Desperation

Dendrus IV, Purgatory System, Great House de Jardin

The planet was, as it had been for the past century, a pure black void invisible to everything. It was like a planet-sized black hole that wasn’t a black hole at all. It didn’t suck anything into it by some massive gravity well.

But anything that fell down to it was certainly lost, just like a black hole.

It was a lifeless rock whose pitch black surface was completely still, as though it was a massive globe of ink, floating serenely out in the galaxy.

Any who looked directly at it were deeply unsettled to the core. It felt to them as though they were looking at something that both existed and never existed at the same time.

It came with a severe sense of finality that everyone couldn’t help but turn their gaze.

Although Denrus IV spun in solitude within its own solar system for most of that century, the past five years changed all that.