veil and whispered to no one: “We dug too deep. But we climbed back out.”

“No biomass, no feeding,” he said. “Your sacrifice is mathematically optimal.”