Eclipse Signal

The Luna Outpost-9 was humanity’s oldest settlement on the Moon. Built in 2081, it was supposed to be a hub for asteroid mining logistics and deep space communication. But by 2130, only a skeleton crew remained—eight people living under a worn metal dome, surrounded by endless grey dust.

On the morning of the Solar Eclipse of 2131, Earth received a strange, low-frequency signal from Outpost-9. It wasn’t part of any scheduled transmission. The message contained coordinates, a set of strange pulsating tones, and… a faint human scream buried under static.

The Astro-Rescue Division immediately dispatched a shuttle to investigate. Commander Aiden Holt, a war veteran turned rescue officer, led the mission. His team consisted of Dr. Lira Osei, a linguistics expert, Chief Engineer Marik Chen, and two security officers.

Arrival

When the shuttle docked, the airlock controls were already open, as if someone—or something—had been expecting them. Inside, the corridors were dimly lit, with emergency red lights casting long, shifting shadows. The oxygen levels were normal, but the smell was wrong—metallic, almost like burnt blood.

In the control room, every monitor displayed the same message in glitching text:

"WE WATCHED THE SKY. THE SKY WATCHED BACK."

The crew of Outpost-9 was nowhere to be seen.

The First Signs

Dr. Osei began analyzing the strange signal from Earth. The tones matched no known language, but their structure was… organic. “It’s not random,” she whispered. “It’s… breathing.”

Meanwhile, Marik checked the station logs. Every entry ended abruptly two days ago, replaced by corrupted files showing lunar surface footage—grainy clips of something moving in the shadows. But there’s no atmosphere, no wind, and no life on the Moon… or so they thought.

Disappearance

That night, one of the security officers vanished during his patrol. Holt found his helmet lying in the airlock—visor shattered from the inside. The station’s cameras showed him stepping out onto the surface, walking calmly toward the black horizon… until his figure simply dissolved into static.

The team decided to search the tunnels beneath Outpost-9, where mining operations had been abandoned years earlier. The deeper they went, the colder it became. Their comms began picking up faint whispers, sometimes in English, sometimes in an unknown tongue. Dr. Osei swore one voice was her mother’s, who had died decades ago.

The Core Chamber

At the end of the lowest tunnel, they found a massive spherical chamber carved into the bedrock. In the center floated a black crystalline object, humming with the same rhythm as the signal.

Marik scanned it and recoiled. “It’s emitting… not just energy. It’s emitting thoughts.”

Suddenly, the crystal pulsed, and every helmet radio crackled with the voices of the missing crew. Help us. Come closer.

Against Holt’s orders, Osei stepped forward, touching the crystal. Her visor fogged instantly. She turned to look at them—her eyes now reflecting the black void.

The Collapse

Alarms blared. The lunar surface above began to fracture, as if something immense was pushing upward from beneath. Holt dragged Marik toward the exit, but shadows—tall, angular shapes—emerged from the cracks in the ground. Their movements were slow, but their presence was suffocating, bending the air around them.

Holt realized the truth too late: the crystal wasn’t just a beacon—it was a door. And the eclipse had opened it.

Final Transmission

Only Holt made it back to the shuttle. His final recorded message was transmitted moments before launch:

“Outpost-9 is gone. The Moon is no longer safe. The signal is a lure. They… wear the voices of the dead. If you hear them, don’t answer. Don’t ever answer.”

The shuttle’s cameras caught the station collapsing into the ground, swallowed whole by an impossible black fissure. The signal stopped… for now.