As Astra-9 drifted behind a massive fragment of rock and fell into deep natural shadow, something inside the station changed in a way no malfunction could explain. The lights did not simply flicker—they dimmed slowly, deliberately, as if the darkness outside were being drawn inward, pulled through the hull like a living tide. Emergency strips glowed weakly along the floors while the rest of the corridors drowned in a heavy, suffocating twilight. The crew carried portable lights, but even those beams seemed thinner than usual, swallowed at the edges by an unnatural density in the air. Then the sounds began: soft clicks echoing through the vents, spaced with unsettling precision—as if a creature were learning to walk on metal. When the crew stopped moving, the clicks stopped; when they moved, the sounds followed, always just a few steps behind, like footsteps made by a shadow with no weight. One technician swore he saw a section of the darkness detach from the wall—a ripple of deeper black sliding just beyond the reach of his flashlight. No one believed him out loud, yet no one doubted him privately, because they all felt the same cold prickling at their backs. The air grew warmer, almost damp, carrying a faint whispering vibration like breath filtering through the ducts. Shadows stretched in impossible angles, bending away from the light rather than with it, as if avoiding being exposed. Every system on the station seemed slower, more sluggish, as though the machinery itself were reluctant to move. Even speech felt out of place; conversations died mid-sentence, swallowed by the oppressive quiet. And through all of it, a haunting certainty spread among the crew: something was moving inside the darkness, watching them with patient curiosity, following them silently, and growing bolder each time the lights dimmed. It wasn't just that the darkness had entered the station—no, something far worse had happened. The darkness had begun to recognize them.