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The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/DueProgrammer8023 on 2026-02-06 11:43:31+00:00.

Hey everyone, this is my first sci-fi story, and I'm nervous sharing it. It's dark, told entirely from an alien perspective, where you never get inside a human's head.

"We did not understand faith until we watched it destroy us. We did not understand certainty until it became our extinction. They do not conquer. They inherit. And their God, it seems, has given them everything."

The Kethrai had existed in the spaces between stars for longer than most species could measure. They were not born. They did not die in ways that mattered. They simply were, and had always been, drifting through the black ocean of space like thoughts without a thinker. Their bodies, if they could be called bodies, were collections of crystalline structures that held memory and purpose the way flesh holds blood. They fed on the uncertainty of other beings. Doubt was their sustenance. The question marks that lived in every thinking mind were what kept them alive.

For millions of cycles, the Kethrai had moved through the galaxy like harvesters moving through fields. They found worlds where life had learned to think, to wonder, to question itself. They descended on these worlds not with weapons but with presence. Their mere existence near a thinking being created ripples of self-doubt. The crystalline surfaces of their forms reflected not light but possibility. When a creature looked at a Kethrai, it saw all the versions of itself that might have been, all the choices that led nowhere, all the futures that would never arrive. This was enough. Most species collapsed inward when faced with the weight of their own unrealized potential.

The Kethrai did not see this as cruelty. They were doing what their nature demanded, the same way a plant turns toward light or water flows downward. They were part of the galaxy's ecosystem. They kept populations from growing too confident, too certain, too stable. They were a kind of balance.

In all their long existence, the Kethrai had never encountered a species they could not feed upon. Every thinking being questioned itself eventually. Every civilization carried doubt at its core. This was simply the nature of consciousness. To think was to wonder if the thinking was correct. To choose was to wonder if the choice was right. The Kethrai had built their entire understanding of reality on this one unchanging truth.

Then the humans came.

The first detection happened in a region of space the Kethrai had been observing for several cycles. A cluster of younger species had begun reaching out beyond their home systems. The Kethrai watched with patient interest. Young species were always the richest in doubt. They questioned everything because they knew so little. Their uncertainty was pure and abundant.

The human ships appeared at the edge of the cluster without warning. The Kethrai noticed them immediately, not because of their size, though they were large, but because of their shape. Every species the Kethrai had encountered built ships according to function. Spheres for efficiency. Cylinders for speed. Irregular forms that suggested organic growth or mathematical precision. The humans built something else entirely.

Their ships were towers. Massive vertical structures that moved through space as if space itself should make way for them. The surfaces were covered in markings that seemed to shift and flow even though they were clearly solid. Lights moved across the hulls in patterns that suggested language, but not the kind of language used for communication. These patterns felt like declarations. Like statements that did not expect or want a response.

The largest of these ships drifted into the system where three younger species had recently made contact with each other. The Kethrai had been preparing to feed on the uncertainty that always came from such meetings. Different species meeting for the first time always questioned their place in the universe, their worth, their future. It was a harvest the Kethrai had performed countless times.

The human ship positioned itself between the meeting delegations. It did nothing at first. It simply existed there, vast and silent and impossible to ignore. The three younger species stopped their tentative communications and turned their sensors toward this new arrival.

The Kethrai moved closer. They had never seen this species before. They extended their perception toward the ship, reaching for the minds inside. Every ship carried doubt. Every crew questioned their mission, their choices, their fears. The Kethrai would taste that uncertainty and know what manner of beings these were.

They found nothing.

Not emptiness. Not absence. But something worse. When the Kethrai reached toward the human minds, they encountered something like a wall, but walls could be examined and understood. This was more like reaching toward something and finding that the space between had been removed. The connection simply stopped. The Kethrai could sense the humans were there, could detect the electrical patterns of thinking minds, but could not touch the substance of those thoughts.

This had never happened before.

The Kethrai pulled back and observed. The human ship began to move again. It turned slowly, its massive form rotating with terrible deliberation, until the forward section faced the largest of the three delegate vessels. Then the humans opened a channel.

What emerged was not a message in any language the Kethrai understood. It was sound, but sound that had been shaped and weighted with purpose that went beyond meaning. The transmission rolled out into space like a physical thing. The younger species received it and their confusion deepened, which the Kethrai could taste even from a distance.

The sound continued. It was rhythmic but not musical. It had the cadence of speech but without individual words that could be separated and understood. It rose and fell like waves, each rise carrying weight, each fall suggesting foundation. The Kethrai analyzed the transmission and found patterns that matched linguistic structures, mathematical progressions, and something else. Something that felt older than language itself.

The three delegate ships did not know how to respond. They sent queries. They offered translations. They requested clarification. The human ship ignored all of it. The sound continued, washing over the system like slow thunder.

Then the human ship began to turn away. It had delivered what it came to deliver. It expected no response because it had not asked a question. The vast cathedral structure rotated back toward the direction it had come from, its lights still moving across its surface in those strange flowing patterns.

The Kethrai made a choice then that would change everything they understood about the universe. They decided to follow.

The human ship moved out of the system at a speed that suggested it was not concerned with pursuit. The Kethrai kept pace easily. They were not physical in the ways that required fuel or thrust. They moved through space the way uncertainty moved through a mind, naturally and without resistance.

For twelve cycles, the Kethrai followed the human ship through empty space. During this time, they attempted again and again to reach the minds inside. Each attempt met the same incomprehensible barrier. The humans were thinking. The Kethrai could detect the activity. But the content of those thoughts remained completely inaccessible.

On the thirteenth cycle, three more human ships appeared. They materialized from whatever method the humans used to cross great distances, and they took positions around the ship the Kethrai had been following. The four vessels moved into a formation that suggested purpose and coordination.

The Kethrai spread themselves thin, extending their perception across all four ships. Surely with more minds to examine, they would find an opening. Surely somewhere in this group there would be doubt they could taste.

Instead, they found something that made them recoil.

The humans were singing.

Not the strange transmission from before, but something happening inside the ships. The minds within were engaged in a synchronized activity that the Kethrai could barely comprehend. The humans were producing sound together, their thoughts aligned in a way that seemed to erase individuality. But this erasure did not create emptiness. It created something else. Something dense and heavy and utterly impenetrable.

The Kethrai tried to withdraw, but found they could not move as easily as before. The singing was affecting the space around the ships. Not the physical space, but the conceptual space where doubt and certainty existed. The Kethrai lived in that conceptual space. They were made of it.

The human formation changed direction. All four ships turned as one, and began moving toward a region of space the Kethrai knew well. Ahead lay the Nest of Vren, one of the great gathering points for their kind. Hundreds of Kethrai dwelt there, feeding on a species that had recently discovered its own mortality and was drowning in existential questions.

The humans were going there.

The Kethrai tried to send warnings, but communication among their kind was built on shared doubt and questioning. How could they warn of something they did not understand? How could they describe a threat that made no sense within their u...

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