The decision was made. The allure of a crossover sequel and a political thriller was strong, but the sheer, bizarre originality of the 'City That Forgot Its Name' was too tempting for a storyteller like Cid to resist. A world of amnesiacs, a memory-eating tower, and a secret that a whole city had chosen to forget—it was a perfect, surrealist stage.
Jin-woo sighed mentally. There was no arguing with Cid when he was in the throes of creative inspiration. Besides, his own Narrator's Eye confirmed that this revision, while dangerous, would indeed unlock a hidden, more profound layer of the story. It was a good edit.
"Alright," Jin-woo said aloud. "Make the revision."
Cid held up his spectral Author's Pen. He didn't touch the Unwritten Page. He simply made a gesture in the air, like a conductor giving a downbeat. The pen pulsed with a quiet, authoritative light.
He was not writing a new story. He was submitting an edit request to the Author King's system.
The synopsis for Tale C on the Unwritten Page shimmered. The final sentence, '...a forgotten child... unaware that the tower is feeding on the forgotten memories...' began to dissolve. In its place, new, glowing words were written.
'...a forgotten child, who seems to be immune, wanders the streets, trying to make people remember, unaware that she herself is the subconscious source of the Amnesia Field, a desperate act of psychic self-defense to protect her people from a truth more terrible than any lie.'
The page flashed once, a soft golden light. [REVISION ACCEPTED.] The world's history, its characters, its very reality, had been seamlessly rewritten to accommodate this new, tragic truth.
The portal opened. It was a swirling vortex of grey fog, silent and disorienting. It smelled of lost time and old, dusty memories.
They stepped through, arriving not in the city itself, but in the 'backstage' of the world, just as they had in the Glitching Kingdom. The Key to the Backstage had granted them this as their default entry method.
Below them, the City That Forgot Its Name was laid out like a blueprint. It was a metropolis of towering, brutalist architecture, all rendered in shades of grey. A thick, soupy fog, which they could now perceive as a physical manifestation of the Amnesia Field, blanketed everything.
And in the center, a colossal, monolithic black tower stood, absorbing all light and color. This was the source of the field, the prison of the sleeping entity.
He then focused on the child herself. He saw her wandering the grey streets below, a small, lonely figure trying to talk to the hollow-eyed, amnesiac citizens.
[Name: 'Nobody' (Subject has no memory of her own name).
[Backstory (Revised): The sole survivor of the 'Silent Cataclysm' that befell this city. Her immense, latent psychic power erupted in a moment of trauma, creating the Amnesia Field to make everyone, including herself, forget the event. She subconsciously believes that if everyone remembers, the horror will return.
[Plot Relevance: The Protagonist. The Antagonist. The Key. The Lock.]
This time, there would be no grand, flashy entrance. That would only frighten her. They needed a subtle approach.
They descended from the backstage into the physical reality of the city, materializing in a quiet, fog-shrouded square. The air was cool, damp, and unnervingly quiet. The citizens drifted past them like ghosts, their faces blank, their movements aimless.
They found the child, 'Nobody,' sitting on the steps of a crumbling monument, talking to a stray cat, the only living creature that seemed to pay her any attention.
"They don't remember their birthdays," she was saying to the cat, her voice small and sad. "Or their favorite foods. Or the people they love. It's like their books are all empty inside."
Cid and Jin-woo approached slowly. Cid had shed his dramatic gi, now wearing a simple, unassuming traveler's cloak. He had even ditched his usual confident smirk, replacing it with a gentle, curious expression. He was playing a new role: the kindly stranger.
The child looked up, her large, dark eyes widening with fear as she saw them. She clutched the cat protectively.
"It's alright," Cid said, his voice soft. He stopped a safe distance away and knelt down, bringing himself to her level. "We're just lost travelers. This is a very... foggy city. It's easy to lose your way."
The child just stared, her guard still up.
Jin-woo decided to try a different approach. He didn't speak. He focused on his 'Sovereign's Presence' skill. He projected a single, simple concept towards her: "Warmth."
Not power, not authority. Just the simple, comforting feeling of a warm hearth on a cold day. A feeling of safety.
The child's tense shoulders relaxed slightly. She didn't know why, but the tall, silent man didn't feel scary anymore. He felt... safe.
"We're looking for stories," Cid continued his gentle approach. "We're collectors of tales. But it seems this city... has forgotten all of its."
"They're not forgotten," the child whispered, hugging the cat. "They're just... sleeping. It's safer if they sleep." This was her subconscious desire, the core of the world's problem, spoken aloud.
"But a story that is never told is a sad thing, isn't it?" Cid asked. "Even a sad story deserves to be heard."
He was planting the seed. The idea that remembering was not a danger, but a necessity.
Their delicate conversation was interrupted. A new presence entered the square. It was not a citizen. It was a tall, slender figure made of pure, solidified shadow, its form constantly shifting, its face a blank, featureless oval. A 'Shade,' a guardian of the Amnesia Field. A subconscious defense mechanism created by the child's own power.
The Shade pointed a long, shadowy finger at Cid and Jin-woo. Its voice was a chorus of whispers, the forgotten memories of the entire city. "You... are a new variable. A new memory. New memories are a threat to the Great Forgetting. You must be erased."
The ground beneath their feet turned to shadow, and spectral hands reached up to grab them.
This was the trial's true conflict. They couldn't just destroy the guardians; the guardians were a part of the child herself. To fight them with force would be to attack the very person they were trying to save.
Jin-woo acted. He stomped his foot, and his own, far more powerful shadow erupted, easily dispersing the spectral hands. He summoned a single soldier: Igris.
But he gave Igris a strange command.
Igris, ever-loyal, charged the Shade. But he did not swing to kill. His movements were a perfect, defensive dance. He parried the Shade's attacks, he redirected its blows, he kept it occupied in a contained, harmless battle that was more of a display than a fight.
While Jin-woo's knight kept the manifestation of the child's fear busy, Cid focused on the child herself.
"See?" Cid said, his voice remaining calm even as a spectacular shadow-battle raged a few feet away. "Sometimes, scary things just want to be heard. They fight because they are afraid of being forgotten." He was reframing the entire conflict for her.
He then pulled out his Author's Pen. He wasn't going to write a plot twist. He was going to perform an act of gentle, narrative therapy.
He pointed the pen not at the child, but at the stray cat in her lap. He wrote a single, simple 'edit'.
[Character Edit: The stray cat is now able to speak, its voice a comforting, familiar purr. It is the manifestation of the city's lost 'Core Memory' of safety and companionship.]
The cat in the child's lap blinked, looked up at her, and then spoke, its voice a warm, gentle purr that only she could hear. "It's okay to remember, little one. It's how we learn. It's how we grow."
The child's eyes went wide. A voice. A memory. A feeling of safety she hadn't known she'd lost.
She looked at the battling Shade, the manifestation of her fear. She looked at the two strangers, one of whom was a silent protector, the other a gentle storyteller. And she looked at the cat in her lap, the voice of her own forgotten past.
A single tear rolled down her cheek. And with it, a single, forgotten memory returned to her. The memory of her own name.
"My name," she whispered, "is Hope."
The moment she spoke her name, the Shade fighting Igris faltered, its form wavering. The Amnesia Field across the entire city flickered, and for a brief second, a citizen in the square blinked and said, "Wait... I remember..." before the fog washed over them again.
They had found the way. They didn't need to fight the city's defenses. They needed to help its creator remember who she was. Their quest was not to defeat a monster, but to heal a broken heart, one memory at a time.