The bridge of green light was not merely a structure; it was a sensation. As they walked across the shimmering, meter-wide path, a feeling of calm washed over them, a stark contrast to the adrenaline-fueled tension of the last hour. The air, still and sterile in the Nexus, now felt soft, carrying with it the faint, phantom scent of damp earth and growing things. It was a gentle, welcoming prelude to what they knew must be a grueling test.

They stepped off the bridge onto the green-lit platform, a circular dais identical to the one in the Nexus. The moment all five of them were present, the light bridge behind them dissolved, leaving them isolated. The platform was bare, except for five shallow, circular depressions in the crystalline floor, arranged in a pentagon.

[THIS IS THE FIRST TRIAL: THE TEST OF EMPATHY,] the Warden’s voice resonated around them, calm and instructive. [YOUR SPECIES IS COMPOSED OF INDIVIDUALS, EACH A UNIVERSE OF PRIVATE EXPERIENCE, PAIN, AND JOY. TRUE UNITY, TRUE COOPERATION, IS IMPOSSIBLE WITHOUT THE ABILITY TO BRIDGE THE GAP BETWEEN THESE UNIVERSES. THE ABILITY TO FEEL ANOTHER’S BURDEN AS YOUR OWN. THIS TRIAL WILL MEASURE THAT CAPACITY.]

As the Warden spoke, a figure materialized in the center of the platform. It was a hologram, but one of perfect, heart-wrenching fidelity. It was an Obsidian.

It was not the monstrous creature of nightmare that some on Earth might have imagined. It was a being of sublime, sorrowful grace. Tall and slender, its form seemed carved from polished, dark volcanic glass, echoing the material of the station itself. Its limbs were long, its movements slow and deliberate. It had no discernible face in the human sense—no eyes, no mouth—only a smooth, featureless head that tilted with an inquisitive air. Yet, somehow, it projected an aura of immense wisdom and an even greater sadness.

[THIS IS A MEMORIAL ECHO,] the Warden explained. [A RECONSTRUCTION OF THE LAST OBSIDIAN, THE ONE WHO INITIATED THE FINAL PROTOCOLS OF THIS STATION BEFORE YOUR SPECIES HAD EVEN LEARNED TO WRITE. IT IS IN PAIN. ITS SPECIES IS EXTINCT. ITS LONG VIGIL IS OVER. IT IS ALONE.]

The Obsidian figure knelt, its glassy hands touching the floor. A wave of palpable grief washed over the platform, a psychic moan of loss so profound it made Amara’s knees weak. It was the collective sorrow of a species that had watched the stars grow cold, a loneliness that spanned a billion years.

[YOUR TASK IS TO SOOTHE ITS PAIN,] the Warden instructed. [EACH OF YOU MUST STEP INTO ONE OF THE DEPRESSIONS. YOU WILL BE LINKED, YOUR CONSCIOUSNESSES BRIDGED TO THE MEMORIAL ECHO. YOU MUST FIND A WAY TO SHARE AND ALLEVIATE ITS GRIEF. BUT BE WARNED: EMPATHY IS A MIRROR. THE SORROW YOU TAKE ON WILL BECOME YOUR OWN. IF THE COLLECTIVE GRIEF OVERWHELMS YOU, YOU WILL FAIL. YOUR MINDS WILL BE… DAMAGED. PROCEED.]

The team exchanged nervous glances. This was not a puzzle of logic or a test of strength. It was a challenge of emotional fortitude.

“It’s a feedback loop,” Thorne murmured, his physicist’s mind trying to model the problem. “We have to absorb its pain without creating a resonance cascade of despair in ourselves. We need to act as emotional dampers.”

“How do we do that?” Cortez asked, his hand hovering near the sidearm holstered on his thigh, a useless gesture that betrayed his need for a tangible solution.

