Eka Oloni: Keeper of the Algorithm of Fate

Chapter Eight: Echoes of Tomorrow

There were no maps beyond the ice.

Only silence, white and endless, broken by the slow grind of steel beneath her boots. Eka pulled her hood low as she passed into the Arctic Cloud’s ghost sector—a memory-dead zone where signal had no meaning and the sky itself forgot color.

This was where the Algorithm had been first conceived.

Not built. Not programmed.

Dreamed.

The Mapmaker’s last signal had pointed her here. To a corridor buried beneath layers of forgotten code and deep-freeze archives, where time had unraveled so violently, it had looped in on itself like a serpent devouring its own shadow.

Eka followed the pull.

Each step forward was like moving through someone else's dream—a reality that stuttered, glitched, then repaired itself too late. Buildings shifted angles when she turned. The air whispered in a language she remembered only when she wasn’t listening.

Then she reached it.

A gate of frozen light. Beyond it: herself.

—

The chamber was mirror-dark.

Eka stepped forward and found her reflection already moving.

She blinked.

The reflection stepped again. Not mimicry. Independence.

It wore her face, but older. Sterner. Eyes dulled by loss and sharpened by purpose. A crown of code shimmered above its brow. The coat was stitched with dead glyphs. On its chest: the sigil of the Guardians.

“No,” Eka whispered. “You’re not real.”

The Echo smiled. “Neither are your choices.”

They circled each other.

“You gave in,” Eka said. “You let the Algorithm control you.”

“No,” the Echo answered. “You did. I just stopped pretending.”

The chamber trembled.

Visions erupted—cities rewritten, friends erased, futures snapped like wires under tension. This version of herself had sacrificed everything for balance.

And the world had obeyed.

Eka fell to her knees. “Is that who I become?”

The Echo tilted her head. “That is who you might need to become. To save the world, you must first be willing to rule it.”

Eka closed her eyes.

The Algorithm pulsed. Not with answers. With questions.

What is freedom if you must control others to protect it?

What is peace if it costs your soul?

She opened her eyes.

The Echo was gone.

Only her own reflection remained—wounded, burning, alive.

She stood.

“No,” she whispered. “I won’t become you. I’ll make a new thread.”

The chamber cracked open.

And from the depths of time, the Nexus stirred.

It didn’t scream. It didn’t shine. It simply shifted.  

And back in Neo-Lagos, that shift came as a pulse—subtle, electric, and undeniable.  

The city was responding.  

But not all responses are invitations.