From every direction, a chorus of roars and shrieks erupted, a horrifying symphony of unseen threats closing in from all sides. The sound was bone-chilling, a promise of violence from the things that called this nothingness home.

"This sound is so fucking scary," Rex muttered, a grim humor in his tone. "In the end, it might just be true that I'm afraid of the dark..."

No sooner had the words left his lips than a shape launched itself from the blackness. It moved with impossible speed, a blur of malice aimed directly for his throat.

Rex's hand snapped up, catching the creature by its neck in a grip of iron. He yanked it closer, pulling the monstrosity into the meager light cast by his armor.

What he saw made his blood run cold. "...You're so fucking ugly..."

The thing was vaguely humanoid, but its limbs were grotesquely long and flexible, twitching with unnatural life.

Its face was a smooth, blank canvas of flesh, featureless save for a gaping maw that was crammed with row upon row of needle-like teeth. Even as he held it aloft, it thrashed and flailed, its clawed limbs scratching uselessly against his armored plates, its head straining forward in a desperate, mindless attempt to bite him.

"Do you want this?" Rex asked, holding the thrashing, faceless creature out toward Cleo as if presenting a particularly unpleasant gift.

"Negative," Cleo replied, her voice utterly flat. In the same motion, a sleek, high-caliber pistol materialized in her hand. She pressed the barrel against the thing's head and fired a single, concussive shot.

The creature's skull exploded into a spray of viscous black blood, splattering across Rex's armor.

That single, violent act was the spark that ignited the tinderbox.

A chain reaction of fury erupted in the void. The soul-tearing screams, which had been a horrifying chorus, now swelled into a deafening wall of sound. From the impenetrable darkness, a living tide of the faceless creatures surged forward, swarming over the convoy.

They moved with a nightmarish grace, their long, spindly limbs propelling them onto vehicles and soldiers alike.

One gunner, positioned on the roof of a transport, was singled out by fate. A creature landed beside him with a soft, terrifying thud. Before the soldier could even scream, a whip-like limb snapped out, coiled around his torso, and yanked him from his post.

In a single, fluid motion, the abomination leaped back into the abyss, dragging the helpless man with it.

The soldier vanished into the abyss, his desperate cries for help swallowed by the cacophony of gunfire and inhuman shrieks.

"No! No! Noooo! Ahhh, fucking die!" He fought back with all his might, stabbing and punching at the thing that held him, but he could feel himself being pulled deeper and deeper into the endless nothing, his fate seeming sealed.

But someone had heard him.

"Where do you think you're taking him?" a voice cut through the chaos, calm and deadly. Rex materialized beside them in the darkness, his form suddenly there as if he had stepped through a fold in the world. "This kid is mine."

With one hand, he seized the creature by its neck with his unbreakable grip and ripped it away from the soldier. He hurled the monstrosity back into the void like a piece of trash.

With his other arm, he caught the falling soldier and, in the next instant, teleported them both back to the relative safety of the convoy's defensive line.

"Cleo, this is the only one alive; all the others are lost in the void forever," Rex declared, his voice carrying a grim finality.

The Emperor's Crown shimmered into existence above his brow, and from its light, he drew a heavy, cannon-like laser rifle. He hefted the weapon and opened fire, carving bright, searing lines through the swarming horde.

Cleo gave a sharp, acknowledging nod. Her consciousness flowed into the convoy's network, overriding manual controls. With a synchronized roar, every vehicle and bipedal mech shuddered back to life, their engines igniting as one.

"We're leaving!" her voice commanded over the general comms, brooking no argument. "We are advancing now! We will not stop for anything! Do not fall behind, because we will not stop for you!"

The convoy surged forward, engines screaming as they pushed to the absolute limit of their mechanical endurance. They became a moving fortress of light and fury, every weapon blazing, carving a path through the endless night.

Muzzles flashed, and laser fire stitched bright lines through the darkness, cutting down the faceless horrors that scrambled and leaped onto the vehicles with mindless tenacity.

But the deeper they drove, the worse the nightmare became. The creatures emerging from the abyss grew larger, their forms becoming even bulkier, their hides turning aside blaster fire that would have felled their smaller kin.

