The Hive reeled.
One of the Lord Marshals was dead.
A piece of their absolute structure—broken.
But that was not what shook the queens.
It was Zion's voice, riding through a low-level devourer, trembling, bleeding, barely holding form as he lifted the creature by its throat.
Zion's eyes burned—not with rage, but with purpose.
"You call yourself hunger," he said, his voice amplified across the psionic lattice of the Hive.
"But hunger… is nothing."
He squeezed.
The devourer shrieked—not in pain, but in confusion, as the echo of Zion's presence invaded every node of the Hive-mind. From the smallest larvae to the Great Broodmothers, his words infiltrated the sacred chambers of the queens.
"Fear…" Zion continued.
"Fear is the beast. Fear is what devoured the French. Fear is what walked through cannon fire. Fear is what set Haiti free."
In the Hive's central web, the High Queen flinched.
Not visibly—but for the first time since her species was born in the pit of forgotten suns, she hesitated.
"I ask you now…"
"Do you feel it?"
Zion dropped the devourer.
It didn't fall—it shattered, its body unable to hold the weight of the message that had passed through it.
A moment of silence.
Then the Hive screamed.
Every queen. Every drone. Every consciousness connected to the neural lattice surged with data, confusion, rage. They sought logic. They searched for assurance in their algorithms of war, in their instinctual hierarchy.
But the fear was not digital.
It was ancestral.
A fear older than matter. A fear they had never known.
A mortal had pierced their soul.
The High Queen roared a psychic command to recalculate every scenario. Zion was no longer a leader.
He was a threat to the hive's concept of truth.
Back at the edge of the galaxy, in the great warbase of Bassoon, Zion turned from the shattered body of the devourer.
Papa Legba watched in silence.
Ogou Feray sharpened his blades.
Baka la Kwa stood beneath a silent banner, his hood low.
Zion spoke to his generals.
"Now they know our weapons aren't made of steel."
He turned toward the darkening horizon—toward the stars where the Hive brooded.
"They're made of stories.
And fear listens to stories."