While chasing your ghost, I became one myself, A shadow lost on a forgotten shelf. Your whispers lingered in the midnight air, Leading me deeper, though you weren’t there.

I followed your footsteps, faint and cold, Through paths where memories silently unfold. The echoes called, a haunting refrain, Each step closer, yet bound by pain.

The mirror showed a hollowed face, Eyes like wells, empty of grace. My voice grew faint, a whisper at most, While chasing your ghost, I became my own ghost.

Through the veil of dusk, I still pursued, Hoping to touch the pieces of you. But the closer I came, the more I knew— I wasn’t chasing you; I was losing “me” too.

Now I drift in the spaces you once filled, A soul untethered, quiet and stilled. For in chasing your ghost, I lost my place, A specter forever, in time’s embrace.

The thick, sulfuric air clung to Dr. Elena Voss’s faceplate as she stepped off the shuttle ramp. Beneath her boots, the ashen soil of Gliese-712c crunched like brittle glass. The landscape was an eerie, monochromatic expanse, dotted with jagged outcrops of obsidian-like rock that reflected faintly under the dim red sun. Her team fanned out behind her, scanners buzzing as they began the monotonous task of cataloging the planet’s ecosystem—or lack thereof.

“Elena, over here,” called Malik, the team’s exobiologist, his voice crackling over the comms.

She turned and trudged toward him, her boots kicking up gritty plumes of dust. Malik was crouched near one of the rock outcrops, his gloved hand hovering over something glistening in the ground.

“What is it?” she asked, kneeling beside him.

“Some kind of… secretion? Gelatinous, translucent. Almost looks like it’s part of the rock, but—wait.” Malik adjusted his handheld scanner, frowning. “It’s organic.”