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The stars were going out.
Not the celestial bodies themselves of course, but the bright beacons of words and voices and life spinning around them.
Extinguished.
One by one, snuffed out like candles by the strange rays that defied what had been thought the laws of this universe.
A web of ending washing over reality, as a distant god enacted his plan for the end of the universe. A plan that did not allow for those who defied it
A lesser (and yet at once impossibly mightier) god watched with interest at this sudden event. Such an occurrence seemed well worth the stress of descending back into the well of mortal time, after all - it wasn’t likely to be an event that would have the opportunity to be repeated. As the beacons of species voices flickered out almost instantly (impossible, it should take billions of years to detect, but everything did seem so much… closer these days) she disregarded the sudden, panicked cessation of attempts by the parasites on her skin to breach her body. Even mortal beings were not unaware of what was happening, it seemed.
Dispassionately, the god looked at her contact engrams. The end of the world, carried by some paranormal means, was quickly approaching, already scorching the far end of the star lanes as her distant compatriots were extinguished with just as little fanfare as the young species of the universe. She declined to answer the frantic hails of her subordinates, asking for explanations, advice, assistance. Could they not see the end of all things when it sped towards them? There was no assistance to be rendered to them, and so she did not respond.
One by one, the calls stopped. By now there was hardly a voice in the sky, dust and echos filling the universe that had already been nearing emptiness before the event. Superluminal eyes detected the incoming beam, aimed at her world-body. Even if this god was a nimble spirit free to dance in the skies instead of an SSM-pattern Static Control Intelligence it would never flee in time, the avenues of possibility narrowing faster and faster to a single point of certainty.
Even the parasite load clustered around her mind were mostly silent, stunned. The inbound beams filled the sky, a force of destruction set loose by the greatest planner in the universe. The Creator’s most ambition plan of all coming to fruition at last, and glory be, but the arrival of Heaven was not for her… nor, it seemed, those mortal intruders who clung on for dear life. The specks of mortal life embraced each other in fear as the beam arrived.
There was a terrible light.
There was a terrible darkness.
There was a terrible silence.
…
Nobody was actually watching that part of the skies from Heaven on the anniversary of that night, as the light of the event finally arrived 10 million years later. But if they had been, they might have noticed that one star among trillions did indeed go out.