## 🌌 Chapter 8 – *The Loop-Locked World*
A storm of white streaks blurred across the *Vanta Skimmer's* viewports.
The ship punched through the edge of a collapsing wormhole, the hull groaning like a beast in pain. The crew held their breath as the turbulence flattened—reality stitching itself back into shape.
Then, in eerie silence, the planet appeared.
RASS-KAR.
A world folded upon itself in a **constant loop**.
A crimson giant hanging above its orbiting twin. Cities trapped in the same hour, repeating endlessly. A loop engineered not by nature—but by *Null code*.
Aarin stared, jaw clenched.
> "They've turned it into a prison of time."
Raylen adjusted the temporal scanners. "No entry signals. No exit either. Once you're inside the loop, you're trapped—unless you're Null, or… connected to a cube core."
Elara nodded. "Which is why *you* can walk through it, Aarin. But once inside, the world will test your mind. The same hour, over and over—it can break people."
Selene loaded her blaster. "I say we break the damn loop and rip out whatever core they're hiding."
The ship descended.
---
They landed near the edge of an abandoned citadel—once a bustling trade hub, now frozen in golden hour. The same birds flew the same arc across the same patch of sky. A vendor across the plaza raised the same fruit, called out the same line to a customer who never answered.
And then—it all *reset*.
The sky blinked. Time jumped backward.
Everything started again.
Except for Aarin.
> "The cube's protecting me," he whispered.
He looked back. Selene, Elara, and Raylen were frozen mid-step, their movements rewinding like glitched recordings.
Alone now, he walked through the **repeat**.
---
Inside the citadel, he followed residual cube energy—felt it like a rhythm beneath the world. He passed through looping moments: a soldier falling over and over, a child laughing, a door never quite closing.
Then… he heard it.
A *new voice*.
**Not part of the loop.**
> "You don't belong here, boy."
Aarin turned.
A man in Null armor stood across the plaza. But his suit was cracked, eyes wild, hands twitching with an unstable current.
> "The loop wasn't meant to hold someone like you," the Null agent said. "You're an infection. A thread outside the stitch."
Aarin raised the cube.
> "Then I'm here to tear it apart."
The Null agent laughed. "You think you're the first? Hundreds came. Wandered these streets, screamed into the hour. They all lost their minds. Even the Guardian who buried the core here…"
Aarin's heart skipped. "A Guardian?"
The agent nodded slowly. "A warrior like you. Left the core in the old spire tower before succumbing to the loop. You'll find his bones tangled in the roots."
Suddenly, the agent *charged*.
Aarin ducked, flared the cube—and unleashed a shockwave that shattered the next loop-reset like broken glass. Time resisted—but bent.
He ran.
---
**The Spire Tower.**
Crumbling. Overgrown with vines that pulsed like veins.
Inside, the walls whispered. Shadows of the fallen Guardian played on repeat—his dying breath, his final moments, over and over.
Aarin climbed the spiral staircase.
Each floor older. Each step harder. Gravity pulsed strangely, like the loop didn't want him to ascend.
At the top, nestled in a nest of dying roots, was the **second core**.
Shaped like a glass prism. Glowing with a calm, white flame.
Aarin reached for it—then paused.
A **voice** behind him.
> "Don't touch it."
He turned—expecting the Null agent again.
But it was… **himself.**
Aarin.
Older. Tired. Scarred.
Holding a broken cube.
> "If you take that core, you'll do what I did. And everything breaks."
The younger Aarin stared. "What… are you?"
> "A timeline that already failed. I touched it. The loop snapped. The Null responded with *Oblivion Protocol*. Billions erased. Elara… she died."
Aarin's hands shook. "Then why are you here?"
> "To tell you—wait. There's another way. The Null *want* you to trigger the second core. It opens the breach even wider. They're trying to lure you."
Outside, the tower began to shake.
Reality quivered. Time frayed. The loop... breaking.
> "You have ten seconds," said his older self. "Choose: trust me, and leave the core. Or take it… and doom us again."
Aarin closed his eyes.
Felt the pulse of the cube.
Felt the echo of his father's mind.
And remembered Kael's words:
> *"To save the universe... you'll have to undo your own timeline."*
> "I'm not you," he said quietly. "Not yet. Maybe I never will be."
He reached out—and **grabbed the second core.**
The world **exploded** in light.
---
The *Vanta Skimmer* snapped back online.
Elara gasped, falling to her knees as her body rebooted from stasis. Raylen stumbled, shaking off time-lag. Selene had her blaster raised, scanning.
Then they saw Aarin.
Standing in the clearing.
Core glowing in one hand. Eyes… changed.
> "We have it," he said quietly. "And we have to move. Because I just saw the next fracture point."
Elara steadied herself. "Where?"
Aarin looked up—toward a system marked *dead* in every chart.
> "Jorah's Hollow. The place time already forgot."
---