Chapter 10 – *Tempus Vortex: The Heart of Time*
The *Vanta Skimmer* surged through the swirling edges of the Tempus Vortex — a colossal storm of fracturing time-energy spinning like a cosmic cyclone.
Outside, stars streaked and fractured as the ship approached the eye of the storm. Time bent so violently here that moments folded onto themselves — seconds stretched and snapped back like elastic.
Aarin gripped the control console, the cube core pulsing wildly in his hand.
"Elara, how stable are our shields?" he asked.
Her fingers danced over the panel. "Holding… but we're skimming the edge of reality. One misstep and the vortex could tear us apart."
Raylen's eyes flicked to the temporal scanners. "Sensors keep glitching. The vortex is… reacting to the cores. It's alive."
Selene loaded her plasma rifle. "I don't care if it's alive. I just want it dead."
---
As the ship spiraled deeper, time fractured inside the ship.
Voices echoed — conversations from different eras overlapping.
Aarin caught a glimpse of himself — older, younger, a shadow fading away — flickering through the corridors.
> "It's a temporal storm… not just outside, but *within* us," Elara whispered. "We're being pulled apart by past and future selves."
Suddenly, the lights flickered.
The cube's glow intensified — a beacon in the chaos.
Then a deafening roar.
---
The *Null Leviathan* emerged from the storm — a massive, shifting behemoth of time shards and shadow.
Its eyes burned like dying stars.
"*Intruders*," it growled — voice layered with echoes of a thousand lost moments.
The battle was instant.
The *Vanta Skimmer* rocked under the Leviathan's assault — temporal blasts ripping through reality's fabric.
Aarin and Selene fought back with synchronized precision, weaving between time fractures, firing cube-powered energy blasts.
Elara chanted spells that warped space, creating bubbles of slowed time to shield the crew.
Raylen hacked the Leviathan's temporal core — trying to destabilize it from within.
---
The storm intensified.
Aarin reached into the cube.
> "This is it — the final core is *inside* the Leviathan."
He took a deep breath.
> "Prepare to board. We're going inside the heart of time."
---
Inside the Leviathan's temporal shell was a labyrinth — shifting corridors of past, present, and possible futures.
Time itself was a maze — memories of worlds erased and lives undone floated like ghosts.
At the center, the final cube core hovered — a pulsating orb of pure white light.
But guarding it was the Null Warden — a towering figure made of fractured timelines and void-energy.
"Your journey ends here, Aarin," it said, voice a cascade of broken clocks.
A fierce battle erupted — time warped around their blows, moments stretched and compressed, futures collided in bursts of light.
Aarin tapped into the full power of the cubes — channeling the combined energy to shatter the Warden's core.
With a final pulse, the Warden fractured — collapsing into shards of forgotten time.
---
Aarin seized the final core.
As the Leviathan screamed and began to collapse, he ran — the *Vanta Skimmer* bursting free from the storm's edge just as the vortex imploded behind them.
Breathing hard, Aarin looked at the four cores — glowing softly in his hands.
> "The path is clear," he said.
Elara nodded. "Now we unlock the secret to breaking the timeline—and saving the universe."
---
But deep in the shadows, the Null Commander watched the collapse from a fractured dimension.
> "So, the boy has the cores," she whispered. "Good. Let the final game begin."
---### Chapter 11 – *The Fractured Gameboard*
The stars above the *Vanta Skimmer* were still, eerily still — as if the universe itself held its breath.
Inside the bridge, silence lingered in the aftermath of the vortex's collapse. Aarin placed the four glowing cube cores in a stasis cradle. Each hummed with a unique resonance — a symphony of space, time, energy, and thought.
"We made it out," Raylen murmured, wiping blood from his brow. "But I've never seen the timeline this unstable. The Leviathan wasn't the end — it was a checkpoint."
Elara's brows furrowed. "Then what's the next move?"
Before Aarin could respond, the ship's AI sparked to life — its voice corrupted and layered.
> "Transmission intercepted… origin: *Fracture Point Zero*…"
A hologram crackled into view — a fractured star-map, pulsating with dimensional scars. At its center, a twisted emblem: the sigil of the **Null Dominion**.
Selene stepped forward. "Fracture Point Zero. That's not a place — that's *ground zero*. The origin of the timeline collapse."
"The place where it all began…" Aarin whispered.
The cores pulsed in unison — as if affirming the path forward.
Suddenly, the ship jolted. Alarms blared.
> "Temporal surge detected — external anomaly approaching!"
Outside, the stars twisted — forming a rift of obsidian and violet flame.
From it, a vessel emerged — black as voidglass, silent as death. Its hull shimmered with paradoxes — ships it had destroyed reflected across its skin.
Raylen's face went pale. "That's the *Eidolon*. The Null Commander's ship."
---
Inside the rift, the Null Commander stood at the edge of her bridge, watching the Skimmer through fractured time.
Her body flickered — a silhouette shaped by scars in reality. Around her, time-wraiths whispered memories of battles yet to come.
> "He has the cores," she murmured. "Now we test his resolve."
She raised a hand — commanding the Eidolon's weapons.
Reality began to split.
---
Back aboard the *Skimmer*, Aarin faced the crew. His voice was steady.
> "We're not running."
> "We face her — and find the truth buried at Fracture Point Zero."
The ship rocketed forward, engines glowing with core energy, straight toward the storm-wreathed rift.
And in the shadows between seconds, something stirred — watching both ships, unseen and ancient.
> The final game had begun.
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