Chapter 75: What’s wrong
"Takashi, do you copy?!" Fiona’s voice crackled through the intercom again, laced with static and panic.
Takashi’s gloved hands tightened around the controls of his thruster pack. He floated alone in the cold void—no planets, no ships, no stations—just endless, empty space. The stars shimmered faintly in the far distance, scattered too thinly to offer comfort.
It was too quiet. The kind of quiet that made your heartbeat feel like thunder.
Then—something shifted.
Up ahead, the stars began to vanish. Not flicker. Vanish. One by one, they winked out behind a crawling black shape. A slow, slithering shadow crept across the cosmos, too massive to comprehend. It moved with dreadful grace, like a creature that had never once been prey.
This was no ship.
A pair of bioluminescent eyes flared open in the dark.
Takashi froze. His breath caught. "Fiona..." he whispered, his voice barely audible. "I see something."
From the abyss, the thing emerged—its form long and serpentine, plated with jagged armor like obsidian scales, each one shining dully in the starlight. Tendrils sprouted from its head, writhing like the arms of a dying star. And then its mouth opened—not like a jaw, but like a blooming flower of flesh, petal-like layers peeling back to reveal rows upon rows of rotating, needle-thin teeth.
It moved like a ghost through vacuum, silent and slow, as if savoring the fear it spread.
"Takashi, what’s happening?! Respond!" Fiona shouted.