They found him just before sunset—standing outside the excavation site, dressed in a Vatican field jacket with old mud crusted on the hems, sunglasses too large for the fading light.
He introduced himself with crisp, unhurried words.
"I'm Brother Matteo Ricci the Second. I've been assigned by the Holy Office of Chronomystics to assess the disturbance."
Efua's face went cold.
"No one informed us of a second visit."
He smiled with no warmth. "Yes, well. Protocols change when seals begin… speaking."
Ayinla didn't trust him. Not because of the Vatican badge, or the sterilized accent.
But because the man cast no shadow.
That night, as the team debated whether to allow him inside, a thundering groan echoed from beneath the chamber.
The Book of Echoes, sealed since Mirella touched it, had opened itself again.
Only Ayinla heard the call.
The wind carried it in symbols. A low chant in three tongues: Oríkì, Latin, and Shang dynasty pictographs. His vision blurred, and he staggered toward the steps.
"Ayinla, wait!" Mirella called, but he didn't.
In the chamber, the book pulsed with light—no longer red, but blue and gold. Lightning licked its spine.
Ayinla touched it.
And the chamber responded.
One of the statues—the one shaped like a man with both Chinese and Ethiopian features, his eyes sewn shut—turned its head.
It creaked forward, stone cracking.
Then it spoke in a voice made of wind and stone and sorrow.
"You are not your father," it said. "But his blood walks in you."
Ayinla stumbled back. "What are you?"
"I am called Orun-Tien, guardian of the sixth gate, bound in silence for 3,000 years."
Efua dropped her torch.
"That name…" she whispered. "It's from the Ayetoro Codex. It's a myth."
The statue turned to her. "And yet I speak."
Efua unwrapped a sealed scroll from her satchel.
It was older than it should've been—brittle, marked with salt and ash.
"The Ayetoro Codex," she said, "was smuggled out of Benin just before the great fire. It contains prophecy. Forbidden timelines. A list of those born carrying the blood of gods and ghosts."
She opened the scroll. A symbol was etched near the top:
The broken sun-ring and a line beneath it:
"When the blood of three crosses the gate of stone, the sky shall split, and memory will bleed."
Ayinla's voice was quiet. "Three?"
Efua didn't meet his eyes.
"I didn't come here as your guide," she said. "I came because the Codex named me, too."
Outside the chamber, the man calling himself Brother Matteo stood still, facing the wind.
His sunglasses now reflected only darkness, no matter the angle. He tilted his head.
In the earth beneath him, shadows moved—pulling toward the chamber.
He spoke to no one.
"She has remembered. The blood burns true. We must prepare the gate for cleansing."
His face flickered. And for a moment, he wore no face at all.
Later, Ayinla, Mirella, and Efua sat by a small fire, silent.
None of them knew what to say.
Finally, Mirella broke the silence.
"If we're all connected to this—if this isn't coincidence—then what are we meant to do?"
Efua didn't hesitate.
"Keep the gate closed."
"But what if we're meant to open it?"
Ayinla added, "The Book didn't warn us. It called us."
Efua's hands trembled slightly as she held her obsidian stone.
"It called us because something on the other side… remembers us. But not everything that remembers you wants you to live."
The stone gate pulsed again.
Not visibly, but deep in the bone—like it was calling from inside their blood.
Ayinla and Mirella stood closest when it triggered.
Without touch, without word, it seized them—pulling them into a lightless place. No falling, no sensation. Just transition. A leap between pulses of time.
They landed on black sand.
Above them, the sky rolled in reverse—moons rising before suns, stars reassembling into ancient shapes.
This was Earth, but not the one they knew.
The first Earth. The raw one. The one before memory.
And they weren't alone.
Figures emerged—tall and draped in layered robes of starlight and bone, each wearing a mask. No two were alike. Some bore features of crocodile and lion. Others had smooth, reflective faces or eyes that blinked sideways.
Nine of them stood in a circle, and in the center: a massive spiral etched into obsidian stone.
One of the figures—tallest, with a bronze jaw and silver-feathered robe—spoke.
"You return. Not as selves. As fragments."
Mirella stepped forward. "What are we?"
Another voice answered—soft, serpentine:
"You are not chosen. You are errors returned to alignment."
Ayinla bristled. "We're not errors."
The tallest Custodian tilted its head.
"Then why does your blood remember what your mind denies?"
A projection flickered to life between them.
They saw a planet fractured, skies broken like glass, oceans sucked into spiral storms.
And at the center—a gate.
Not a door. A wound.
A voice echoed across the council:
"The last time we opened it, we lost a thousand years of memory. Civilizations fell before they rose. Gods walked and were erased. The gate does not forgive."
Another Custodian added:
"Yet your generation dances near it again. You've forgotten how close we came to ending all timelines."
Ayinla and Mirella stood frozen.
But one of the Custodians—the shortest, youngest—spoke gently:
"Not all who open the gate seek power. Some seek healing."
A mirror rose from the sand.
They were told: look into it, and you will see the true fragment you carry.
Mirella saw a child—herself at maybe seven, cradling a mask in her lap, whispering in three languages at once. Behind the child: her grandmother, standing not in their Sardinian home, but on a glowing platform above the stars.
Ayinla saw a battlefield—no guns, only sound. Warriors chanted Ifá code into the wind, fighting machines made of memory metal. He recognized one of them as his father. The other… himself, dying.
Their reflections vanished.
And the gate behind them pulsed again—this time like a heartbeat.