VoidHive Codex — Arc 4, Chapter 19: The Threshold

[PERSONAL LOG — LT. SERA VANCE — DAY 1, ARCHITECT PROJECT]

They gave me a room.

That's the wrong word for it. A room implies walls, corners, a door that locks from the inside. What they gave me was a space — a hollow grown into the living structure of the Welcome Station, shaped to human proportions with an accuracy that felt deliberate and slightly wrong, the way a word sounds strange when you repeat it too many times.

The floor was warm. Not heated — warm, the way skin is warm. I didn't sleep on it.

Admiral Coss had approved my transfer with three words: Understood. Be careful. I don't know if that was an order or a prayer.

The Architects had not spoken to me since I crossed the threshold. But I could feel the station attending — a low, constant awareness pressing gently at the edges of my thoughts, like a hand resting on a shoulder without weight.

I am the first human to live inside one of their structures.

I am trying very hard not to think about what that means.