In the tightly controlled city of Lathbury, where forgetting is considered a civic virtue, archivist Mira Vale begins to experience memories of events that have not yet occurred. When a mysterious power failure exposes a hidden machine beneath the Municipal Archives, Mira discovers the existence of the Mnemosyne Engine—a device designed not to predict the future, but to send lived memories backward through time.
With the help of Jonas Reed, a weary engineer who has already sacrificed years of his own life to fuel the machine, Mira learns that Lathbury once stood on the brink of collapse. The Engine was created as a last resort: by embedding future consequences into present minds, the city hoped people would make better choices. But altering memory comes at a cost—shortened lives, blurred timelines, and growing public resistance from citizens who fear their free will is being stolen.
As protests rise and the government orders the Engine’s destruction, Mira faces an impossible decision. She remembers multiple futures, all ending in ruin, unless one final act is taken. In a moment where time folds in on itself, Mira and Jonas choose to send a collective memory to the entire city—forcing Lathbury to remember the pain, responsibility, and hope of a future that hasn’t yet happened.
The Engine is lost, Jonas is gone, and the city is forever changed. Lathbury does not become perfect—but it becomes conscious. In the aftermath, Mira remains as a quiet guardian of memory, understanding that while some things must be preserved, others must be forgotten. The city survives not because it knew the future—but because it remembered it.

On the morning the city learned how to remember the future, the rain fell upwards.


It lfted from the streets of Lathbury in silver threads, pulling puddles into the air and drawing gasps from the people who stood frozen beneath umbrellas that suddenly felt useless. Traffic lights blinked yellow. Then reds then something between. Time itself Seemed uncertain which way it should flow.


In a quiet apartment above a shuttered bookstore. Mira Vale woke with her heart hammering and the taste of electricity on her tongue. She sat upright before the dream could fade, clutching the sheets, already knowing this moment was important.


She whispered the words she had dreamed all nỉght.


But she knew--deep in her bones-that she had already lived this day.


Chapter 2 - Prologue