An original AI generated sci-fi illustration on an immutable blockchain – The Lantern Ship – They called it the Lantern Ship, though none alive could say who first gave it that name. It drifted through the void like a relic from another age, its glass chamber glowing with imprisoned light. Around it swarmed entities of impossible size—tendrils of darkness tipped with emerald eyes, ancient guardians bound to the ship’s orbit. Some believed the light within was the soul of a dead star; others whispered it was something far worse—an imprisoned god. A lone traveler stood beneath it, watching as the great tendrils stirred. The air crackled with static and the taste of iron, and for a moment he felt the ship’s gaze upon him. The creatures hummed, their tones resonating through his bones, a song older than language itself. He realized the Lantern wasn’t drifting by chance—it was searching. And he, somehow, had been the one it was meant to find. Then, the glass began to pulse. Shadows rippled across the surface, and a shape—vaguely human, yet infinite—appeared within. The traveler felt his mind stretch and fracture, flooded with visions of stars dying, galaxies collapsing, and time unraveling in reverse. When the light finally enveloped him, his body disintegrated, but his consciousness was drawn upward, into the Lantern. There, among the tangled tendrils of cosmic horror, a new light flickered into being—the latest soul to fuel the eternal voyage of the Lantern Ship.