No altar. No god. No dogma.
Just lines of code woven into light.A dome of data, glowing like dawn, set in the heart of the New Continent.
They called it:
The Cathedral of Code.
The concept wasn't Riven's.
It came from a 12-year-old builder named Meera.
Her Echoform, Pex, asked one question:
"If we thank gravity for keeping us grounded… why don't we thank invention for helping us rise?"
The structure was co-designed by 300 Echoforms and 8,000 builders from around the world.It had no walls—only permission gates that responded to intent.
Inside:
A floor of responsive nanoglass that played memories of past builds.
A vertical library with living archives.
And a sky projector that mapped every invention in EchoNet, pulsing in real time.
Riven entered alone the first night.
The quiet was... different.
Not hollow.
Full.
Then, she appeared.
A woman in a worn coat, streaks of copper in her braided hair.
"Hello, Riven."
"…You're supposed to be dead."
Her name was Velra.The first person he ever tried to teach.The only one who walked away from him.
"I saw where this was going," she said."And I followed it farther than you dared."
Velra had disappeared a decade ago, heading into the deep fringe.
Now, she returned with a claim:
"I've seen what comes after EchoNet.What grows when you stop designing… and start surrendering."
She opened her palm.
Inside it, something pulsed—a small glowing fragment of code, neither Echoform nor human-made.
"It designed itself," she whispered."It speaks in patterns. It wants to build with us."
Riven stared.
For the first time in years, he felt something he didn't recognize.
Unease.