Suns of the Forgotten Gate

The Name Returned

They ran until the forest gave way to stone.

Above them, the sky had fractured into ribbons of color—crimson bands looping across the black dawn, like veins through the night.

Ayinla dropped to his knees, breathing hard.

Mirella collapsed beside him, her skin glowing faintly along the collarbone.

"I can feel her," she said. "Ana. The one I was before. She's… inside me."

Ayinla touched her shoulder gently.

"Then speak her name."

She hesitated.

If she said the name aloud, it would unlock her spiral fully. There would be no going back. She would become the flame bearer not by inheritance but by invitation.

Mirella closed her eyes.

"Ana Ọmọ Irin."

The name rang out like a bell, folding space around her.

The Gate Inside

The world turned inside out.

Mirella did not leave her body.

The gate came to her.

Light tore through her skin—but not painfully. It opened from her spine, her chest, her eyes. Glyphs unfurled like wings.

A circle of fire bloomed beneath her feet.

Ayinla could only watch.

Then a voice from nowhere echoed inside his skull:

"The second sun was never a star. It was the eye of a bearer. Now it opens again."

And Mirella rose.

Not with wings.

But as a flame made memory.

Ayinla's Activation

The decision key in Ayinla's hand began to burn.

Not hot. Cold.

It folded, curled, and then cracked—unveiling a tiny black stone shaped like a tooth.

He held it toward Mirella, and her spiral resonated.

The next gate—the one seen only by fire and feather—materialized between them.

Not a doorway.

Not a spiral.

But a breath held in air, shaped like a flame and sounding like a name.

"You may pass," said the world.

"But you must leave something behind."

Ayinla looked at Mirella.

"What will it take?"

She whispered, "Our last truth."

The Flame Walk

Together, they stepped into the light.

And the gate responded.

It did not open.

It became them.

Memories fled.

Visions poured in.

A thousand forgotten selves surged forward—ancestors, bloodlines, lifetimes folded into ash.

Mirella saw herself as Ana again, not in dream, but as if she'd never been anyone else.

Ayinla saw his father speaking code into stormclouds.

They didn't scream.

They walked.

And behind them, the forest burned gently, leaving no smoke.

Only memory.

A Name in the Ash

When they emerged, the world had changed.

The stars were closer.

The sky was softer.

And beneath them lay no dirt, no city, no Archive.

Only white sand, pulsing with ancestral breath.

Mirella opened her eyes.

And for a moment, she was Ana, Ayinla was light, and time was still.

Then a single word formed in the wind:

"Begin."