Prologue
The Silver Era
The world we knew did not perish in fire. It faded, like the last glimmer in a dying eye. Long before the Plague arrived, long before the final screams of human civilization, the sky had already been obscured by thick, impenetrable clouds that rarely let the familiar sunlight through. The world was now shrouded in a constant, yellowish twilight that had changed nature itself. Adapting to this new reality, the vegetation was no longer green — trees and bushes took on purple, blue, or even deep black hues, and the forests came to resemble strange, tangled tropical jungles where each species evolved not to compete, but to make the most of the scant, available yellow light. The war that had exhausted our planet for decades left behind not nuclear wastelands, but something far more terrifying — a disease they called the Silver Plague.
It began quietly. With small, almost unnoticeable gaps, like holes in the fabric of reality: a forgotten word, a fact that could not be recalled. Our memories, like fragile silver threads, snapped one by one. First, trivial things disappeared, then the faces of loved ones. And then, something more profound — memories of our own identity.
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But that was only the beginning. As the mind emptied, the void was filled with something else. The final, most dreadful phase of the disease began — the metamorphosis. The body, stripped of its mind, started to change. Hands elongated, fingers fused into horrific, bony claws. The body stretched, becoming gaunt and disproportionate. The skin around the eyes reddened, and the eyes themselves became bloodshot. Hair fell out, and in place of consciousness, only one instinct remained — hunger. These creatures, which we call the Hollow, roam the ruins, hunting any living soul they encounter.
As cities turned into empty stone mausoleums, and roads became overgrown with weeds — through which the now-common blue, purple, and black trees grew — a handful of those who were immune hid from oblivion. We, the survivors, call ourselves the Memory. We collect books, old photographs, maps, anything that can remind us of the world before the Plague. Each page is a shield, each picture is a weapon against forgetting.
I was born after the world had gone quiet. My life is one of searching and preserving the knowledge we are rescuing from oblivion. I am a daughter of Memory, and this is my story. It is a story about a world that died but cannot be forgotten. For if we forget, the Silver Plague will have won for good. My life is an eternal struggle: for the past and for the future, and against the Hollow monsters and against the very same fanaticism that destroyed the world but not itself.
