They called it the Eye of Helios.
It was an object detected just beyond the asteroid belt—a perfect black sphere, the size of a city, orbiting nothing, moving of its own accord. The initial images from the probe were met with disbelief. It wasn't a planet, nor an asteroid, nor anything of natural origin. It had no texture, no reflection; it swallowed light in a way that baffled astronomers, giving nothing back. It was as if the darkness itself had taken shape.
The Abyssus was sent to investigate, a classified vessel carrying a team of specialists: scientists, engineers, and one man known only as Doctor Malin. Malin was a name spoken in whispers among the scientific elite, a man with a mind as brilliant as it was feared. He was known for delving into theories and experiments that most would not dare consider. The crew knew little of him, only that he alone had been informed of the true purpose of their mission.
As they approached the sphere, the Abyssus grew deathly quiet, as if each crew member sensed something deeply wrong. The black orb seemed to stretch across the expanse of the observation windows, impossibly vast, an absence of light so pure it hurt the eyes to look upon. Even the instruments struggled to understand it, giving back readings that contradicted one another. One moment, it was inert; the next, it seemed to pulsate, a slow, rhythmic throbbing that resonated with the ship's hull.
The Abyssus held its orbit at a cautious distance. Doctor Malin ordered a probe launched—a small, automated drone equipped with cameras and scanners. The crew watched as it drifted toward the sphere, a tiny point of light against the vast dark.
As it neared, the sphere did something they hadn't expected. It opened.
It was not a mechanical opening. No doors slid back, no panels shifted. Instead, the darkness itself seemed to part, like curtains drawing back to reveal something that had lain hidden for aeons. A slit of pure nothingness, like an eye in the heart of the black, pulsed open. There was no light, no glow—just a deeper, more terrible darkness, as if staring into the essence of void.
Then the probe's signal cut off, just meters from the opening. The screen showed only static.
Malin ordered a second probe. But this time, it wasn't just the probe that changed. The hum of the engines fell silent. The lights flickered. And a low, strange sound filled the air—a hum that resonated not through the speakers, but in their bones, their teeth, their minds. It was not a sound meant for human hearing. Each crew member felt it in a different way: some heard whispering, others, a low keening. And in that moment, they knew with a certainty that something was aware of them.
Hours passed, though no one could keep track of time anymore. Malin grew agitated, pacing the control room, his eyes wild. "We have to see it up close," he said, more to himself than to the crew.
He ordered the ship forward. Protests rose, but Malin's authority was absolute, his conviction a terrible weight on the crew's resolve. Slowly, the Abyssus crept forward, until the black surface of the sphere loomed before them, filling every window with its impossible vastness. And then, just as they neared, the slit widened once more, swallowing their view in total darkness.
As they crossed the threshold, the lights on the Abyssus failed. Emergency backups kicked in, bathing the halls in a dim, red glow. Every member of the crew felt it then—a suffocating pressure in the air, as though they had left space itself behind. They looked out the windows, and what they saw was not the void of space, not the stars they knew, but something else.
Shapes, twisting in the darkness, vast and ancient, circling like predators around their tiny vessel. Some appeared as spires, others as immense, slithering forms that moved with a rhythm older than time. They were not material, not wholly there; they drifted in and out of view, as though existing between planes of reality.
One of the engineers, a young man named Carson, collapsed to his knees, clutching his head. "I hear it," he whispered, his voice thin and shaking. "A voice…a voice that isn't sound. It's…seeing us."
Others began to feel it too, an awareness pressing into their minds, cold and vast, a presence that was not indifferent, but something far worse—curious. They felt themselves examined, each thought, each memory laid bare, as though whatever thing watched them found human minds to be novel curiosities, relics of an inferior world.
Malin alone seemed unfazed, muttering to himself, his eyes wide with a terrible light. "They were right," he whispered. "It's a vessel. Not for space, but for something else. Something beyond."
The shadows outside began to pulse, to undulate, moving closer. They pressed against the hull, their formless shapes twisting and stretching, becoming almost human, almost recognizable. Faces seemed to appear—distorted, endless faces, whispering in silent screams, as if frozen in an eternal moment of horror.
One by one, the crew began to change. Carson's eyes grew black, his irises disappearing, replaced by a void that seemed to stretch inward, deeper than his skull could contain. Another crew member, Elise, began to mutter in a language no one could recognize, her words a low, guttural chant that made the air vibrate.
Malin watched them with a quiet awe, as though he had expected this all along. "They are…hosts," he murmured, his voice reverent. "Vessels for something beyond matter, beyond light. We are nothing more than…shells."
The thing outside drew closer, pressing itself into the ship, into the crew. The lights flickered as the engine surged, the metal walls groaning with a pressure that defied physics. And then, the thing spoke—not in sound, not in language, but in an idea, a thought pressed so deeply into their minds that it felt like it had always been there, like they were only now remembering it.
Return.
They felt their consciousnesses slipping, as though they were falling backward, deeper and deeper into themselves, down into a place where light and matter did not exist. They understood, in that moment, that the Eye of Helios was not merely an object. It was a gateway, a wound in space, leading to something beyond the universe itself—a realm of pure awareness, pure hunger, a place where concepts like time, distance, even existence, held no meaning.
The last sight Malin saw before his mind shattered was the faces pressing in, merging with his crew, with himself. The shapes twisted into him, filling him with thoughts that did not belong, memories that stretched across galaxies, across lives and deaths, a cacophony of voices without end.
And as he felt himself drift into the blackness, a part of him understood, dimly, that he was becoming part of it—a fragment, an echo, a thought in an endless mind that consumed all things, that stretched across the cosmos like an infection, waiting to find new worlds, new minds to fill.
The Abyssus was never found. Occasionally, strange signals, faint and distorted, are picked up in the region where it vanished—whispers, fragments of voices, distorted pleas, in languages unknown and long dead. Some say these are only echoes, ghostly remnants of the crew, caught forever in that other realm.
But there are others, those who know of Doctor Malin's theories, who believe the truth is darker still—that the Abyssus has become something else, a vessel for an ancient mind drifting through space, carrying with it the dreams and fears of a thousand worlds, waiting for the next ship, the next civilization to answer its call.