Suns of the Forgotten Gate

The white sands whispered.

Wind carried nothing. No heat. No sound. Only memory, curling in the air like incense from a forgotten shrine.

Mirella walked first.

Each step left a print that faded behind her. Not erased by wind. Not swallowed by time. Just undone. As if the moment she moved forward, the world no longer needed to remember where she'd been.

Ayinla followed, his heartbeat steady but louder than it should have been in the silence. The decision key had vanished from his palm, but its after-touch still pulsed in his bones. His right hand trembled with coded rhythm. Left hand, empty. Always empty since the gate passed through them.

Mirella hadn't spoken since they crossed.

Not aloud.

She was listening. To the spiral within. To the weight of her ancestors whispering not in warning, but in recognition. Their breath moved with hers. She was no longer only Mirella. She was Ana-Ọmọ-Irin. And Ana did not walk blindly.

Ahead, the sands folded inward. A depression in the landscape became a mouth of stone, carved in cracked obsidian and layered with hundreds of names, none written in a human hand. Not one. They shimmered. Shifted. Sometimes they vanished and reappeared in another place on the wall, as though memory itself were breathing.

Ayinla reached out.

The stone warmed.

This is a threshold, he said, though his voice carried no sound.

Mirella turned. Her eyes were not glowing. They were bright. Alive. Like something had been lit behind them and left to burn slowly. She nodded once.

We are expected.

They stepped inside.

The chamber was long and round, shaped like the inside of a spine. Pillars rose like vertebrae into a ceiling that moved like water. All along the walls, murals flickered in and out—visions of fire, collapse, birth, betrayal.

And shadows.

Dozens of them.

They stood motionless in a ring.

Not people.

Silhouettes made of folded light, like beings burned into existence and left behind by time.

Mirella stopped in the center.

The spiral beneath her skin glowed gently. A hum filled the room.

Then one shadow moved.

And spoke.

You carry her name, but not her pain.

Mirella didn't flinch. She knew this would come. She nodded. I have inherited what I did not suffer. But I remember now.

Another shadow stepped forward.

Then show us.

Mirella opened her arms.

And the chamber changed.

The murals blurred into motion. A great hall appeared before them. Golden-robed figures debated around a broken sun disc. Ana-Ọmọ-Irin stood among them, fists clenched, spiral glowing at her throat.

You cannot seal memory and expect it not to rot. If we forget the war, we will relive it.

A man in a crimson crown turned from her. And we cannot open the Veil again. Last time it bled through. We lost whole timelines.

Let them be lost. Better than this half-life you call protection.

The vision shattered.

Mirella stood panting.

The spiral on her chest dimmed.

You have seen the root. The first fracture.

Ayinla stepped closer. What happened to her?

The shadows said nothing. Only one raised a hand and pointed toward the far wall. A doorway stood there now. It had not been there before.

Beyond it, a city of smoke waited.

The City of Forgotten Names.

Mirella stepped forward. But Ayinla held her wrist.

If we go in, we don't come back the same.

She met his eyes.

We haven't been the same since we woke the gate.

They walked.

The city shimmered into view.

It wasn't a city built of stone or steel. It was woven from memory. Streets formed as they moved. Buildings built themselves out of emotion. A cathedral grew from longing. A tower from guilt. A library from promises broken and never spoken aloud.

And walking through it were people.

Shadows wearing familiar faces.

Mirella saw her father. Her real one. The one who died when she was thirteen, who used to hum to her in Yoruba and tell stories of stars in baskets.

He turned.

Spoke her name.

Not Mirella.

Ana.

She fell to her knees.

He smiled.

You're burning again.

She wept without shame.

I didn't want this.

I know. But it still chose you.

She reached for him.

But her hand passed through smoke.

Ayinla stood beside her, but saw something else.

A man with his own face.

Older.

Eyes clouded. Shoulders heavy.

You still think you can carry both names, the man said.

Ayinla shook his head. I never wanted to carry even one.

But here you are. With her. Which means you already chose.

Then what now?

You find the third gate.

Where is it?

The man pointed to his chest.

Where it always was.

And vanished.

When Mirella rose, she and Ayinla were standing at the edge of the city.

The world was fading behind them.

The spiral on her skin had changed shape.

It now resembled wings.

The third gate, she whispered.

Ayinla nodded.

And they stepped forward into a sky that had forgotten how to hold stars.

The stars returned slowly.

Not all at once.

They blinked into place like old memories restored, shy and unsure. Some were faint. Others pulsed with golden light, forming constellations Mirella somehow recognized without knowing why. Shapes that matched no map she had studied, no myth she had memorized.

Above her, one formed a perfect spiral.

Ayinla traced it in the air with his finger.

The third gate, he whispered. It's not just a direction. It's a condition.

She looked at him.

What kind of condition?

He turned to face her fully. His voice was steady, but something behind his eyes was breaking open.

The kind that costs you something before you get there.

The air around them began to ripple. Soft at first, then stronger. A breeze laced with scent—salt, burning cedar, and something cold like cracked bone. The last breath of a place that had waited too long to speak.

Behind them, the city faded.

In its place stood a woman with a sword across her back, her skin the color of volcanic glass, her eyes the color of old copper coins. She did not blink.

You left without taking your names.

Mirella stepped forward.

We were given none.

No. You refused them. One of you out of fear. The other out of love. Both are dangerous. Both are incomplete.

She drew her sword—not in threat, but in ritual.

Do you wish to walk into the third gate whole? Or leave the truth of who you were scattered behind you?

Ayinla frowned.

We're not here for judgment.

The woman did not move.

Then you're not ready.

Mirella inhaled slowly.

What if we don't remember enough to be ready?

The woman closed her eyes.

Then the gate will show you what must be lost.

She stepped aside.

A great rift opened in the air behind her—not like the others. This one had no flame. No spiral. No sound.

It was perfectly still.

A hole in existence.

A place where time had not yet been written.

They stepped in.

Darkness welcomed them, but not like death.

It was a silence of choices.

Of dreams that had never been dreamt.

Mirella floated, untethered.

She saw her mother holding her for the last time, whispering prayers in a dialect she'd never learned to translate.

She saw Ana—young, not yet a gatekeeper—laughing with someone whose face was missing, burning a scroll too dangerous to survive.

She saw Ayinla.

Not the one beside her.

A boy, no older than ten, programming sound into sand, watched by a faceless Custodian cloaked in ivory smoke.

You were never chosen, a voice said to her.

You were made.

You chose yourself.

Mirella turned slowly.

There, in the void, stood a gate unlike the others.

It had no frame. No door. Just a curve of stars bending in a way that defied geometry.

In its center, a mirror.

And in the mirror—

Mirella.

But not as Ana.

Not as flame-bearer.

As herself.

All of her.

Her grief. Her failure. Her love. Her doubt.

The mirror cracked.

You must forgive her, the voice said.

Mirella touched the surface.

It was warm.

And in that warmth, she saw Ana again—fighting, burning, refusing, regretting.

I forgive you, Mirella said.

The mirror shattered.

And in its place, the gate opened.

She landed with a gasp, knees hitting solid ground.

Ayinla beside her.

They were back.

But not where they began.

A lake stretched before them—black as ink, still as obsidian.

Overhead, a sky full of spirals.

And in the distance, a tower of bone rising into flame.

The gate's next guardian waited.

But now Mirella understood.

She wasn't here to repeat Ana's path.

She was here to finish it.