The static of the comms crackled as Lin Ye’s gloved fingers wrapped around the hilt of the blue dagger, its skull pommel glinting faintly in the flickering emergency lights of the derelict Federation warship Ethereal. “I told you to leave it be! Those things are cursed!” Old Joe’s voice cut through the noise, but Lin Ye, a star scavenger desperate for a payday, ignored him. The dagger’s serrated edge was caked with dried, bioluminescent Zerg blood, and the hollow carvings along its blade hummed with an unseen dark energy. As he clipped it to his utility belt, the comms died entirely. The warship’s bulkheads creaked, and whispers slithered into his ears, thin and icy like the vacuum of space. He drew the dagger, only to find his own blood seeping from the hilt’s eye sockets, staining his tactical glove. A broadcast blared from the ship’s speakers—his own voice, distorted and cold: “Welcome, 76th host of the Nether Frost Fang Soul Reaver…”. Lin Ye froze, watching as his reflection in the blade shifted, showing not his face, but the grinning skull from the pommel. The emergency lights flickered out, leaving only the dagger’s eerie blue glow to illuminate the pitch-dark corridor, where the whispers grew louder, closer, as if the walls themselves were breathing.