An original AI generated sci-fi illustration on an immutable blockchain — The Gate of Echoes — Before him loomed the Gate of Echoes, a colossal structure drifting above the shattered crust of a forgotten moon. It was said that those who climbed its fractured stairs could speak with the architects of reality itself. The traveler, cloaked in silence, had crossed dying worlds and timeless voids to stand before it, guided only by the pulse of a beacon within his mind. The face that emerged from the gate’s core was neither machine nor god, but something that shimmered between both—a relic of consciousness forged in the dawn of creation. Its eyes burned with knowledge unspoken, galaxies swirling in their depths. When it spoke, its voice rippled through the airless void like a hymn carved from starlight, summoning memories that did not belong to him. He realized then that the gate was not an entrance but a mirror—reflecting the universe’s will through those who sought it. The traveler’s body dissolved into light, his essence threading through the infinite lattice of worlds. The Gate of Echoes absorbed his final breath, and in that instant, a new star was born—another mind woven into the endless machinery of the cosmos.