The fog came earlier than usual.
In Wamena village, morning lost its color. The sky hung low in shades of gray, and the birds that once greeted dawn were silent. The sacred stones that used to glow at night were now cold, lifeless objects. People began to forget. They forgot the cardinal directions, their children's names, even the prayers they used to whisper before sleep.
Yohwa stood in his yard, staring at the cracked stone that had glowed the night before. Now it was dim, but he knew—the light hadn't vanished. It was hiding. Inside that stone, something waited. He could feel it. Like a breath held in. Like a soul not yet awakened.
At the market, a mother wept because she didn't recognize her child. At school, a teacher forgot the alphabet. At the temple, the priest forgot the chants. The world was slowly losing memory, and Yohwa felt the light inside him growing stronger, as if refusing to fade.
He tried speaking to his father, Tama, who was carving stone at the edge of their home. "Father, don't you feel something's changed?" he asked.
Tama paused, then resumed his carving. "Fog comes and goes. We carve. That's all."
"But people are forgetting. The stones don't shine anymore."
Tama sighed. "That's not our concern, Yohwa. We're not guardians of light. We're just carvers."
Yohwa fell silent. But his heart resisted. He knew—if not him, then who?
That night, Yohwa returned to the cracked stone. He sat before it, quiet. He touched its surface. No light. But a vibration. Subtle. Deep. Like a sound without voice. He closed his eyes, and in the darkness, he saw something: ancestral figures standing in the fog, watching him.
"Why me?" he whispered.
And from within the stone, as if answering, one word echoed in his mind: because you remember.