When the golden Ark emerged from hyperspace, Lin Ye saw none of the communications hub's radiance that the star charts said should have been there.
Altheimia, the Watchers' outpost that had once linked seven star systems, was now nothing but a metal graveyard floating on the edge of a dark red nebula. Countless ancient starship wrecks had interlocked and crushed against one another, forming a belt of ruins thousands of kilometers long. From afar, it looked like the skeleton of a dead behemoth laid bare in space.
The sickly-sweet stench of decay peculiar to the void hung in the air. Even through the shuttle's sealed cabin, Lin Ye could feel that skin-crawling malice. The intelligent system projected its scan results onto the viewport: dark purple fungal veins crawled over the metal surfaces of the entire wreckage belt, still pulsing with agonizing slowness, like blood vessels parasitizing a corpse.
"Contamination level confirmed: severe mycelial infestation. Suspected to be an early-stage hatchery for the 'void devourer,'" the system said without emotion. "Recommend activating the Ark's main cannon for orbital purification."
"No." Lin Ye shook his head and marked landing coordinates on the touch panel. "Flatten this place with the main cannon, and we destroy the records inside it too. I want to know who turned Kaguya into that."
He piloted the one-man shuttle through the broken deck of the largest mothership wreck. When his boots touched the decaying alloy walkway, the metal cracked like splintering joints. His searchlight swept across the corridor, revealing scorched runes on the walls-distress signals the Watcher civilization had burned into the metal with thermal weapons in its final moments. Their frantic strokes carried a terror that reached across ten thousand years.
At the end of the corridor, a desiccated corpse sat upright, frozen in its final posture.