The Hungry Dark

Dr. Laurie Obregon, a reclusive astrobiologist haunted by her daughter’s death, is humanity’s last hope. Her experimental cybernetic implant—forged from the wreckage of a colony ship disaster—allows her to commune with voidblooms, bioluminescent organisms that make interstellar travel possible. But when her crew answers a distress call near a black hole’s edge, they uncover a derelict alien megastructure… and learn the blooms are not tools, but sentient warnings.

The voidblooms whisper a terrible truth: harvesting them has weakened a prison holding a cosmic entity that feeds on civilizations. As the crew fractures—torn between survival, guilt, and madness, Laurie’s implant reveals darker secrets. The entity knows her grief. It offers her daughter’s resurrection in exchange for freedom. But the voidblooms plead for sacrifice, urging her to seal the horror… even if it dooms humanity.

Now, in the shadow of a black hole that watches with a star-forged eye, Laurie must confront the lies festering in her own mind. Is her implant a tool, a traitor, or something far older? And as her body unravels into bark and static, will she resist the siren song of a second chance… or become the architect of humanity’s extinction?

A fusion of Annihilation’s body horror and Event Horizon’s cosmic dread, The Hungry Dark is a claustrophobic odyssey exploring the cost of survival in a universe where love and guilt are the deadliest fuels.