Scars of the Void

The silence in the med-bay was a thick, suffocating blanket, heavier than any vacuum. Bodyguard lay on the sterile cot, his gaze fixed on the flickering ceiling panel. Each pulse of light seemed to echo the ragged rhythm of his own breathing, a fragile counterpoint to the vast, indifferent void that had almost claimed him. They had pulled him from the wreckage of the *Stardust Wanderer*, a husk of twisted metal and shattered dreams, but they hadn’t been able to pull the emptiness from his eyes.

The wounds were closing, the med-techs assured him. Nanites were knitting flesh, repairing bone, flushing toxins. But the real damage, the kind that left no visible scar, was a different beast entirely. It had burrowed deep, lodging itself in the marrow of his being, a cold, persistent ache that whispered of what he had seen, what he had done, and what had been done to him.

He remembered the chilling precision of the Void Lurker. Not the frenzied savagery of a predator, but the calculated cruelty of a surgeon dissecting a specimen. The way it had moved, a ripple in reality itself, leaving behind only the echoes of screams and the stench of ozone. He remembered the chilling realization that this was no mere killer, but something… other. Something that wore the guise of flesh and blood but was as alien as the dark matter that spun between the stars.