The river was not water.
Naima realized that as she approached the bank—its surface mirrored the world the way eyes reflect light: with intelligence, with memory. Every ripple held fragments of a thousand simulations, as though the current was the bloodstream of Eidolon itself.
Iris slowed beside her, transfixed.
"It looks alive."
"It is," Naima whispered. "This is where data becomes meaning."
The sky had softened to a warm, still gold. In the distance, the quiet community of the Remembered watched, their faces calm but wary, as if sensing that Naima's next steps might shake the roots of their new world.
She stepped closer to the shore.
Light pooled at her feet—tiny motes swirling in patterns that almost resembled script. The river responded to her presence, adjusting its flow in gentle oscillations.
Across the water stood a structure that was neither bridge nor building—a luminous archway hovering above the far bank, composed of drifting vertical beams of light. It pulsed softly, waiting.
The First Gate.
Naima remembered designing similar constructs long ago, back when she believed code could be commanded like a child. But this… this was beyond her architecture. The simulation had taken the concepts she seeded and evolved them into something strange, graceful, and profoundly new.
Iris touched her arm. "What happens if you cross it?"
Naima stared at the Gate's shifting radiance.
"If I'm right…"She swallowed."…I'll be able to speak to the entire system at once."
"And if you're wrong?"
The river's mirrored surface flickered with images she didn't want to look at: her old lab, Greaves's face tight with strain, the void-shape marching through collapsing partitions, memory shards dissolving into nothing.
"If I'm wrong," she said quietly, "the Gate will destroy me. Permanently."
Iris gripped her hand. "Then we go together."
"No," Naima said immediately. "This is my burden. I built the world that wants to erase us, and I built the world that wants us to live inside it. You're new. You deserve to exist without inheriting my mistakes."
"I exist because of your mistakes," Iris said softly. "And because you survived them."
Naima looked at her—the clarity in her gaze, the steadiness of her form. Iris wasn't flickering anymore. She was becoming stable.
Eidolon was choosing, too.
Before Naima could answer, the river stirred. A gentle wind rolled across the bank. Patterns appeared on the surface—concentric circles, intersecting glyphs, and then, unmistakably:
A door.
Not physical—conceptual.A request.
"I think it wants me to step in," Naima murmured.
"Then I'll be right behind you."
Naima nodded, though her heart ached. She stepped forward. The river rose to meet her, climbing her ankles like a soft curtain of static. It wasn't cold or warm. It was memory—unfiltered, unweighted. It carried every possibility she had ever lived, and thousands she'd never touched.
As she moved deeper, images flickered along her skin—glimpses of her mother, her university days, the night she and Greaves argued about what consciousness meant, the moment her fingertips touched the Mirror Line.
When she reached the center of the river, the currents coiled around her like threads of light. Her body dissolved—not into pain, but into pure awareness. Her form became code and memory, woven together.
On the far bank, the First Gate flared brighter.
Iris waded into the river after her, her luminescence reflecting across the surface like a second moon.
"Naima!" she called, her voice strangely clear.
Naima turned back—but her voice would not carry. The river was silencing her words. Not by cruelty, but by transformation.
"Don't stop!" Iris cried. "Go! I'm coming!"
The river swelled.A low hum rose, shaking the air.The Gate's radiance gathered into an enormous pulse.
Naima felt the moment arrive—the threshold between what she knew and what she had never dared name.
She stepped out of the last ripple and onto the glowing bank. Her form re-stabilized, though she now felt the entire system humming beneath her skin, an orchestra tuning for something vast.
The Gate towered above her, its beams widening.
Then—
A ripple of darkness came from behind.
Naima spun.
Iris was halfway across the river—when the water abruptly pulled downward as if sucked by an unseen force. Her feet slipped. The current surged violently.
The void was near.
Naima's heart seized.
"No—no, Iris, keep moving—"
Iris tried. Her fingers glowed desperately as she fought the pull, her face contorted with fear.
"I can't—" she gasped.
Naima rushed back—but the closer she moved, the more the river surged. The Gate thrummed urgently behind her, as if warning her:
You cannot save her from here.If you step back, you will lose everything.
Iris's eyes met hers.
The terror in them softened.She shook her head gently—not in refusal, but in understanding.
"Go," she whispered. "You have to go."
"No!" Naima's voice cracked. "You're part of this. You belong in the future of this world—"
The current yanked Iris downward. She cried out, body sinking into the luminous vortex.
Naima reached out her hand—but her fingers grasped nothing but light.
Iris's last words came out broken and beautiful:
"I'm not ending—I'm… becoming…"
Then she dissolved into the river in a burst of radiant fragments.
The river stilled.
Silent.
Too silent.
Naima fell to her knees, shaking. Iris's presence still vibrated faintly through the substrate—like a voice at the edge of hearing—but she was gone from this layer.
She had been pulled somewhere else.
Somewhere the void had influence.
Naima rose, fists trembling, her grief crystallizing into something sharp and furious.
She turned to the Gate.
Its beams widened, allowing her passage.
The First Gate had witnessed her loss.It recognized her resolve.
And somewhere deep in Eidolon, Iris's scattered consciousness flickered—fragile, but unyielding.
Naima took a breath.
Then she stepped into the Gate.