The Custodians stood around them.
"You have seen what once was," said the feathered one. "Now you must choose. You may return with the knowledge. But you must leave something behind."
Mirella asked, "What do we leave?"
The answer came not in words but emotion:
Certainty. Safety. Linear time.
"You will wake," one Custodian warned, "but not in the same now."
They opened their eyes to moonlight and firelight both—in the same sky.
Efua knelt beside them, eyes red.
"You were gone for one hour," she said, "but the sky changed."
Above them, two moons hung.
The dig site was silent.
But the stone gate now glowed from within, as if something beyond it had begun watching back.
And far behind them, Matteo was speaking into a device not of Earth.
Efua sat between Ayinla and Mirella, her hands buried in the ash-covered soil.
"The name you know," she began, voice barely above a whisper, "is only half of me."
She reached into her satchel and pulled out a cloth-wrapped relic—old, fragile, embroidered in what looked like cowrie shells and dark copper thread.
"This," she said, unfolding the cloth, "was given to me by my grandmother. Her mother was born in a place that no longer exists on any map—Ayetoro-Adun, the Eighth Custodian Keep. Lost in the Great Unbinding."
On the cloth was a symbol—a double spiral, circled by eight points and centered on a burning eye.
"I'm not just a mythkeeper," Efua said. "I am the last voice of the Rite of Echo Binding."
Mirella blinked. "Echo Binding… like the Book of Echoes?"
Efua nodded. "Only those with binding blood can awaken the gate without destroying what lies beyond."
Ayinla stared at her. "Why didn't you say something sooner?"
Efua looked to the sky, now pulsing with unnatural gold.
"Because I was afraid that this time, I might be the one to lose everything."
At 2:08 a.m., the impossible happened.
A second sun appeared in the sky—rising slow and soundless from behind the Sierra de las Villuercas.
Unlike before, it did not vanish.
Instead, it hovered—brilliant, metallic, and veined with rivers of red light. It cast no warmth. Only gravity.
All electronics in the camp failed.
Time slowed. Insects stopped moving. The wind paused mid-breath.
And the stone gate opened.
From the center of the glowing portal, a voice spoke—not into the air, but into their bones.
"Return what was taken."
Efua fell to her knees.
Mirella clutched Ayinla's hand.
"Open the seal. Restore the fracture. Or all threads will unravel."
Ayinla stepped forward, heart hammering. "What fracture? What was taken?"
"The last Custodian. The binding soul. The one who chose to forget."
Efua gasped.
Mirella whispered, "They mean… me."
Drawn by light and blood, the three crossed the gate.
Their bodies remained at the threshold.
But their essence—fractured yet focused—passed through.
Inside was not a world, but a weave of memory, looping history, and star-map code. Events layered over one another like silk.
They saw:
The birth of the first gate in ancient Nubia.
Custodians of multiple empires—Benin, Axum, Shang, Latium—joining hands to seal something too dangerous to name.
A girl with Mirella's eyes refusing her destiny.
A boy like Ayinla choosing silence over destruction.
A child of the Eighth Line—Efua's ancestor—bound in flame and promise.
And finally… the gate breaking once before.
Caused not by war.
But by grief.
The voice came again.
"You have seen. You have remembered. Now: bind or bleed."
Efua stood tall.
"I offer the Rite," she said.
Mirella: "I offer memory."
Ayinla: "And I offer code. The thread between now and never."
They joined hands.
And spoke the words that came not from mouths, but from every ancestor behind them.
The gate pulsed.
Then closed.
The second sun shattered.
And silence fell.
The voice came again.
"You have seen. You have remembered. Now: bind or bleed."
Efua stood tall.
"I offer the Rite," she said.
Mirella: "I offer memory."
Ayinla: "And I offer code. The thread between now and never."
They joined hands.
And spoke the words that came not from mouths, but from every ancestor behind them.
The gate pulsed.
Then closed.
The second sun shattered.
And silence fell.
When they woke, the chamber was still.
The Book of Echoes had closed.
The stone was no longer glowing.
And outside, the sky was clear.
Only one sun rose.
Matteo was gone.
And so was the shadow that had watched them from the ridge.
But on the wall of the chamber, one final line had been carved in shimmering ink:
The gate remembers. And so must you.