A cursed city where everyone forgets their past.

The mist rolled in every morning, swallowing the city in its silent embrace. The people of Elessa woke up each day with blank minds, remembering only the skills necessary to survive but none of their pasts. They moved like ghosts through streets lined with crumbling statues, their eyes vacant, their hearts unburdened by memories. No one knew who they were or how they had come to be there.

• The city itself was beautiful, its architecture a mixture of ancient elegance and eerie decay. Tall spires clawed at the sky, their glassless windows gaping like silent mouths. Vines twisted through abandoned mansions, their previous occupants forgotten. A fountain stood in the central square, its water dark and still, as if mourning for the memories lost to time.
• No one questioned why they were there. It was as if the ability to wonder had been stolen along with their pasts. The baker made bread because his hands knew how. The blacksmith hammered iron because his muscles remembered the motion. Lovers clasped hands with a vague sense of longing, yet their minds held no faces, no names.
• And every night, as the sun dipped below the horizon, a whisper echoed through the streets:
• “Remember.”
• The word sent shivers down spines. It curled through alleys, seeped through doorways, wrapped itself around sleeping figures like a phantom. But when the sun rose again, the whisper was forgotten, as was everything else.
• One evening, Calem, a young man with restless eyes, sat by the fountain, staring at his reflection in the water. Something tugged at the edges of his mind, a feeling just out of reach. He clenched his fists. There had to be more.
• He had always felt it—an ache deep in his bones, a hunger for something lost. When others accepted their empty lives, he resisted. He would find out why.
• As Night fell, Calem forced himself to stay awake. He fought the lull of forgetfulness, repeating a single word in his mind: Remember.
• At midnight, a figure emerged from the mist. Cloaked in shadows, it walked toward the fountain, its face obscured by the hood of its robe. The whispers grew louder, swirling around Calem, urgent and desperate.
• “You resist,” the figure said, its voice layered, as though many people spoke at once. “Why?”
• “I want to know who I am,” Calem said, standing his ground.
• The figure tilted its head. “That is dangerous.”
• “Then tell me.”
• A silence stretched between them, thick as the mist itself. Then the figure raised a hand, its fingers brushing against Calem’s forehead. A sudden rush of images flooded his mind—faces, names, laughter, pain. He gasped, stumbling back, his knees hitting the cobblestone.
• He remembered.
• A city before the curse. A thriving place, full of life. Then came the Betrayal, the one who had sought to rewrite fate. The city had defied a god, and for that, they had been punished. Their pasts stolen, their names erased, their lives reduced to shadows of what once was.
• Calem’s breath came fast and shallow. He looked around at the city, now drenched in moonlight, and saw it for what it truly was—a graveyard of stolen identities, a place cursed to forget forever.
• He turned back to the figure. “Can I break it?”
• The figure hesitated. “You can try. But remember this—memories are painful. Not all will want them back.”
• Calem looked at the sleeping city. He had a choice: let them live in blissful ignorance or awaken them to the truth, to the pain and sorrow that memory would bring.
• The whispers still echoed in the air.
• “Remember.”
• Calem took a breath and made his choice.
• The next morning, the mist rolled in as always. But this time, as the people woke, their eyes were not empty.
• And the city of Elessa trembled under the weight of its returning past.