Amara looked at the grieving figure. Its sorrow was a tangible thing, a weight on the air. “We can’t just absorb it,” she said, thinking back to her plea. “You can’t empty an ocean with a bucket. We have to… transmute it. We have to offer it something in return. Not logic. Not pity. Connection.”

One by one, they stepped into the shallow depressions. The moment Amara’s boots settled into place, the world dissolved. The crystalline platform vanished, replaced by a shared mindscape, a grey, desolate plane under a starless sky. The five of them stood there, disembodied points of consciousness, able to feel each other’s presence as a faint warmth. In the center of this mental space was the Obsidian, a towering figure of black glass, radiating waves of cold, crushing despair.

The grief hit them like a physical force. Amara felt the loss of a billion billion souls, the finality of being the last of your kind, the keeper of memories that would die with you. It was a sorrow so complete, so absolute, it threatened to extinguish her own sense of self. She felt Thorne’s scientific curiosity curdle into existential dread, saw Wei’s iron discipline begin to fracture under the sheer weight of futility. She could feel Cortez’s bravado melting into fear, and Orlov’s quiet composure being eroded by a wave of cold loneliness.

They were drowning. The Warden had been right. The pain was too much.

Then, a new sensation cut through the despair. It was sharp, ugly, and jarringly out of place. It was not the pure, ancient sorrow of the Obsidian. It was a human emotion, raw and venomous.

Greed.

It emanated from one of their own. From Cortez.

In the physical world, Cortez’s eyes were screwed shut, his face a mask of concentration like the others. But in the mindscape, Amara could feel the true nature of his thoughts. He wasn’t trying to soothe the Obsidian. He was analyzing the connection. He saw the trial not as a test of empathy, but as an opportunity. This direct neural interface, this link between minds… it was the key. Alien technology wasn’t just in the walls and the power core; it was here, in the software that ran their very thoughts. If he could understand it, if he could find a way to replicate it, to control it…

He imagined returning to Earth not as a hero, but as a king. The sole possessor of a technology that could read and influence minds. He saw nations bowing to his will, corporations begging for his secrets. The power would be absolute. He was a career soldier from a poor background, always feeling overlooked, always resentful of the officers and scientists who commanded him. This was his chance to rise above them all, to seize the power they had stumbled upon for himself, for his country, for the glory he felt he was owed.

His selfish, avaricious thoughts acted like poison in the shared consciousness. They did not soothe the Obsidian’s grief; they insulted it. They were a screech of static in a symphony of sorrow. The Obsidian’s despair intensified, lashing out, focusing on the impurity in their midst. The psychic pressure doubled.

Orlov’s consciousness flickered, nearly overwhelmed. “Something is wrong,” his thought echoed in the space. “There is a dissonance.”

Amara felt it too. The pure, clean blade of the Obsidian’s grief was now tainted with a familiar, ugly human stain. She focused on the source, on the hot, greedy spike of Cortez’s ambition. She saw his plan, his betrayal, with perfect clarity. He was actively trying to record the architecture of the neural link, using his suit’s internal processors to piggyback on the station’s systems. He was smuggling out the most dangerous technology of all: the blueprint for mental domination.

The realization was a splash of ice water. There was a traitor among them.

“Colonel!” Amara projected, her thought a sharp cry. “It’s Cortez! He’s not with us! He’s trying to steal the interface tech!”

Wei’s consciousness, which had been buckling, solidified into a pillar of cold fury. He focused on Cortez, and the disciplined mind of the Colonel slammed into the soldier’s greedy fantasies. “Cortez! Stand down! That is a direct order!”

Cortez’s mental voice was a snarling retort. “You’re not in command here, old man! This is a new world, with new rules. My rules.”

The conflict between them sent a new shockwave of chaos through the link, further agonizing the Obsidian echo. The grey landscape around them began to crack, fissures of black nothingness spreading from the Obsidian’s feet. They were failing the test. The countdown clock was still running, and they were trapped in a battle for their own souls.

