Crawling from a pool of sludge that was more ethereal necrotic energia than anything else. The being once known as Zarlac the Malignant pushed his way to the only thing he could sense within a half-million leagues. The asteroid was what remained of a black hole. The gravity around it was tremendous. The matter was so compressed as to be indestructible. His body would have been torn asunder if it contained any mass, but it did not, for he was a creature of the void. His very existence centered around mere thought. How long had he been incorporeal and dispersed, he pondered. How long had they imprisoned him to float like so many specks in the void?

As Zarlac pondered this. He could feel bits of his once great form move towards his location from across the vastness of the void even at the speed of thought. The energia that was once him would take millennia to reach his being. Much of his once-massive shape was gone to time and the ravages of war. But he existed again both in thought and intent.

He sat upon this dense mass in the inky blackness of the void. The dark being pondered what his siblings were doing now. He hated them, for they had attacked and cast him down because his very existence threatened theirs. How would he enact his revenge on them and their creations?

His three siblings and their creator had cast him away and scattered his very being to the far corners of the cosmos. The war against Zarlac had lasted many cycles. His siblings had thrown every one of their followers against him. The war had been called the Never-Ending War. Divines, celestials, demons, devils, elementals, and every form of magic had been brought to bear. To thwart him from taking what was rightfully his as firstborn of the firstborn. Creation itself had been altered to cast him down. Demons now appeared in pools in the deepest hells. Divines formed from the stars of order, and Elementals formed from the flows of magic that bound the universe. Chaos had been brought to order and order to chaos. His siblings had altered the very foundations of nature to combat Zarlac's legions of the void.

This time it would be different. The Malignant being of the void would not take the direct approach or alert his siblings. He would work his magic against the universe itself and force it to reform in his image. An extension of him, to BE HIM. The creator has been gone for far too long. This time Zarlac would trap his siblings before they even knew he was present. His vast mind pondered the problems ahead.