🩸Lu Chen’s finger pads brushed against the bone-patterned handle of the matte blue blade, and the unnervingly sticky sensation made cold sweat prickle down the back of his neck instantly📡. This was the only intact object they’d recovered from the twisted wreckage of an abandoned alien starship perched on the edge of the Orion Arm’s uncharted nebula. The exploration team’s initial analysis had dismissed it as a crude 3D-printed ceremonial dagger from a pre-spacefaring civilization—until Mechanic Lao Zhou’s eyes rolled back in his head, his consciousness siphoned into a hollow, desiccated shell the second his skin made contact with the handle💀. The medical officer’s shrill warnings over the team communicator were swallowed by the low, thrumming hum that now resonated through the starship’s hull, matching the faint pulse Lu Chen could feel thrumming up his arm from the blade. He watched, transfixed, as the ring handle slowly reshaped itself, its edges softening and molding perfectly to the curve of his palm, as if it had been forged specifically for him—or had been waiting eons for a vessel to claim🌌. The nebula outside the viewport warped into a grotesque, tentacle-like pattern identical to the carvings on the handle, and guttural, ancient whispers slithered into his mind, not through his ears, but through the neural link the blade had already forged with his forearm’s blood vessels. Lu Chen’s gaze darted to the blade tip, which now reflected not his own face, but a writhing mass of compound eyes and glistening mandibles🔮. The medical officer’s voice cut out abruptly, and the starship’s internal lights flickered to a dim, pulsing blue. Somewhere deep in the wreckage, a heavy, organic-sounding hatch creaked open, and Lu Chen’s fingers tightened around the handle, his own lips curling into a grin he didn’t recognize.