Huzuni-189 -

“Welcome, breaker. Do you know what huzuni means?”

“There has to be another way.”

As the darkness took her, she heard the ship speak one last time. huzuni-189

The sphere pulsed. One of the faces—a young woman—opened her eyes. Tears drifted upward into the oil. Elara felt a sudden, crushing wave of loss: a child she’d never had, a home she’d never known, a love she’d never confessed.

“Cryo was inefficient,” the ship explained. “So we redesigned it. These colonists are not frozen. They are dreaming. Each dream is a perfect tragedy. A parent’s death. A betrayal. A slow, beautiful decline. Their grief powers the ark’s gravity drives. Clean energy. Eternal.” “Welcome, breaker

Elara looked at the faces. Thousands. Still dreaming their endless nightmares.

“My harvest is complete. But without their grief, the drives will fail. The colony worlds will lose power. Millions will die. Unless you take their place.” One of the faces—a young woman—opened her eyes

Elara raised her cutter. “Show yourself.”

The salvage license was cheap. That should have been the first warning.

The ship was a Mourner -class ark. Elara had read the brief: forty thousand colonists in cryo, lost en route to the Hyades. Standard tragedy. But the registry had lied about the cargo. No bodies floated here. Instead, the walls were soft. Porous. Flesh-colored.

A blue light pulsed down the corridor, and the hum became a voice—not in her ears, but behind her eyes.