The night after the flickering heartbeat in the sky, sleep became impossible.Pamela sat by the dying fire, arms wrapped tight around herself, listening to the heavy silence that had fallen over their camp. The others slept in fitful shifts, if they slept at all.But Pamela couldn’t close her eyes.Because she kept hearing it.Selene’s voice.Whispered through the cracks in reality.Faint. Broken. Almost like static.But it was her.“Find him,” the whisper said.“Bring him home.”Pamela pressed her hands to her temples, trying to block it out, but it only grew louder the harder she tried. It wasn’t madness. It wasn’t grief.It was Selene.It was real.As the second sun rose weakly over the broken city, Marcus stumbled to her side, rubbing his face tiredly.“You look like hell,” he muttered.Pamela didn’t bother answering. She just stared into the gray morning.After a few minutes, Marcus spoke again, voice low and hesitant.“I saw him.”Pamela stiffened, heart pounding painfully again

The jump ripped through reality, hurling the Ship of the Damned into the void between stars.Pamela staggered against the control panel as the vessel shuddered violently, alarms screaming across the bridge.“We’re here!” Marcus shouted over the noise, steadying himself with one hand on the wall. “Wherever the hell ‘here’ is!”The turbulence stopped.Suddenly—everything was still.Silent.Heavy.Pamela straightened, her heart hammering painfully in her chest.Outside the cracked viewports, a dead star hung in the blackness.It wasn’t shining.It wasn’t burning.It was broken.A jagged mass of collapsed light and ash, pulsing weakly, barely alive.The remnants of a sun that had been dying for a long, long time.Orbiting it was a structure.At first, Pamela thought it was an asteroid—until she saw the faint glint of metal beneath the dust.A station.Massive.Ancient.Twisting like a spine around the corpse of the star.Elias leaned forward in his seat, eyes narrowing.“I know this place

The door closed behind them with a heavy, final echo.Pamela stood frozen in the silence, eyes darting around the massive chamber they had just entered. The space was nothing like the rest of the station. It wasn’t dark, it wasn’t cold, and it didn’t feel abandoned.It felt… sacred.Soft light poured from glowing panels embedded into the walls, casting a golden hue across everything. Dust hovered midair, unmoving—as if even time refused to touch this room.Marcus walked beside her, moving slowly, almost reverently. “This doesn’t look like a prison.”“No,” Pamela murmured, “it doesn’t.”The room stretched far ahead. Towering arches lined both sides like the halls of some ancient cathedral. Beneath their feet, the floor wasn’t metal—it was stone. Carved. Inscribed with strange symbols she didn’t understand, yet somehow recognized.Everything about the place screamed one truth louder than any whisper:This wasn’t built to hold Kael.It was built to remember him.—Elias trailed behind th

The station was no longer still. It pulsed like a living thing, walls breathing, lights flickering like a dying heartbeat. Pamela pressed her palm to the console. It didn’t respond. “Marcus,” she whispered. “Something’s wrong. The layout’s changed.” He looked around. “This corridor wasn’t here before.” The walls had shifted again, swallowing the exit behind them. They were trapped. No alarms. No sirens. Just silence. A silence so heavy it made the air hard to breathe. Then the lights cut out completely. For a moment, they were blind. Then came the voices. Familiar. Terrifying. Echoes. “Pamela…” a voice murmured. Her blood froze. It was Kael. But not the Kael she knew. This voice was broken. Empty. She turned. And there it was. A door. Just standing in the hallway. A frame of rusted metal and shimmering glass. No hinges. No logic. Just… waiting. Marcus stepped forward. “Don’t.” Pamela didn’t listen. She opened the door. And walked into her past. The world aro

“Kael?” Pamela’s voice was shaky. Soft. Too soft for this place.Kael stood there in the dim red light of the stasis chamber, shirtless, barefoot, eyes wide open. But they weren’t the same eyes. Not anymore.They were glowing.Not with light. With memory.With power.His chest rose and fell slowly, like he was learning to breathe again. His fingers twitched. Then his neck turned. Mechanical. Sharp. He looked at Pamela, then Marcus, then Elias… and said nothing.“Kael,” she tried again, stepping closer. “It’s me. It’s Pamela.”He blinked once. “Pamela,” he repeated, flatly. The name came out like data being processed. Not remembered.Her heart broke on the spot.Marcus reached for his weapon on instinct, but Pamela raised a hand. “Don’t,” she whispered. “He’s… he’s confused.”Kael tilted his head, like he was hearing a sound no one else could hear.Then he said, “Define ‘confused.’”Pamela flinched.Marcus stepped forward anyway. “Alright. What do you remember?”Kael’s eyes didn’t blin