The void was no longer silent.
It throbbed.
Je stood adrift, his breath ragged, as the remnants of the fissure's closing left streaks of light scarred across the black expanse. Each streak pulsed like veins, carrying whispers he could not unhear.
— Devourer.
— Witness.
— Consume.
But this time, the voices were not from failed inheritors.
This was older. Vast. Something that had never failed because it had never needed to try.
The System flickered once. The text it revealed was brief:
> [Warning: Presence Detected]
[Designation: Hunger Between Stars]
Je's stomach tightened as if the words themselves gnawed at him. His hunger clawed upward, overwhelming, but this was not his. This hunger belonged to the cosmos.
And then… he saw it.
A maw without form, stretched across the horizon of reality. Not teeth, not flesh, only absence — a wound in existence. Stars bent toward it like prey, shivering in the silence before collapse.
The System trembled. Even it could not mask its fear.
> [Task Deferred.]
[No calculation available.]
Je's hands shook. For the first time, he wondered if the System wasn't guiding him at all… but merely using him as a shield against something greater.
And still, the hunger pulled at him.
Not to devour.
But to recognize.
The maw was not hunting him.
It was waiting.
Waiting for Je to decide whether he was food… or kin.
---