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## Chapter 7 – *The Mind of the Forgotten*
The silver shard pulsed in Aarin's palm, humming like a living heartbeat.
He stood alone now—Selene and Raylen had stayed behind at the relay vault, tending to the wounded Guardian. Elara had warned them: this journey was not for minds grounded in singular time.
Aarin took a breath.
> "Alright, Dad," he whispered. "Show me what you left behind."
He pressed the shard into the cube's core.
Reality **fractured**.
---
He was no longer standing.
No longer *breathing*.
There was no floor, no sky—only a liquid sea of memory and thought, folding endlessly into itself like glass and gravity were rewriting the rules.
He floated… or perhaps fell… through **the In-Between**.
All around him: fragments.
* A snowglobe shattered in reverse, the shards reassembling themselves into a child's memory.
* A school hallway stretching endlessly, doors whispering voices he almost recognized.
* And faces—*hundreds of them*—versions of himself at every age, each locked in silent motion, reliving moments they never lived.
**This was not time travel.**
This was time *unraveled.*
> "Welcome, Aarin."
The voice echoed not through his ears but his **mind**. It came from everywhere—and nowhere.
He turned.
And saw **his father**.
---
Or rather... what remained.
Dr. Kael Thorn stood in a storm of drifting thoughts. His body glowed with faint quantum flickers, held together not by flesh but *intention*—a memory given shape through sheer will.
Aarin took a hesitant step forward.
> "Dad?"
The memory smiled.
> "Not exactly. More like... the version of me that survived the breach. A synaptic echo. I've been waiting for you, son."
Aarin's throat tightened. "Why didn't you ever come back?"
Kael's smile faded. "Because I did. Just... not the way you expected."
The In-Between rippled, revealing a dark moment—Kael stepping through the first prototype cube, the lab exploding behind him. A cry from Aarin's mother. The screen going black.
> "The moment I crossed, my physical body died. But the cube transferred my neural pattern into this realm. It was the only way I could finish my mission."
Aarin clenched his fists. "What mission?"
Kael extended his hand—and the world **shifted.**
---
Suddenly, they stood above a rotating **timeline lattice**, like a web of golden wires extending through infinity. Some strands were vibrant. Others dim. And some—completely severed.
> "The universe is a living structure," Kael explained. "Every intelligent species with enough energy begins to bend time. But there's a price. Every manipulation—every jump, every wormhole, every loop—*frays the lattice*."
A glowing section pulsed red—**the Null Order's influence**.
> "They're not just trying to conquer space, Aarin. They're trying to *erase competition*. By freezing planets, looping systems, or corrupting time anchors. When the lattice weakens enough, it'll collapse into a singularity—and whoever controls the cube... will rewrite reality in their own image."
Aarin looked at the cube in his hand. "That's why I was chosen?"
Kael nodded. "You're genetically bound to it. Only those with resonance from the original breach—my bloodline—can truly stabilize it."
> "You're the last anchor, Aarin. And they're coming for you."
---
Aarin absorbed it all—his father's sacrifice, the danger ahead, the weight now on his shoulders.
But one question gnawed at him.
> "Elara… she said you left her behind. Born inside the breach. Is she my sister?"
Kael's image flickered.
> "In a way. Not by blood. But… she's part of me. My last fragment, encoded into time's memory as a guide. Protect her. She knows more than she lets on."
Suddenly, the lattice pulsed violently.
Red light bloomed across several strands.
> "They've found you," Kael whispered. "The Null have infected the In-Between."
The space around them began to decay—memories crumbling, moments dissolving like sand in wind. A dark mist bled into the void—Null algorithms, hunting conscious thought.
Kael grabbed Aarin's shoulder.
> "You need to go. Now."
"But I'm not ready!"
> "No one ever is. But you are *necessary.*"
Kael's form began to tear, dragged toward the mist. Aarin reached for him—but his fingers met nothing.
> "One last thing," Kael cried. "There's a sixth core… *hidden outside time itself*. Elara will know. But to reach it, you'll have to do the impossible—**undo your own timeline**."
Aarin's heart pounded. "What does that mean?"
> "You'll know… when it breaks."
---
**CRACK!**
The cube pulsed with unbearable force, and the In-Between imploded.
Aarin screamed.
---
He awoke on the cold floor of the relay vault, gasping for breath.
Elara knelt beside him, eyes wide.
> "You saw him."
Aarin could barely speak.
> "We… we have to stop the Null. And there's another core. Outside time. He said…"
Elara closed her eyes, grief flickering across her face. "Then he remembered."
Selene entered the room, blaster in hand. "Good timing. We've got Null ships in orbit again. Five minutes until breach."
Aarin stood.
His body trembled, but his mind burned with purpose.
Five minutes.
Five cores.
And one impossible choice.
> To save the universe…
> He might have to erase the very past that made him.