Thank you. Below is Chapter 8 of you
The storm that swallowed Olympus Mons had not subsided. Dust storms tore across Martian plains with the vengeance of ancient gods, and in the control room buried beneath the Martian regolith, the lights flickered as if the planet itself had begun to pulse with unease.
Nova stood silently before the reinforced observation window, watching the abyss form where the wormhole had widened. Its edges now twisted like threads unraveling in the fabric of reality.
"Is this what you feared?" came a voice from behind.
She turned slowly.
It was Commander Ryke, his uniform stained with blood and ash from their earlier recovery mission. He had lost three people. They had lost too many already. But his eyes still carried the fire of defiance.
"No," Nova replied, her voice quiet but unwavering. "This is worse."
*----------------------*
In Earth's orbit, aboard the Black Horizon Station, Chairman Mark Patreon's personal chamber was darker than usual. He stared at a holographic projection of a time-locked dossier labeled Project Hourglass.
Beside him stood an old friend—or rather, a remnant of one: Dr. Elyra Kaine, former Quantum Cryptographer, now reduced to a neural AI imprint stored in an obsidian cube.
"She's activated the subharmonic frequency array," Elyra's voice chimed in low tones. "That protocol is forbidden."
"It was forbidden for a reason," Patreon said. "But I gave her the key."
"You knew she'd defy you."
"I knew she'd see through the lies."
Patreon's eyes narrowed. His memories drifted back to a blood-soaked laboratory two decades ago. A girl, no older than seven, strapped to a table, her eyes wide with terror as her father—no, as he—walked away from what had to be done.
"Nova always had to be the key," he whispered.
*-----------------------*
Back on Mars, the task force had gathered in the central lab beneath the outpost, where a new schematic had been drawn from the wormhole's data.
The sphere in the center was no longer a simple anomaly—it was a singular mindfield, a woven trap of physics and magic, where time spiraled and memories burned like dying stars.
"It's… alive," whispered Dr. Kessler, her knuckles pale as she gripped the table.
"Worse," Nova said, activating the inner projection. "It's ancient."
The room went quiet.
"According to the harmonic signatures," Nova continued, pointing at the interference wave, "this wormhole didn't open on Mars first. It originated outside the Sol system. A place known in ancient files as… Velarith."
"Velarith?" General Trask muttered. "There's no such place."
Nova turned her gaze on him, and her voice grew colder. "It was erased. Along with everything that once lived there."
And then, she activated the Hourglass Protocol.
*----------------------*
Time didn't shift.
It shattered.
In the corridors of the outpost, clocks spun backward. Voices repeated mid-sentence. An engineer screamed as he relived the last five minutes on loop, his body aging and regressing in sync.
Outside, the storm above Olympus Mons froze. Lightning suspended mid-air. The dust halted mid-flight.
And in the control room, Nova's eyes glowed with a faint hue of violet, her pupils narrowing into spirals.
"We're not just looking into another world," she said. "We're remembering one."
She didn't elaborate further. She couldn't. The memories flooding her weren't hers. Not all of them.
Some belonged to another Nova. One who never lived. Or who had died long ago.
And she remembered the fire.
The experiments.
The betrayal.
She remembered Mark Patreon's face as he walked away.
And the screams of a thousand failed versions of her, buried beneath laboratories and history.
"Time travel isn't theoretical anymore," Nova whispered. "It's personal."
*----------------------------*
In the heart of the anomaly, something stirred.
For centuries, it had waited. Feeding on the entropy of collapsed dimensions. Weaving time not as a river, but as a web.
Now, it had found a thread.
Nova.
"Commander Ryke," she said over comms. "Prep the Temporal Displacement Pod. I'm going in."
"You're what?"
"There's a version of Mars… before this all began. Buried in fractured time. I need to find it. There's something hidden there. Something we were never meant to see."
"You'll die."
"I already did."
She disconnected.
*-------------------*
The displacement chamber hummed with energy as the pod closed around her.
She felt the walls vibrate.
The countdown began.
10…
Her heart raced. Not with fear, but anticipation.
9…
In her mind, images blurred—dead colleagues, corrupted data, hidden logs.
8…
A child crying.
7…
Chairman Mark Patreon's final words during the Exodus Project: "You'll understand one day."
6…
She did.
5…
And she'd burn it all to the ground for what they did.
4…
"Nova," a soft voice came through.
It was Ryke.
3…
"Don't forget who you are."
2…
She smiled faintly. "That's the one thing I never knew."
1…
The pod vanished.
-------------------*
A place between moments.
A fracture in time.
Nova opened her eyes to find herself standing in the ruins of a Martian city that never existed—gleaming towers twisted like helixes, banners in a language she somehow understood, skies lit by auroras that whispered.
This was Velarith.
Not a myth.
Not a lie.
A future erased from history.
And walking toward her was someone she never expected to meet.
Herself.
But not quite.
The other Nova wore robes lined with gold, her eyes glowing like stars.
"You shouldn't be here," the other whispered.
"I needed answers."
"There are no answers. Only consequences."
"I don't care."
The other Nova frowned. "Then you really are me."
And then the sky cracked.
A dark tide, like black glass, poured from the stars, devouring light.
The Time-Eater had arrived.
*------------------*
Back on Mars, alarms blared.
The wormhole pulsed wildly.
Chairman Patreon watched from the Black Horizon, unmoving.
"Should we intervene?" Elyra's AI asked.
"No."
"You're letting her die."
"She has to understand. Only then can she choose."
"Choose what?"
Patreon closed his eyes.
"Whether to save the future or destroy the past."
*------------------*
Nova's mind was unraveling.
Velarith's secrets bled into her soul.
She saw the fall of civilizations that never were, timelines consumed by hubris, scientists turned into gods, and gods who feared a child born of anomaly and purpose.
She saw herself standing over her own corpse.
She saw Mark—no, Marcus Velarion, once the High Chancellor of Velarith, now reborn as Chairman Patreon—destroying an entire reality to flee the collapse.
He had run.
And he had built Earth's future on the corpses of Velarith.
She screamed.
Not in pain.
In rage.
*--------------*
Nova returned through the wormhole in pieces.
Literally.
The pod crashed, smoking.
She stumbled out, bloodied, coughing, eyes burning.
Ryke caught her.
"What did you see?"
"Everything," she gasped.
"Is it too late?"
"No." She looked up.
"But we don't have much time."
Far above, the stars dimmed slightly, as if reality itself were watching her.
Waiting.
*-------------------------*