Distant starlight continued to illuminate the colossal structure. Amid the endless void, it resembled an invisible shield, protecting the small spacecraft from the freezing darkness. Yet the deeper they ventured inside, the more that light was swallowed by the shadows, as though even the stars themselves were trying to flee from something lurking within. In the end, only the twin headlights at the ship's bow remained, guiding them through the abyss. None of them knew what awaited them ahead.
Everyone had been forced into one corner of the spacecraft as loose equipment crashed onto the floor.
A massive slab of metal shot past, leaving a long scratch across the hull.
Apoloziro broke the silence.
"Do you even know how to fly this thing...?"
HE78 remained silent.
A heavy silence filled the cabin.
"...A dead ship."
Hongco merely glanced at him and quietly moved her lips, saying nothing.
Inside the structure, they had hoped to find at least a trace of temporary safety. Instead, wherever the ship's lights reached, countless wrecks emerged from the darkness. Some remained eerily intact, drifting in complete silence. Others had been torn apart beyond recognition.
Among the countless derelicts floating through the lifeless void, one warship stood out from all the others.
It had not been sliced apart by laser fire.
Nor did it bear the scars of any weapon they recognized.
Even someone as reckless as Apoloziro couldn't help but ask,
"Don't tell me... this was just some kind of laser cannon, right?"
"Why is nobody answering me?"
A deep gash stretched from the ship's bow all the way to its stern. The two halves were held together by only a handful of damaged cables, crackling with flickering arcs of electricity.
No one answered.
But deep down, every one of them desperately hoped...
...that it had been caused by a laser.
Not far outside the massive structure, another spacecraft continued to shadow them from a distance.
Kraith and Velkar stood frozen.
Before them drifted thousands of abandoned ships, scattered across the void alongside countless colossal fragments of twisted metal. It was a sight they knew they would remember for the rest of their lives.
The ship's searchlights swept across the darkness. Beams of light slipped through cracks in the drifting wreckage, slowly revealing the silhouette of the object ahead.
Nyxara remained seated in the corner, her mind racing.
What was that...?
How could something like that exist here?
She repeatedly tried to convince herself that she had imagined it.
"There they are!"
Kraith suddenly shouted.
"Those lights... they have to be theirs!"
Without hesitation, he made a reckless decision. He switched off the ship's headlights, intending to follow the distant glow in complete darkness until the perfect moment to wipe Levi's group out.
Velkar frowned.
"If you're so certain those are their lights..."
"Then why aren't they moving?"
"I don't think something's right."
Nyxara stepped toward the control panel, never taking her eyes off the faint light ahead.
The longer she stared...
the more convinced she became.
It wasn't Levi's ship.
She reached out and activated the searchlights.
Brilliant white beams pierced through the darkness, slipping between layers of shattered metal.
Then...
they finally saw it.
It wasn't a spacecraft.
A gigantic, bizarre creature floated silently in the void, its enormous jaws hanging open. Row after row of impossibly long teeth extended outward, making it seem capable of swallowing their entire spacecraft in a single bite.
The most horrifying part...
It wasn't made of flesh.
Its entire body was metal.
Each tooth resembled a sharpened steel pillar, deeply embedded into its jaw with only the razor-like tip exposed.
And the mysterious light they had been following...
wasn't coming from a ship at all.
It came from a luminous organ hanging just in front of the creature's head, casting an eerie glow through the darkness like a lure waiting for its prey.
"What should we do now?"
Velkar turned to Nyxara.
"I... don't know."
"Maybe we should turn off the lights... and slowly back away."
Kraith snorted as though he already understood everything.
"This is probably just another trap Levi set up."
The three of them fixed their eyes on the bizarre creature once again.
It remained completely motionless.
As if it had never noticed them.
Velkar continued staring at it.
A thin metallic membrane slowly slid over both sides of its eye.
A moment later...
it opened again.
It looked exactly like a cold, emotionless eye...
watching everything around it.
"Back up."
"Slowly."
Velkar said without taking his eyes off the creature.
"I don't think..."
"...that's a machine."
"I think..."
"...it's some kind of living creature."
Kraith scoffed.
"You seriously believe that?"
"In a place like this?"
"There's no way something living could survive here."
Ignoring him, Kraith lifted his hand from the controls and searched around the cabin.
After a few moments, he found a spare light bulb.
He walked over to the disposal hatch, placed the bulb inside, then returned to the control panel and aligned the launcher directly toward what appeared to be the creature's mouth.
Click.
Kraith pressed the launch button.
The small bulb shot out of the spacecraft, drifting straight toward the creature.
Nothing happened.
Kraith smirked.
"See?"
"I told you."
"It's just a pile of metal—"
Before he could finish...
the bulb lightly brushed against one of the creature's teeth.
In the very next instant...
it shattered into countless tiny fragments.
No one spoke.
Silence filled the cabin.
Kraith immediately brought up the ship's recording system.
Since escaping the battlefield, the spacecraft had been recording everything continuously.
He rewound the footage to the moment he launched the spare bulb.
Then played it back.
Nyxara frowned.
"Something's wrong."
"Slow it down."
Kraith nodded.
1/2 speed.
Nothing unusual.
1/4 speed.
Still too fast.
1/8 speed.
The bulb had only just grazed the surface of the creature's tooth...
When suddenly—
The creature bit down.
Its jaws closed and reopened with a speed so terrifying that none of them had perceived the movement with the naked eye.
The bulb had never shattered on impact.
It had been...
crushed.
One frame later...