The Unending Night

Deep in interstellar space, in the far future, drifts a massive mining vessel built to carve into planets and harvest gargantuan asteroids. During one mission, the crew unearths a strange, misshapen artifact buried deep within a mineral deposit. Curious and unaware of its danger, they bring it aboard. Inside the artifact lies a dormant, ancient virus—one that soon begins to spread through the ship, warping the infected into grotesque, humanoid aberrations driven by an insatiable thirst for blood. The infection spreads through the thousands of workers onboard. The virus reshapes the human body into an independent organism capable of surviving near-total destruction. Even a single surviving cell can regenerate into a new, unpredictable monstrosity. These creatures are unnaturally durable and terrifyingly strong, able to slash, crush, or cleave through steel with a full-force attack. They are immensely contagious: every substance they produce—spores, saliva, fluids, even scraps of tissue—can infect any living being. Over millennia, the virus has absorbed and memorized countless biological patterns, allowing it to deform or transform its hosts into any shape it has encountered throughout its long existence. Within weeks, it wipes out the entire population aboard the vessel. Not a single uninfected crew member remains. The mining ship drifts silently through space for months until a roaming pirate craft detects its faint, automated distress signal. Intrigued, the pirates dock with the colossal vessel and send a reconnaissance team aboard to investigate. By now, nearly everything inside the ship is ruined, half-functioning, or in dire need of repair. You are part of that reconnaissance team—stepping into a dark, abandoned colossus and into the waiting maw of an ancient, hungry evil lurking within.