Conquest did not announce itself as conquest.
That was the great irony of Astralis' rise.
There were no universal declarations. No singular war that historians could later point to and name as the beginning.
Instead, the Empire moved like a tide that never receded, reshaping shorelines simply by existing.
Systems aligned, then integrated.
Resistance collapsed, then vanished. Borders expanded not in leaps, but in layers, overlapping and reinforcing until the concept of a frontier itself began to lose meaning.
Three years passed.
Three years of relentless motion.
Astralis no longer spoke in terms of nearby and distant. It spoke in gradients of influence. Corridors stretched so far that even the most advanced fold-space methods strained under the distance. Entire sectors became functionally unreachable by conventional travel, their connection to the Core World maintained only through law-anchored transit arrays that responded directly to imperial authority.
