At the edge of the Outer Rim, in a salvage ship barely holding together with welded scrap and prayer, Jin Park stared at the blue notification floating in front of his eyes.
"Stellar Genome System Activated. Host detected. Beginning synchronization."
Jin blinked hard. Three times. The damn thing wouldn't disappear.
He wasn't wearing AR goggles. Wasn't jacked into any neural interface. His implants had been repossessed six months ago when he missed a payment—along with his decent tools, his backup oxygen tanks, and the last shred of his dignity.
This wasn't tech. Couldn't be.
"What the hell did I touch?"
His hands were shaking. Still covered in that black dust from the sphere. It had gotten under his nails, into the creases of his palms. The air in his suit tasted like metal and something else. Something wrong.
Twenty minutes ago he'd been inside the wreckage of a Leviathan-class dreadnought, trying to find anything worth enough to pay his sister's school fees before the collectors showed up at her dorm. The ship had been floating dead for who knows how long, hull torn open like something had reached inside and scooped out its guts.
Bodies everywhere. Crew still strapped to their stations. Skin turned to black glass.
And that sphere, embedded in the captain's chair. Perfectly round. Perfectly black.
The moment his fingers brushed it, the thing crumbled.
Now this.
"Synchronization progress: 47%..."
"Stop. Hey—stop that." Jin waved his hand through the text. It flickered but didn't vanish. "I don't have time for First Contact bullshit. I've got two days before—"
"...99%... 100%."
"Synchronization complete."
The text shifted. Changed color to something that hurt to look at directly.
"Welcome, Host. You have been selected to inherit the Stellar Genome."
"Type: Star Devourer /// Rarity: Mythical /// Status: UNSEALED"
"Current evolution stage: Hatchling. Genetic capacity: 0/1000."
Jin's breathing sped up. The suit's recycler couldn't keep pace—each breath tasted stale, used up. His heart hammered so hard he thought it might crack a rib.
"This is a virus. I touched alien tech and now I'm infected. I'm going to crystallize like those poor bastards back there, aren't I?"
"Negative. Host vitals stable."
The voice was too calm. Too clean.
"Stellar Genome is not a pathogen. It is an evolutionary catalyst."
"That's worse!" Jin kicked off a support beam, drifting toward the exit. His mag-boots scraped against twisted metal. "That's so much worse than a virus—"
A metallic screech cut through the silence.
Jin froze.
Something moved beyond the torn hull. Big. Segmented. Silhouetted against distant stars that suddenly seemed too far away.
"...oh no."
"Warning: Hostile entity detected."
The text flashed red.
"Classification: Void Serpent /// Threat level: EXTREME"
"Recommended action—"
"I know!" Jin launched himself toward the exit, jets firing at max. "Evacuate! I'm evacuating!"
Void Serpents were nightmare stories. The kind of thing old spacers talked about in bars to scare rookies. Alien creatures that lived in deep space, drawn to dead ships like sharks to blood.
They were supposed to be rare. Supposed to avoid populated sectors.
Jin's luck had always been shit.
He shot through the hull breach. Open space. The Lucky Star floated fifty meters away—his junker salvage ship, held together with hope and stolen parts. Airlock still open. So close.
Behind him, the screeching got louder.
The Void Serpent emerged from the wreckage—purple chitin, segments the size of cargo containers, head full of crystalline teeth that bent light in ways that made his eyes water. Bioluminescent patterns pulsed across its body.
And it was fast. Too fast.
"Distance to entity: 200 meters."
Jin didn't look back. Just flew. Maneuvering jets screaming, fuel gauge dropping into red.
"180 meters."
The Lucky Star's airlock. Right there. Twenty meters.
"150 meters."
The serpent opened its jaws.
"Entity preparing to attack. Impact in—"
Jin grabbed the airlock frame, swung inside, slammed the emergency close. The outer door started sliding shut.
Too slow.
