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The Obsidian Gate · KofiTable - Mystery Box stories

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: The obsidian figure's voice slithered through the bone towers like
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: wind through a ribcage. You will see the doors, Lesejo Mocuena.
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: But first, you must survive the opening of one. Lesejo's
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: hand drifted to the spiral mark on her wrist, still
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: cold from the rift's touch. She stood on a ledge
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: of black glass, two moons hanging fat and pale above
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: a forest of blue-leaved trees. The air tasted of iron
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: and honey. I didn't come here to be tested, she said.
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: I came to understand. The figure, tall, skin like polished coal,
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: eyes without pupils, inclined its head. Understanding is the test.
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: It gestured toward an archway of fused bone that hummed
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: with a low, subsonic pulse. The MEP has already traced
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: your entry. They will be here within three of your hours.
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: If you wish to choose which doors open and which
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: stay sealed, you must learn to read the gate before
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: they arrive. Lesejo stepped closer to the arch. Symbols crawled
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: across its surface, shifting like living script. She reached out,
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: then stopped. What happens if I read it wrong? The
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: door opens anyway, just not where you intended. The figure
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: faded backward into the shadows between towers. I am called Tabo.
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: I was a key once. I chose to become a
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: lock instead. Learn from my mistake. She was alone with
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: the arch. The spiral mark on her wrist began to warm,
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: then burn. She bit down on a cry as light
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: bled from the mark and threaded into the symbols, rearranging
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: them into patterns she almost recognized. Fractal geometries, orbital mechanics,
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: the DNA helix. Her astronaut training screamed at her to document,
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: to measure, to stay calm. But the mark didn't want calm.
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: It wanted her to listen. She pressed her palm flat
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: against the arch. The world dissolved. Darkness. Not the darkness
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: of closed eyes, but the darkness of a place that
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: had never known light. She floated in it. weightless, her
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: heartbeat the only sound. Then something tugged at her navel,
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: a hook of gravity, and she was falling upward, pulled
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: through a throat of black velvet toward a pinprick of white.
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: The light hit her like a physical blow. She squeezed
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: her eyes shut, tears streaming, and when she opened them,
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: she was standing on a platform of white stone veined
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: with gold. Below her stretched a city, no, a civilization,
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: carved into the walls of a canyon so deep the
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: bottom was lost in mist. Bridges of woven light connected
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: towers that grew from the rock like crystal formations. Waterfalls
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: poured from impossible heights, their spray catching rainbows. And everywhere,
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: moving through the air on wings of translucent membrane, were people,
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: not humans. Their skin ranged from deep indigo to pale silver.
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: Their faces elongated, their eyes large and dark. They wore
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: robes that shimmered like oil on water. Some carried staffs
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: that glowed. Others rode creatures that looked like a cross
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: between a mantis and a horse, their carapaces iridescent. One
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: of them landed on the platform before her, tall, slender,
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: with a circlet of bone on their brow. They spoke.
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: and the words arrived in Laseko's mind already translated, though
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: the mouth moved differently. You are the one from the
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: blue world. The rift spoke your name. Laseko found her voice.
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: Where am I? You are on Mars. The true Mars.
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: What your people call a dead planet is a veil
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: we wove millennia ago to hide from those who would
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: harvest us. The alien's eyes flickered with something like pity.
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: Your arrival has torn the veil. The MEP will follow.
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: The MEP? They're your police? They are the reason we hid.
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: The alien extended a hand. I am called Tabo. I
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: was a key once. I chose to become a lock instead.
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: Learn from my mistake. Laseko stared at the hand, then
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: at the city below, then at the two moons hanging
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: in a sky the color of ripe peaches. Her oxygen
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: readings were normal. Her suit's sensors insisted the atmosphere was breathable.
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: None of it made sense, and yet the spiral mark
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: on her wrist had stopped burning. It pulsed now, slow
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: and steady, like a second heart. You said I have
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: three hours, she said. Show me the doors, all of them,
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: and then I'll decide. Tabo smiled, and it was the
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: first genuine expression she'd seen on an alien face. You
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: are already deciding. Come. The first door is beneath the city.
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: It leads to your earth. The second is above the canyon.
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: It leads to the MEP's homeworld. The third... Tabo paused,
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: and the pause was heavy. The third leads nowhere. It
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: is a door that only closes. We call it the
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: Final Seal. If the MEP breaches the other two, someone
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: must stand in the third and shut it from the inside. Forever.
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: Leseko looked at the city, at the waterfalls and the
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: light bridges and the winged people going about their lives,
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: unaware that a human from a blue world had just
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: arrived to decide their fate. She thought of Nomusa's voice
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: in her helmet, of the stone circle in Molechi, of
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: the hunger that had almost eaten the world. She thought
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: of Earth, of her crew, of the silence on the
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: comms since the rift swallowed her. No one's standing in
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: a door forever, she said. Not on my watch. Show
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: me the first one. I want to see what the M.E.P.
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: is so afraid of. Tabo's circlet glowed faintly. As you wish, Ki.
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: He turned and walked toward the edge of the platform,
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: where a bridge of light unfurled like a tongue. Lesejo followed,
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: the spiral mark warm against her skin, and tried not
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: to think about the fact that she had just promised
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: to save a world she'd known for five minutes.