The Gatekeeper of Echoes
2025.03.09
Jane was the keeper of echoes, the last guardian of voices lost between time’s woven threads. Her world was a realm where memory and shadow intertwined, where the past whispered against rusted bars and the wind carried secrets too weary to be spoken.
She walked the overgrown path to the gate, fingers brushing against cold metal. The bars, once sharp and unyielding, had softened with time, blurred by the weight of forgotten moments. Each line, each slant of shadow, held the imprint of those who had come before — those who had touched this threshold and left something behind. A name. A sigh. A promise never kept.
Tonight, Jane was listening.
The hues of green and gold stretched beyond the gate, a landscape neither here nor there. The air trembled with voices trapped in the stillness. She could hear them if she stood just right — if she let her breath match the rhythm of the silent past. A child’s laughter, distant yet near. A footstep hesitant before crossing the threshold. The hush of someone waiting, hoping.
Jane pressed her palm against the bars, eyes half-lidded. The echoes curled around her fingertips, familiar as an old dream. She did not remember when she first became the Gatekeeper, nor if she had ever been anything else. But she knew this: her role was to listen, to give shape to the formless, to let the forgotten be seen again, if only in the spaces between blinks.
The world shifted, the green deepened, the echoes softened. The gate remained, waiting for the next shadow to pass through. And Jane, as always, stood watching.
Waiting.
Listening.