The Echo Gate

The fog rolled over the abandoned harbor like a living thing, swallowing streetlamps, swallowing silence. Few people ever walked there after midnight—except for Elara. Something had been calling to her for weeks, a whisper threading through dreams, a pulse beneath reality.

That night, she stepped onto the cracked wooden pier, lantern in hand.

A cold voice drifted from behind her.

“You heard it too.”

Elara didn’t turn. “Simster… I knew it was you.”

The djinn materialized from the mist, his form stretched thin like smoke trying to remember it once had bones.
“The Echo Gate stirs again.”

A second presence rippled the air. Desins appeared beside her, his golden aura dimmer than usual, as if the fog were feeding on its light.
“Something is crossing,” he said softly. “Something that should not.”

Elara tightened her grip on the lantern. “Why call me? What can I do?”

Simster tilted his head, listening to a whisper only he could hear.
“Because the world beyond carries your name tonight.”

The fog around them shivered. The pier beneath their feet creaked, though there was no wind. And then she heard it—the call. A faint, haunting melody rising from the sea, like a choir singing underwater.

Elara stepped closer to the edge.

Desins caught her wrist.
“Do not be deceived. The gate lies behind the sound, but the sound itself lies.”

She swallowed. “What is the Echo Gate?”

Simster leaned toward her, his eyes two swirling galaxies.
“A threshold between worlds. It opens when a truth that was buried refuses to stay silent.”

“But what truth?” Elara asked.

Desins looked away.
“Yours.”

The boards under them began to vibrate. Fog twisted upward, forming a tall, wavering arch—a doorway carved from nothing but sound and shadow.

Inside it, she glimpsed shapes: a desert at dusk, a library made of falling sand, a figure that looked like her but older, sadder, brighter.

Simster stepped behind her.
“You are not destined to enter, Elara. You are destined to decide.”

“Decide what?”

Desins spoke gently, almost regretfully.
“Whether the truth crossing through that gate will heal the world… or consume it.”

The reflection within the arch shifted. The older version of herself looked desperate, reaching out.
“Help me,” the reflection whispered.

Elara’s breath caught. It’s me…

Simster’s voice hardened.
“Not every echo is a future. Some are warnings.”

“Or traps,” Desins added.

The reflection pressed its palms against the inside of the arch.
“You abandoned me,” it cried. “You left me in the sand. Come back. Come become me.”

Elara felt the pull—familiar, emotional, terrifying.
The smell of desert wind.
The taste of regret.
The ache of choices she hadn’t made but might have.

She stepped forward.

Desins shouted, “Elara, NO!”

But she stopped a breath before the gate.

And whispered, “Tell me who you are.”

The reflection smiled—too wide, too sharp.
“I am everything you fear you might become.”

Simster hissed,
“The Echo feeds on doubt. Step back.”

Elara raised the lantern. The flame flickered wildly, then steadied, bright as a star.

“I don’t fear what I might become,” she said softly. “Only what I might refuse to become.”

The gate trembled.

The reflection cracked like shattered glass.
A scream—ancient, hollow—echoed through the harbor as the arch collapsed into mist.

Stillness returned. The fog receded. The sea lay quiet again.

Simster exhaled a slow breath.
“You closed it. Few mortals can do that.”

Desins placed a hand over her heart, warm, steady.
“The truth that tries to devour you is only the shadow of your unclaimed strength.”

Elara lowered her lantern. “Will it reopen?”

Simster smirked faintly.
“Every truth tries twice.”

Desins added,
“But you will be ready.”

And as dawn broke, painting the harbor pale gold, Elara realized the most mysterious thing of all:

The darkness calling her had not been something foreign.
It had been hers—
and she had survived it.