The cost of their advance was made brutally clear when a massive, hulking void beast, twice the size of a tank, rose from the black and swatted a transport vehicle like a toy. The vehicle tumbled end over end before being instantly buried under a swarming, shrieking mass of creatures.

"Tsk! Don't stop!" Rex shouted out, his voice a whip-crack of command over the din. He took to the air, his wings flaring with energy. Seeing the doomed transport and the horrific fate awaiting the soldiers within, he made a terrible, merciful choice.

A single, devastating sword wave of silver energy sliced through the swarm and struck the transport's core. The vehicle erupted in a fireball, a brief, sun-bright funeral pyre that granted a swift death instead of prolonged agony.

"Rex... " Cleo's voice was a soft, private note in his ear, heavy with unspoken understanding.

"I know, I know, dammit!" he growled while landing back on the tank with a heavy thud. He raised his laser cannon again, his jaw clenched tight as he resumed firing.

They pushed on, the weight of their losses heavy upon them. Then, a primal warning screamed in Rex's mind. A presence of immense danger loomed directly ahead.

Without a second thought, he launched himself in front of the entire convoy, throwing his hands forward. A thick, shimmering wall of planetary energy erupted from him, a final bastion against the unseen.

A fraction of a second later, a beam of pure, light-devouring blackness slammed into it.

"Ugh! Cleo! Raise another barrier behind me!" he shouted, his voice straining as he poured every ounce of his power into the shield.

The black ray was immense, an overwhelming force of annihilation. With a sound like shattering reality, his barrier exploded. The beam struck him head-on, blasting him backward into the second, weaker barrier Cleo had just managed to erect.

It held for only a moment before it shattered like glass. The force of the blast hurled Rex backward like a comet, sending him crashing deep into the abyss behind them, vanishing from sight.

The beam continued its path of destruction, shearing through a huge section of the convoy, vaporizing vehicles and soldiers alike in an instant.

Cleo's heart screamed for her to go after him, but the new threat gave her no quarter. Where the black beam had originated, a colossal figure now rose.

It was a void colossus, a hundred meters tall, its form a vaguely humanoid mockery of anatomy, twisted and unsettling. Its skin was a shifting tapestry of deep purples and absolute blacks, a substance that seemed to drink the light from their lamps.

The creature opened its maw and released a scream that bypassed armor and helmet, a psychic assault that drilled directly into the mind. Soldiers clutched their helmets, screaming and writhing, some even turning their weapons on themselves in a desperate attempt to escape the mental torment.

From its monstrous body, countless shadowy tendrils unfurled, snaking out to snatch up the panicked soldiers. Where the tendrils touched, life was extinguished in seconds, not by violence, but by rapid, horrifying decay, as if their very lifespans were being consumed.

"It seems this creature thinks we're just free food!" Cleo declared, her voice cold with fury. Brilliant, lightning-woven wings burst from her back as she took to the air with her body crackling with incandescent power.

She became a storm, lashing out with bolts of pure, compressed energy that struck the shadow tendrils, causing them to evaporate into harmless mist before they could claim more lives.

A sound like grinding stones and shrieking hyenas erupted from the colossus, a laugh of pure, predatory malice. It had found a true challenge, and all its horrifying attention was now focused on the single, lightning-wreathed figure before it.

Below, the remaining soldiers fought for their lives against the swarming lesser creatures, their tanks and mechs forming a desperate, shrinking circle of defiance. But the true battle raged in the air above them.

Cleo wove through the darkness like a darting star of incandescent fury. She hurled lance after lance of searing white lightning into the behemoth's form.

Each strike carved a burning wound into its shifting, light-devouring flesh, but the victories were fleeting. The wounds sizzled and smoked, only to seal themselves moments later, the unnatural flesh knitting together as if it had never been harmed.

The colossus, in turn, lashed out with countless shadowy tendrils. They snaked through the air, attempting to ensnare her, to drain the very life from her.

Each time they closed in, Cleo responded with a blinding nova of energy, a lightning explosion that vaporized the grasping shadows into nothingness. It was a breathtaking, terrifying dance of annihilation and rebirth.

But it was a dance she could not sustain. The grim reality was settling in. While they appeared evenly matched, Cleo was burning through her immense reserves of energy with every thunderous blast. The colossus, a creature born of this endless void, showed no sign of strain or fatigue. It was playing with her, and they both knew it.