Ums512 1h10 Natv -

Then they saw it.

For the first time in years, he smiled. “With pleasure, Captain.”

“Good.” She smiled. “Debris drifts.”

It wasn’t a glowing orb or a swirling maelstrom. It was a hole —a perfect sphere of absolute black, rimmed by a thin, furious ring of blue-shifted light. It looked like an eye. An eye that was watching them.

The UMS512 was a salvage scow, not a hunter-killer. Its hull was a patchwork of stolen alloys, its engines wheezed like an asthmatic cyborg, and its crew—five debt-ridden souls—had exactly one thing going for them: desperation.

They were paid in one thing only: a new course, burned into the nav computer by the station’s dying AI.

“It’s alive!” Kaelen shouted. “It’s a predator! ‘NATV’ isn’t Natural Vector—it’s Narrative Vector ! It reacts to conscious intent!”