STARLIGHT PARASITE

They called it The Eye of Nysa—a rogue star caught drifting between galaxies, flickering faintly like a beacon no one meant to follow. The crew of the long-range explorer Odyssia didn’t go looking for it. The Eye found them.
It started with light.
A pale shimmer that leaked into the observation deck’s viewports—an impossible glow with no known source, pulsing like a heartbeat. Dr. Vanya Roth, xenobiologist, was the first to see it. She stared at it for five minutes, unmoving, before someone shook her.
“Are you okay?” asked Lieutenant Bray.
She turned slowly, smile thin. “It’s not a star.”

By the next day, Vanya was different.
She stopped eating. Her voice came out slow, deliberate, like she had to remember how to form words. When Captain Halverson asked what she thought the Eye was, she whispered: “It’s looking for hosts.”
They isolated her in medbay.

But the light spread.
Not outside the ship—inside. The walls of the Odyssia developed a soft bioluminescent shimmer, pulsing in rhythm. The engineer, Cortes, opened a wall panel and found no power source—just a strange, translucent film spread over the wires, like roots searching for blood.
He burned it with a plasma torch.
It grew back.

Day 3. Vanya vanished from medbay.
Security footage showed her stepping into a blank hallway—and vanishing mid-step. The lights flickered, and then she was gone, like the ship had swallowed her whole.
Captain Halverson declared emergency protocol and rerouted the ship away from the Eye.
The ship didn’t move.

Day 4.
Bray began vomiting black fluid.
Cortes started humming a melody no one taught him, one that made others’ skin crawl. He called it the song from the starlight. When asked how he knew it, he said: “She sings it to me when I sleep.”
No one slept much after that.

Halverson locked himself in the cockpit, sending distress signals back to Earth, but no one responded. Not because of interference—but because the ship’s log showed no signal was ever sent.
Something was rerouting their messages. Erasing their voices before they could escape.
Bray died that night. His corpse dissolved into a puddle of black liquid that slithered into the vent system.

Day 5.
Cortes disappeared.
Security found a smear of bloody handprints leading to the maintenance shaft—and a series of symbols etched in the floor, spirals and lines like constellations collapsing into one point. The Eye.
Vanya’s voice played over the intercom, though she was still missing.
“Stop running. You’ll only make it hungry.”

Day 6.
They found the nest.
In hydroponics, the plants had overgrown, mutated—tendrils wrapping around glowing sacs suspended like lanterns. Inside each, something writhed, half-formed.
One of the sacs burst.
Inside was Cortes—or what used to be him. His skin was transparent. Beneath it, black threads pulsed, carrying starlight through his veins. He opened his mouth and whispered, “It needs a navigator.”
Halverson shot him twice. Cortes didn’t bleed. He collapsed like empty skin.

Day 7.
Only two remained: Halverson and Nav Officer Elia Chen.
They tried to escape in the shuttle. The moment it launched, the light returned—stronger now, like a storm of whispers behind their eyes. Elia screamed and clawed at her face.
When Halverson looked, her eyes were gone—burned out, replaced by twin pinpricks of starlight.
She whispered, “We’re part of it now.”
He ejected her into space.

Day 8.
The ship changed.
The corridors lengthened. Doors led nowhere. Gravity shifted at will. Halverson ran, hiding in supply closets, talking to himself to drown out the constant thrum in his head.
It wasn’t words anymore.
Just hunger.
He found Vanya again—or something wearing her shape.
She floated in midair, suspended by threads of light. Her limbs were longer now. Her skin too smooth. Her smile not quite human.
“We were never meant to travel this far,” she said gently. “We’re intruders. And it’s lonely out here.”
He raised his gun.
She tilted her head.
“You brought it with you the moment you saw it. The Eye doesn’t move. It waits. It projects itself. Into minds. Into ships. Into you.”
He pulled the trigger.
Click.
Empty.

Day 9.
Halverson sat in the cockpit, starlight bleeding in through the glass.
He had stopped blinking.
The Eye pulsed before him—no longer distant.
It filled the view. It was the view.
He opened the comms, placed a single repeating transmission on loop.
“This is the Odyssia. Do not approach the Eye of Nysa. It’s not a star. It’s not light. It’s a parasite. It lives in perception. If you see it, it sees you.”
Behind him, the hatch slid open with a soft hiss.
Light spilled in.

AFTERMATH LOG – DEEP SCAN UNIT 77
Recovered from derelict vessel Odyssia – drifting between sectors.
Crew status: None found.
Ship systems overwritten by unknown protocol labeled “Vanya”.
Primary communication still active. Message on loop:
“…do not look at it. Do not chart it. Do not name it.”
Final words from Captain Halverson:
“The stars are not lifeless. Some are mouths.”