Everything on this ship was too slow.
The serpent's head crashed into the closing door. The impact sent the Lucky Star spinning. Jin's shoulder hit the bulkhead hard enough to crack something. Alarms everywhere. Red lights. The smell of burning circuits.
He scrambled through the inner door, sealed it, sprinted toward the cockpit.
The ship shuddered. Metal groaned.
"Hull breach detected. Outer airlock compromised. Structural integrity: 34%."
Jin threw himself into the pilot's chair. Hands flying across controls he'd repaired a hundred times. Engine ignition. Reactor spinning up with that awful whine that meant it might explode or might work—fifty-fifty odds.
Through the viewport: the Void Serpent coiling around his ship. Crushing it. Its body starting to glow with that same painful light.
"Entity charging energy attack."
Jin's fingers slipped on the plasma thruster controls. Sweat in his eyes. "Come on, come on—"
"Estimated power output: Sufficient to destroy host vessel."
"Yeah, I figured!" His voice cracked. "I don't have weapons! I don't have shields! I've got nothing!"
"Stellar Genome recommends: Activate emergency protocol."
"What protocol?!"
"Initiating First Feeding."
The notification flashed purple.
"Wait—what? No, I didn't agree to—"
"Warning: Host has insufficient genetic capacity for normal evolution."
The text stuttered. Glitched.
"Emergency measure required /// Activating Star Devourer ability..."
"...CONSUME."
The black mark on Jin's palm—the one that had appeared when he touched the sphere—flared with light that felt cold and hot at the same time.
The light shot through the viewport. Through the hull. Straight toward the serpent.
The creature screamed.
Jin heard it. Actually heard it, even though there was no air in space to carry sound. The noise crawled inside his skull and vibrated in his teeth.
Purple light wrapped around the serpent's body. Held it. The creature thrashed, segments crashing against the Lucky Star's hull, but the light wouldn't let go.
And then it started pulling.
Not the serpent's body. Something deeper. Jin could feel it through the mark—a hunger that didn't belong to him but was using him anyway. Ravenous. Endless.
The serpent dissolved. Chitin turned translucent, then transparent, then into streams of glowing particles flowing back toward the ship. Toward Jin. Toward his hand.
He tried to pull away. His hand wouldn't move.
The particles poured into the mark. Into him.
"Void Serpent consumed."
Jin's vision went white. Then black. Then colors that didn't have names.
Information flooded his brain—not words, but pure knowledge burned directly into his neurons. How the serpent moved through space. How it sensed prey. How its teeth crystallized anything they touched.
"Genetic material absorbed."
"Genetic capacity: 847/1000."
"New traits available..."
Jin doubled over in the pilot's chair, gasping. The cockpit spun. His hand felt like someone had stuck it in a furnace.
The mark had spread up his wrist. Black veins crawling under his skin, pulsing in rhythm with his heartbeat.
No. Not his heartbeat. Something else.
"What did you do to me?"
No answer. Just the hum of the reactor and that echo of hunger, waiting beneath his thoughts.
"The Stellar Genome has granted you the ability to consume and evolve."
The voice was back. Still too calm.
"By devouring other organisms, you may integrate their genetic traits and advance your own evolution."
Jin stared at his hand. At the empty space where a creature the size of a building used to be.
"I'm not..." His voice sounded wrong. Hollow. "I'm just a salvager. I find things. Sell them. That's it."
"Incorrect."
The word hit him like a slap.
"You are now a Star Devourer. Your purpose is to consume, evolve, and ascend."
"The galaxy is full of prey. You need only hunt."
Jin wanted to laugh. Or scream. Or rip the mark off his skin even if it took the whole hand with it.
But he didn't.
His hands still shook on the controls.
"Genetic integration options available."
The system didn't ask. Just started listing traits like a menu at a restaurant where everything was made of nightmare.
Jin looked at the stars and said.
"Show me what i can become with this power."