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Death.

In the span of twelve Adrestian hours, the Crystal Castle grew a dozen new sparkling rooms and four more iridescent towers. For the first time in fifty standard years, the massive gossamer-stone structure, which hung in the black void of space like a blue jewel on a queen’s crown, expanded from the size of a small spaceport to that of a tiny town.

On the same wake-cycle, the immortal corpse of Doctor Remi Isles, whose body remained unchanged since her original entombment in the Castle’s walls, was discovered to have shrunk to a mummified husk. Remi Isles’ body, hanging like a bug caught in amber, forever encased in glittering walls, had finally been devoured by the structure she’d devoted her life to studying.

With Doctor Isles succumbing to the universal force of decay, I found myself wandering one of the Castle’s new rooms in the bulky cast of my spacesuit, feeling certain for once what the Universe expected of me. I watched the Adrestian system’s tiny sun cast rainbow prisms through a refracting panel on one of the new room’s ceilings and knew the time had come for my own final act of devotion.

I alone remembered how the Castle trapped Doctor Isles half a century before. I, Professor Cassandra Kan of the University of the Adrestian Star System, knew that the Crystal Castle only grew larger when it wanted to eat.

For another five days, I allowed the students to study in the Castle as I lectured in our research station. Tyrant-like, I demanded that no one enter the new wing alone, forbidding anyone from staring at the Castle’s prismed lights.

When I’d been a student and Doctor Isles had been my teacher, I thought her theories were ridiculous. Believing that the Crystal Castle was a sentient lifeform was a baseless hope, a dream bordering on pseudo-science. I’d been avoiding Remi Isles for a lifetime, ignoring the trauma of losing my mentor to the very artifact we’d both been studying for as long as I could, until the Castle made my choice for me.

My final days became consumed with thoughts of the Castle. When I slept in my solitary bunk on the research station—the outpost constructed to study the object where I’d lived most of my life—I dreamt of dancing through the crystal structure’s newly grown rooms without a spacesuit. In those same visions, the Castle spoke to me through clouds of iridescent dust which settled on my skin, transdermal messages of comfort which melted into my mind like telepathic snow.

Subject to less than a week of the Castle’s telepathic interference, I became convinced that our inability to understand the artifact came from our refusal to acknowledge its true nature. The first satellite imagery had been taken of the Castle winking on the outskirts of the Adrestian star system seventy years before only because the Castle wanted to be seen.

The Crystal Castle erected itself in beautiful and bizarre shapes to dazzle the human race, choosing to consume one person a quarter century to sate its appetite. The Crystal Castle only entrusted the truth of its existence to its true devotees, and I was finally prepared to prove to it my worth.

On the sixth night following the Castle’s expansion, I waited for the research station’s sleep cycle to begin and took a space shuttle to the Castle alone. In one of the new rooms, I turned my space suit’s life support systems off and stood in reverent ecstasy with my heart open and my mind calmed. I watched, enraptured as a rainbow beam expanded across my upper body in a shower of gossamer snow, until my vision was completely obscured by hardening beams of light. Warm pressure encompassed me like a mother’s hug as the crystal walls closed in at last.

I was unaware that any time had passed at all when I woke to the sight of my students crying at the entrance of my new room. I watched them in unmoving half-existence as they held each other in mourning, too afraid to enter my hungry new sanctuary.

A plaque with an inscription now serves as the only monument of my life’s work, a few words mounted above the room I dwell within, no more an answer to the Castle’s beautiful mystery than the dried husk of my professor down the hall. All that matters now is that I’ve satisfied myself and that I may rest knowing the Crystal Castle enjoys me as much as I treasure it.

“Here lies Professor Cassandra Kan, expert in Non-Human Archeology—she died in devotion to what she loved.”

Author’s note

This piece is an example of one of my favorite tropes in media - a person becomes obsessed with an unorthodox interest and allows it to consume them. I imagine how impossible it would be to resist when the void you’ve been staring at starts staring at you too! 

Cheyanne Brabo

Cheyanne Brabo (she/her) is a queer fiction writer from Northern California. Her work appears in Scissor Sisters Sapphic Villain’s Anthology, Broken Olive Branches Charity Anthology, Unnerving Magazine, and Moth Eaten Mag. She is the winner of Alien Buddha Press’ 2024 Horror Showdown and has been Pushcart Nominated. When she’s not writing, she and her golden retriever enjoy laying in their local waterways and pretending to be bloated corpses.

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