When beings or objects are capable of crossing hundreds of light-years, traveling through space and time, they definitely aren’t humanoids, as Jacques Fresco used to say. Outer space is already colonized, and the most powerful and influential factions have long carved up territories among themselves. Yet this seemingly stable order is disrupted by the appearance of enormous monoliths in inhabited systems. These crystals consume resources and adapt them for their own purposes. A small inconvenience that seems insignificant at first leads to changes on such a scale that space radically transforms its very face. People and other intelligent beings are forced to fight for survival. Old factions gradually disappear, and previous technologies are lost. But what if a fragment of these technologies and magic comes to life and tries again to alter the way life works in inhabited space? This cycle is both the successor to and a complete continuation of the events of the “House Among the Stars” cycle, with the same main character.