Prologue to Blessed Shadow

Stars. Atoms fuse, light is thrown, gravity shifts, time distorts, and the objects of space are cast in shadow.

A star was born, like all others, from a cloud of gas. It lived, as all stars do, consuming itself like a starving child, wasting away. Its existence was uneventful, unspectacular. But, as is sometimes the case, its death was catastrophic. In a flash, it disappeared. A blue ring expanded from its origin, a marked tombstone for the once magnificent star. Invisibly, radiation hurtles through space. Light years away a planet spins towards their eventual crossroads….

…1,347 years, 8 months, 23 days, 2 hours, 14 minutes, 39 seconds later…

… Dr. Riegn Striger of the Nazi party searched the heavens with his telescope. A missile of sweat hit the floor, launched by the Doctor's shaky hand. Hitler did not take failure well. Iron walls were closing in on the once glorious Third Reich. Their distraught leader had personally asked Striger to look to the skies, in search for a sign from God. So far, God remained silent.

He refocused the telescope on a near star, about twelve-hundred light years away. It struck him as odd, how a star larger than our own, gave our Earth such a little amount of light. He sighed and thought about his family deeper in Berlin. If I don't see something I'll never see them again. The thought chilled him and he concentrated harder on the star. Without warning the star disappeared into spontaneous eruption of light. Blinking once or twice he looked again through the small eyeglass.

        The star had vanished! It was replaced by a blue halo surrounding an angered purple heart of gas. He couldn't think straight for a moment. He was the first man ever to witness the death of a star so closely. He exhaled deeply, a sign at last for the Fuhrer.
A noise pierced the small room, it scratched at the air. The radiation monitor on the desk along the far wall was going berserk. "We've been hit!" The Dr. realized. All of his life he had researched radioactivity in space, now he knew that it indeed existed. He scrambled towards the door of the observatory to go inform his Fuhrer of the death of a once powerful star. He burst open the double doors hailing for his leader with great excitement. "My Hitler," he cried "my Fuhrer!"

The air screamed. Red clouded Striger's vision, he couldn't move, couldn't breathe, couldn't scream; all he could do was fall to the dry soil of the Earth and die…

…"Good shot Vladimir," a sturdy Russian hidden in the foliage whispered, "now Mother Russia moves to take Berlin, and end this plague of a war."