Eka Oloni: Keeper of the Algorithm of Fate

Chapter Three: Threads of the Future

The map burned in her mind.

Not a place. Not a shape. A feeling—pulling her forward through tunnels of forgotten memory, toward a place where time looped like corrupted code.

Eka stood with the Mapmaker at the edge of the undercity. Beneath the city’s surface, buried beneath strata of old simulations and dreams discarded like junk code, was the First Thread.

She didn’t know what it was.

But the Algorithm wanted her there.

They descended past crumbling steel walkways and through chambers choked in moss and server rot. Lights flickered. Echoes carried the words of long-dead programs.

Finally: a door.

It wasn’t made of metal. Or matter. It shimmered like possibility.

The Mapmaker hesitated. “This is a nexus knot,” he said. “A crossroad where time has splintered too many times to count. Once you step through, you’ll see lives you haven’t lived. Pasts that aren’t yours. Futures that could be.”

Eka stepped forward. “I’m not afraid of what might be.”

“It’s not what might be,” he said. “It’s what almost was.”

She stepped through anyway.

—

The room was circular, infinite, impossible. Reflections of herself appeared in every direction: Eka with glowing eyes and scarred hands. Eka kneeling before a city in ruin. Eka standing atop a tower as drones saluted. Eka... dead in a cradle of wires, blood forming binary on the ground.

She gasped.

A future. Her future.

The Algorithm pulsed.

Each thread was a path. A decision. A failure. A triumph.

She dropped to her knees as the weight flooded in: the pain of losses she hadn’t suffered, the pride of victories she hadn’t earned. All of it surged in her veins, rewriting her body, her breath, her belonging.

Then she saw one more reflection:

An older version of herself.

Wiser. Angrier. Eyes burning like stars about to collapse.

“Do not trust the Mapmaker,” the reflection whispered. “He’s not what he claims.”

Eka blinked—and the image vanished.

Behind her, the Mapmaker’s voice drifted in.

“You’ve seen it, haven’t you?”

“What are you hiding from me?” she asked, standing, fists clenched.

“I’ve never lied to you,” he said. “But I don’t serve the Algorithm. I serve the Map. And those... are not always the same.”

A tremor ripped through the room. The walls cracked like glass. The visions vanished.

Reality folded back.

—

They stood outside again. Only seconds had passed. But Eka was changed. Her spine held storms. Her eyes held echoes.

She turned to the Mapmaker and whispered, “Then from now on—we walk on my path.”

And above them, in a spire of code and sky, the Architects watched.

She had seen what she might become. That fear still echoed behind her eyes.  

But the path forward—her path—was already pulling her toward the sea.  

Toward memory.  

Toward the Vault.