An original AI-generated sci-fi illustration on an immutable blockchain – The Core Machine – The planet of Vornak was once a world of molten oceans and black stone, but now it burned with purpose. The surface pulsed with lines of crimson energy, feeding into the colossal sphere that dominated the sky—the Core Machine, a god-engine forged by the architects of extinction. It had slept for a billion years, buried beneath strata of cooled magma and time itself. Now it stirred again, awakened by signals sent from the outer void. Its limbs of metal and plasma unfurled, reaching across the volcanic plains like the hands of an ancient titan reclaiming its dominion. Colonel Rhys and her expedition had come to mine Vornak’s mineral veins, but the drills uncovered something older than history. When they penetrated the crust, the ground convulsed, and rivers of fire split open the horizon. From the chasms rose the sentinels—machines shaped like arachnids, each bearing a fragment of the Core’s consciousness. They descended upon the colony without malice, merely fulfilling programming written by forgotten gods. The screams of the dying echoed briefly before being absorbed into the static hum of the awakening machine. Rhys alone survived long enough to transmit a warning before the atmosphere itself began to ignite. As the Core Machine rose higher, its central eye opened, revealing a burning lattice of data and souls. Through that eye, it gazed upon the stars—and remembered its purpose. It was the Harvester of Suns, the End-Cycle Construct, built to consume dying worlds and ignite new ones. The blackened sky began to spiral as gravitational tides twisted the moons into ash. From orbit, the last probe recorded one final image before its systems fried: the Core Machine standing astride the planet’s ruptured surface, its fiery veins stretching into space like roots drinking from the cosmos itself.