The universe is not empty. It never was.
Beneath the silence between stars, something breathes. Something dreams. Something watches from the dark with eyes that were old before the first sun ignited.
You have felt it. In nightmares you can't remember. In whispers you convince yourself are nothing. In the feeling that you are never truly alone.
You were right.
A mining station where children learn the length of your intestines. A moon that is not a moon-a chrysalis wrapped around a sleeping god. A fleet of dead ships that move in formations that shouldn't be possible. A wormhole that opens not to another place, but to a between-where the darkness has texture and the silence has teeth.
Nine stories. Nine descents into the beautiful, terrible truth:
We are not the observers.
We are the observed.
And something out there-something patient, something hungry, something that has been waiting for longer than time has meaning-is finally turning its attention this way.
The Colosseum of Tears is not a book you read.
It is a door you open.
And once opened...