Amara knew they couldn’t win like this. They couldn’t soothe the Obsidian while fighting amongst themselves. They had to excise the poison. But how? They were disembodied minds.

Then she remembered her own words to the Warden. The choice to place another’s well-being above your own. It wasn’t about absorbing the pain. It was about offering a purer emotion in its place.

She reached out, not to the Obsidian, but to her own teammates—to Wei, to Thorne, to Orlov. She didn’t send words. She sent a feeling. It was the memory of her father teaching her to read the stars in a cold desert sky. It was the warmth of shared discovery, the quiet pride of mentorship, the simple, profound connection of a shared human experience. It was a memory of pure, selfless love.

Thorne responded first. He shared the joy of his first great breakthrough, the moment an elegant equation bloomed in his mind, revealing a hidden truth of the universe—not for fame, not for glory, but for the sheer beauty of understanding.

Orlov, the quiet soldier, shared a memory of returning home from a long deployment, the silent, tearful embrace of his wife, a moment of peace so profound it outweighed years of hardship.

Wei, the hardened Colonel, shared the memory of holding his newborn daughter, the overwhelming, illogical, fierce protectiveness that had reshaped his entire world.

They were building a fire in the desolate landscape. A small, warm campfire of shared humanity, of love, of hope, of grace. They offered these pure, selfless moments to the Obsidian, not to replace its grief, but to sit with it, to share the warmth. They were not trying to take its pain away; they were offering to share its burden, to let it know that even at the end of all things, it was not truly alone.

The effect was transformative. The cold, crushing waves of despair began to lessen. The Obsidian’s towering form seemed to shrink, to soften. It turned its featureless face towards their small fire of shared memories, as if warming its glassy hands.

But Cortez was immune. He was walled off by his own greed. His consciousness was a cold, hard rock that the warmth could not penetrate. He was still focused on his theft, his betrayal poisoning their offering. He was an anchor, dragging them all down.

Amara realized what she had to do. It was a terrible choice. They couldn't force him to be empathetic. But they could sever him from the link. She focused the collective goodwill of the four of them, the purity of their shared memories, and formed it into a blade of light. With a final, sorrowful thought, she swung it.

“I’m sorry,” she projected, and severed Cortez’s consciousness from their own.

In the physical world, Cortez’s body convulsed. A stream of blood trickled from his nose as the neural interface violently rejected him. He collapsed to the floor of the platform, unconscious, his part in the trial over.

Freed from his toxic influence, the team’s offering to the Obsidian was now pure. Their shared warmth enveloped the ancient being. The crushing grief didn’t vanish, but it changed. It became bearable, a shared sorrow, a bittersweet memory rather than a consuming void.

The Obsidian echo looked at them, and though it had no eyes, they felt its gratitude. It slowly raised one hand, not in threat, but in a gesture of acknowledgment. Then, it faded, dissolving into motes of green light that rained down gently upon them.

The mindscape dissolved. They were back on the crystalline platform. The green light of the trial pulsed once, brightly, then settled into a steady, satisfied glow. Cortez lay unconscious on the floor.

[TRIAL OF EMPATHY… COMPLETE,] the Warden’s voice announced. [THE SUBJECT SPECIES HAS DEMONSTRATED THE CAPACITY TO SHARE AN EMOTIONAL BURDEN AND OFFER SOLACE. YOU HAVE ALSO DEMONSTRATED THE CAPACITY TO IDENTIFY AND ISOLATE AN INTERNAL CORRUPTION. THE ASSESSMENT IS NOTED. PROCEED TO THE NEXT TRIAL.]

A new bridge of light, this one a cool, analytical blue, formed, leading from their platform to the next. But the team did not move. They stared down at the body of their fallen teammate, the reality of the betrayal settling upon them like a shroud. They had passed the test, but the cost had been high. They had proven they could unify, but only by excising one of their own. The victory felt hollow, and the remaining trials loomed before them, now more daunting than ever.