In the grey dawn, Marla moved through the silent city. Buildings stretched upward, disappearing into a smog that never lifted, their surfaces a patchwork of dark, rusted metal and stained concrete. The streets were empty, save for the hunched figures that shuffled towards the Centre each morning like clockwork—a silent, colourless parade.

Marla kept to the shadows, her thin coat pulled tight against the chill that the sun no longer dispelled. At every corner, she paused, her eyes scanning the looming towers for any sign of the Wardens. They were ever-watchful, though few had seen them, and fewer still had seen them and lived to tell the tale.

Her destination was the old library, a relic predating the Ruling. It stood alone in an overgrown square, its once-gleaming façade now dulled and crumbling under the weight of years and neglect. Inside, the air was musty with the scent of old paper and rebellion. This was where the Forgotten met, where Marla found her kind—those who remembered, those who dared to dream of a world beyond.

Today, they gathered around a frail older man named Jotham, his voice barely a whisper as he spoke of the Before—of green fields and open skies, things Marla had seen only in tattered books.

"We are the memory of the world," Jotham said, his eyes gleaming with an enthusiasm that seemed at odds with his fragile frame. "And memory is a thing they cannot take, not so long as we breathe."

Marla listened, her heart swelling with a mix of hope and fear. Each meeting was a risk, for memory was forbidden.

The Ruling decreed it so when they seized power, claiming that the past held only pain and loss, that memory bred only discontent. Better to forget, they said. Better to move forward under their watchful gaze, unburdened by what was lost.

But Marla could not forget. She carried within her the memory of her father's laugh, bright and booming, and her mother's hands, rough and warm as they pulled her close. These memories were her defiance, her reason to fight.

As the meeting ended, the members of the Forgotten filed out, their eyes alert and movements quick. Marla lingered, letting the others vanish into the maze of streets before she, too, left the library's shelter. The cold bite of the outside air was a sharp reminder of the world she returned to.

On her way back, Marla's path took her near the Centre, the monolithic complex that housed the Ruling. It loomed above, casting long shadows that swallowed whole streets. Here, she encountered the unexpected—a young boy darted out from an alley, his face pale, eyes wide with desperation.

"Please," he whispered, clutching Marla's sleeve. "My brother, they took him."

The sudden plea jolted Marla, memories flashing in her mind of her own brother, lost to the Ruling's merciless grip years ago. In the boy's eyes, she saw the same helplessness that must have mirrored her own back then.

"Where?" she asked, her decision made.

He led her deeper into the maze of the city, to the edge of the Centre, where the air buzzed with a silent tension.

There, hidden in the shadows of the great complex, they found his brother, eyes vacant, a shell of who he had been. The Reformation, they called it.

The erasing of self; the final step in the Ruling's quest to sever the people from their past.

Marla and the boy did not speak as they carried him back through the winding streets, away from the towering might of the Ruling. They moved like phantoms, unseen, the boy's brother a silent weight between them. As dawn bled into day, they reached the outskirts, where the forgotten and the outcasts lived. Here, memory was a communal thing, a shared burden and a shared hope.

Marla looked at the boy, his hand clasped tightly in hers, and then at the man they had rescued. She knew then what she had to do. She would return to the Centre, again and again, to reclaim those lost to the Ruling's grasp.

For memory was a flame, and as long as it burned within even one willing heart, the future remained unwritten. And in that unwritten future, there lay a world worth fighting for.