The Asteroid Graveyard was a frozen hellscape of dead ships – Keeper cruisers, Pagoda scouts, alien hulks from forgotten wars. Tomb-01 hung silently at its edge, dormant. Watching.
[FINAL VOID SEED FRAGMENT DETECTED: DEEP WITHIN DERELICT 'SOLAR QUEEN' (ELDER TECH CARRIER)]
The Solar Queen was a titan, its hull scarred by weaponry capable of cracking planets. Its power signature was dead… except for a faint, corrupted pulse deep within.
"No Seekers active," Li Na reported. "Tomb-01 is just… waiting."
"It's herding us," Silas said grimly. "Letting us gather the fragments. To consume us all at once."
They boarded the derelict. Silence pressed down, thick with the ghosts of dead crews. The path to the fragment was a gauntlet of failed security systems, frozen corpses fused with consoles, and gravity anomalies warping corridors.
Deep in the engineering heart, they found it. The final Void Seed fragment. It wasn't contained. It had fused with the ship's core reactor, pulsing with sickly green light, tendrils of corrupting energy snaking through the deck.
[ENTITY: VOID REACTOR]
[THREAT: UNSTABLE SINGULARITY CORE - CORRUPTION FIELD (DISABLES EXTERNAL TECH)]
Wu Gen, pale but standing with a makeshift crutch forged from debris, eyed the core. "One wrong move… and it takes the Graveyard, us, and half the asteroid belt with it."
Lin Mo felt the pull of the completed Seed within him (97% integrity). The Reactor pulsed in response. Tomb-01 stirred at the edge of the system.
[SYNTHESIS REQUIRES PHYSICAL CONTACT]
[CORRUPTION FIELD: 100% FATAL TO ORGANIC MATTER]
Yu stepped forward, her eyes fixed on the writhing core. "I can do it."