The Souls
Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
The probes had sent back disturbing images of the planet's underground.
The images revealed the hollow internal structure of the planet and its original rock formations were gone. After thousands and thousands of years of an exhaustive existence, the planet was no longer a real celestial body, but a large creature. Dark tentacles and hollow spaces were everywhere. The probes had not been able to find any soil or rock formations.
One of the probes flew quickly in the underground, maneuvering past the tentacles that looked like a thorn forest. Red was the only light that filled the underground space. This light was the glow that the ganglia and pump-like organs emitted. There were also ubiquitous, thin clouds of microbes released by the tentacles. Their composition was the same as that of the bacteria in clouds in the atmosphere of the planet. Some heterogenized fragments of crust and mantle in the form of dark, metallic deposits remained in between the tentacles.