It arrived on a Tuesday. It didn't attack. It didn't have to.
Within weeks the planet of Terranos was dividing itself -- the faithful drawn to the great orange mass in the lowlands, the furious raging against it, and neither group able to stop. The blob simply pulsed its frequency and waited, indifferent as geology, while everything around it fed it without knowing why.
One general. One scientist. One woman with a history her people needed to remember. Against something ancient that had done this before, on other worlds, to other people who thought they were different.
They were not different.
Because some hungers are older than reason, and the most dangerous lies are the ones that tell you what you always wanted to hear.