“All things end. We are the mercy of that ending.”

Before the Empire.
Before the Citadel.
Before the galaxy learned to fear what sleeps beneath it…

There was Malak.

He was the greatest of the Old Ones—the master of Affinity, the architect of life, the one who sought to cure death itself. Where others accepted the limits of existence, Malak defied them. He would not allow his people to fade. He would not accept an ending.

And so, he reached too far.

What he created was not salvation.

It was the beginning of silence.

The Reanimator Virus did not spread like a plague. It spread like a correction. It did not simply kill—it erased, hollowed, repurposed. Flesh became vessel. Mind became nothing. The living were reduced to echoes of motion, driven only to consume and spread.

And behind it all… something deeper stirred.

The Dark had answered.

When the fall of the Milky Way began, when Terra itself became a graveyard, not all fled in time. Some stayed. Some studied. Some listened.

These would become the first Champions of the Void.

They followed the path Malak had opened—not to undo it, but to understand it. They saw the Reanimator Virus not as a mistake, but as revelation. A glimpse into the true nature of existence: that life was noise, and that silence was the natural state of the universe.

And so, they embraced it.

When the last great exodus from Terra fled into the Andromeda galaxy, the Champions came with them.

They did not arrive as conquerors.

They arrived as pilgrims.

They carried the virus within them—not as a weapon, but as a sacrament. A gift. A seed of inevitability. Wherever they went, the infection followed. Quiet at first. Contained. Patient.

Waiting.

The galaxy did not understand what had been brought into it.

It would.

The Champions of the Void are not a unified empire, but a doctrine—one that has taken root across countless worlds, systems, and even within other factions. They do not seek to rule. They do not seek to build.

They seek to end.

To them, the universe is flawed. Life is excess. Emotion, conflict, growth—all of it unnecessary noise in a reality that longs to return to stillness. The Reanimator Virus is not destruction.

It is purification.

It silences.

And through that silence… the Dark may once again sleep undisturbed.

They are the ones who awaken Sleepers—those vast, unseen entities of dark matter that drift between existence and nonexistence. Where others would fear them, the Champions guide them, disturb them, call them into motion.

Not to control them.

But to let them pass through.

Because where a Sleeper moves… reality forgets itself.

Their forms across the galaxy are many.

Most commonly, they appear as dark feudal orders—necromancers, lich-priests, and death-bound knights who rule over silent kingdoms of the dead. Their worlds are not bustling with life, but filled with stillness. Processions of the reanimated. Castles of bone and ash. Rituals that blur the line between life and afterlife until it no longer exists.

But this is only one face.

In other places, they wear the uniforms of soldiers—entire regiments within the Empire of Sol or branches of the Citadel that have fallen without anyone realizing it. They still march. They still speak. They still follow orders.

But something is gone.

They are ghosts wearing flesh.
Echoes of loyalty without will.
Perfect soldiers—because they no longer question.

There are even those who do not appear dead at all.

These are the most dangerous.

Champions who walk among the living, unchanged on the surface, carrying the doctrine quietly. Spreading it through philosophy, through influence, through subtle infection. By the time they are discovered… it is already too late.

To fight the Champions of the Void is not to fight an army.

It is to fight inevitability.

They do not fear loss.
They do not fear death.
They do not fear time.

Because all things move toward the same end.

A silent galaxy.
A still universe.
A reality where nothing stirs, nothing suffers, nothing remains.

And in that final stillness…

The Dark will be at peace once more.

The Champions do not rage against the dying of the light.

They welcome it.

They hasten it.

They are not destroyers.

They are the final step.

And they will see it done.