##Chapter 9 – *Jorah's Hollow: The Lost System*
The *Vanta Skimmer* slipped through the black velvet of space, engines humming quietly beneath the vast void.
Outside, the stars dimmed—one by one—like candles snuffed out by an unseen hand.
Aarin sat at the helm, his gaze locked on the holographic star map. A blinking red dot hovered over an empty patch of sky, marked only as *Jorah's Hollow.*
"Dead system," Raylen muttered beside him. "Officially, it's been erased from every chart for centuries. Like it never existed."
Elara studied the readings. "But the cube says otherwise. The third core is here — hidden in a place outside normal time, in a ghost system. Jorah's Hollow might be the key to understanding what 'undo your own timeline' really means."
Selene cracked her knuckles. "Great. A ghost system. What could go wrong?"
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The ship approached the coordinates. Sensors flickered—then went blank.
Suddenly, the hull rattled violently as the ship crossed the invisible boundary.
> "We're inside a temporal void," Aarin said. "Time isn't flowing here. We'll have to rely on the cube to anchor us."
Outside the viewport, a swirling nebula appeared—pulsing with colors that defied the spectrum. Shadows of dead planets drifted aimlessly like cosmic ghosts.
> "This is Jorah's Hollow," Elara whispered. "A place outside space, where timelines collapse into one another."
The crew readied weapons and gear.
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Inside the nebula, they detected faint signals—old tech signatures, relics from a lost civilization. Traces of life still flickered in hidden pockets.
Aarin followed the cube's pull deeper, feeling a strange weight press on his mind.
Suddenly, a voice crackled through the comms.
> "Aarin… are you receiving? This is the *Chrono Echo*. You're not alone in here."
The screen flickered to reveal a cloaked figure inside a rusted exo-suit, floating among debris.
> "Who are you?" Aarin asked.
> "Call me Jorah," the figure said grimly. "I'm what's left of the lost colony. We tried to harness the temporal rifts here. We failed. The Null wiped most of us out."
Aarin felt a chill. "You know about the cores?"
> "I've guarded one for decades, hidden in the heart of the Hollow. But it's unstable. It's tearing apart the timeline."
Jorah motioned toward a nearby asteroid belt shimmering with strange energy.
> "We'll have to move fast. The Null are hunting the core's signature. If they find it, the entire Hollow—and the threads tied to it—will unravel."
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The crew landed on a jagged asteroid, its surface crackling with quantum instability.
They navigated through fractured ruins—half-melted structures suspended in shifting time loops. Every step felt like walking through a dream constantly rewritten.
In the central chamber, a crystalline pedestal held the third core—shimmering with a deep indigo flame.
But before Aarin could reach it—
A piercing shriek shattered the silence.
Null soldiers erupted from temporal shadows, their forms flickering in and out of sync.
> "Defense mode!" Selene shouted, raising her blaster.
A brutal firefight broke out. Bullets and temporal pulses clashed, tearing the air with bursts of unstable energy.
Aarin used the cube to warp in and out of the soldiers' attacks, each pulse synchronizing his movement with fractured time.
Elara chanted low-energy spells, weaving shields that bent reality around them.
Raylen hacked a nearby Null turret, turning it against its own.
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Finally, after a desperate battle, the Null forces retreated—pulled back by something deeper in the Hollow.
Aarin grabbed the third core.
Its indigo flame seared his palm—not with pain, but with **knowledge**.
Visions flooded him—alternate timelines where choices were different, realities where the Null never rose, and moments where his own existence flickered like a candle in the wind.
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Breathing hard, he turned to Jorah.
> "What now?"
Jorah's eyes glinted beneath the visor.
> "Now, we find the fourth core. It's hidden where time runs fastest… and where the Null's true power began."
Aarin nodded.
The Hollow shimmered behind them—a fragile bubble in the dark.
> "We don't have much time," Elara warned. "The lattice is breaking faster than ever."
The crew boarded the *Vanta Skimmer* and set course for their next destination: the **Tempus Vortex**.
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