They came without warning. Silent and unnoticed.

They carved their way into our society with deft accuracy. Played on our weaknesses. Our insecurities. We let them undermine us. Compromise us. For all intents and purposes, they’d already won.

In a matter of days what took humanity centuries to carve out was redistributed among their territorial claims. And we let them.

Our resistance was pitiful. Their stain upon our world rendered our weapons capable of ending millions of human lives in a single blast inert.

They let us fire one. We saw the result. Human lives erased and they thrived. The Void thrived on our death and carrion. Radiation a comfort to them.

We never stood a chance.

They crept and crawled while we fought ourselves. Simple lesser spawns harrying human lives. Lords waiting silently to step in and bring order to merciless chaos.

It didn’t take long for them to offer solutions. A way forward for humanity. The world had changed we just didn’t realize how much. It wasn’t even out world anymore.

One by one they laid claim to swaths of our planet. Five out of nine made their presences known. They reorganized our lives. Our existences. We saw their manipulation as a salve. There was nothing else we could do. Fighting would be extinction.

But these lords… They didn’t seem to want us dead. In fact, they tailored their rule to the areas they occupied. Mimicked our cultures and traditions.

Seamless.

But they didn’t know. They didn’t understand. It was all death in the end. Our only choice was swift or slow. And they’d chosen complacency.

“We” became “them”. They bowed and the question was asked in silent darkness. In the corners of dim resistance, it echoed. The lords heard it and gave no answer. To them, there was none. Their rule was now absolute. And they, the masses, had accepted it.

So who, then, will answer the Void’s question?

Who will stand?

Who will give answer to their endless eons of slaughter?

Who will fight the Void?