The Eos Harrow drifted into orbit above Kepler-189F, a rogue planet that had once passed too close to a dying star and was now considered dead—no sunlight, no atmosphere, no recorded life.
But it emitted a signal.
Pulsing.
Structured.
It wasn't a distress call. It was a welcome.
Commander Tessa Rourke didn't believe in ghosts. Or gods. She believed in science, in engines and equations.
Still, when the signal started matching their heartbeat rhythms, she gripped the console a little tighter.
The onboard AI, GLAS, confirmed: the pulses were not random.
They were adjusting to them.
---
A team of five descended in the lander.
Tessa Rourke, Commander
Dr. Mason Vire, Xenolinguist
Lieutenant Cruz, Tactical Officer
Dr. Nia Hale, Exobiologist
Corporal Wren, Engineer
They touched down near the source of the signal: a canyon chiseled into the crust, impossibly precise, as if drawn by a hand with infinite patience.
The walls bore etchings—symbols that flickered, as if lit from behind by something dreaming.
"Natural formations," Mason muttered, his voice brittle.
Nia scanned the surface. "No flora. No fauna. Just... stone."
Then one of the symbols blinked at her.
And smiled.
---
They descended the canyon, flashlights dull against the black-stone walls.
The deeper they went, the stronger the gravity distortion became.
GLAS reported anomalies in perception: time skew, directional inversion, emotional bleed.
"We are being filtered," Mason said. "Something's adjusting us to it."
Cruz saw his reflection twitch in a wall of stone.
It waved.
He did not.
---
At the base of the canyon sat an archway.
Not a door. A hole in space that shimmered like water—but didn't reflect anything.
It absorbed light, memory, sound.
They stared too long.
Tessa was the first to blink and step forward.
"Suit cams only," she ordered.
One by one, they entered.
The air on the other side was warm. The light was red.
Like a womb. Or a furnace.
Or both.
Behind them, the doorway closed.
---
It wasn't ruins.
It was waiting.
Black spires rose from shifting ground, built from a material that recorded everything—when they touched the walls, they saw their births, first fears, first betrayals.
"This place is not showing us its history," Nia whispered.
"It's learning ours."
Above them, a sky that wasn't sky swirled with red stars that moved in language.
Mason whispered, "The signal was a syntax test. It wasn't calling for help. It was... testing compatibility."
---
The voices started on day two.
From the walls. From their suits. From inside their skulls.
Not spoken—harmonized.
Not words, but permissions.
Cruz fired his rifle at the shadows when he heard his mother's voice singing lullabies.
The bullet hit the ceiling. The spire bleed—a thick mist that smelled like burnt names.
GLAS tried to disconnect. It couldn't.
"Command reroute failed," it said. "I am being rewritten."
Mason stared at the red horizon and murmured, "This place doesn't want to kill us. It wants to wear us."
---
Corporal Wren disappeared after attempting to reroute power through the suit cores.
They found her three hours later.
Her suit was empty.
But the inside was lined with skin.
Not hers.
Tessa ran diagnostics.
The internal pressure sensors recorded no exit.
Just... multiplication.
Wren was never found.
But the walls whispered her dreams now.
---
They followed the harmonics to the center of the city—a shrine made of polished bone and dark glass.
At the top: a dais. A throne.
Empty.
Mason touched it and fell backward, screaming.
"WE'RE THE SEAT," he cried. "WE'RE THE ANSWER!"
Then he laughed. And laughed.
And laughed.
Until his jaw split open and didn't close again.
He died smiling.
The dais etched his face into itself.
Like a signature.
---
Nia tried to destroy the spire with a seismic charge.
The ground swallowed it.
And then regurgitated it... inside her.
Her body collapsed in convulsions. Her blood was white, her veins writing new symbols on the floor.
She wept and sang simultaneously.
Her last words were: "We were never explorers."
Then her body folded—like paper.
Into a new shape.
It crawled into the shadows.
Tessa and Cruz ran.
---
Tessa found the threshold again—reopened by GLAS, its fragmented AI flickering like a stuttering child.
> "Protocol corrupted… Consciousness… infected… you are not returning… you are... carried."
They reached the hole.
But something followed them—Mason's face, worn like a mask over a boneless shape.
It asked in Mason's voice: "Why do you flee? You're already here."
Cruz pushed Tessa through.
He turned to fire.
But the gun screamed.
And so did he.
---
Tessa awoke in the lander.
Alone.
No signal. No GLAS. No Cruz. No Mason. No Nia. No Wren.
Only the canyon, pulsing.
The Eos Harrow didn't answer her hails.
She looked in the mirror.
Her eyes were red.
And blinking out of rhythm.
The language was still inside her.
And in the stars, the signal shifted again.
A new phrase.
> "THERE IS NO OTHER SIDE."