Last month when I sat down to work on my picture prompt, I used ChatGPT to generate a laundry list of prompts from the picture. As a result, I selected the next prompt from the list that I wanted to explore. A scholar enters the forest in search of a long-lost magical archive said to record the memories of every creature who’s ever walked the earth. The deeper they go, the more they begin to remember things they never lived. Is the forest showing them a forgotten past—or creating false memories? While the premise intrigued me, there were elements I didn’t particularly like. But that’s the beauty of prompts. The real magic lies in how the story takes shape in your mind.
What if the past wasn’t just recorded? What if it was alive? If it was whispered through trees, encoded in mist, and etched into the very roots of the earth?
In Memory’s Weight, we follow Calen, a well-traveled man with the mental fortitude to handle nearly anything he finds. However, nothing from his past has prepared him for what waits in a forgotten glade, an archive that doesn’t just store memories, but shares them.
Guided by a cryptic map, vague riddles, and a voice without a face, Calen must question not only what he sees, but who he is. Step into the archives, though before you do, ensure you’re ready to see what will remember you.
With a growl, Calen crumpled the map as mist clung to his face. He wiped his mouth as he leaned against a tree. Calen reopened the weathered paper and examined it. When he finished, he shoved the map into his pocket. “That’s what I get for chasing whispered gossip.”
“Whispers can possess the same weight as facts.”
He whipped around, searching the dense wall of foliage. He inched closer to a dense swatch of bush and thrust his arms inside. With a long breath, he spread the branches, revealing a mist rolling across the ground. He removed his arms, retrieving the map to read the note written on the reverse.
The archive of all walkers can be found where the markings glow faintly and the air empowers the scent of memory.
“I should have gotten more information from the traveler I bought this from.”
“You’ve found the path you need for recollection.”
Shaking his head to banish the strange voice, Calen stepped through the foliage. Once through the dense vegetation, he stepped into a moss-draped glade, where light ran through the gaps in the canopy. Filtered light mingled with green foliage, casting shifting shadows despite the stillness.
Moments passed as the mist unfurled from the glade’s edge. Calen had studied magic for decades. He’d translated ancient memoirs. He debated the ethics of dangerous spells with high mages. Calen even argued with a vampire, convincing him not to satiate his hunger. However, none of his past achievements prepared him for the weight of this place.
He felt it first in his fingertips, the ghost of calluses he didn’t have. He staggered toward the emerging mist as a memory bloomed. Calen ran barefoot through a grassland. Occasional blades brushed his cheek as he chased someone whose laughter reminded him of heavenly bells. When she turned, something inside him surged. The way her eyes crinkled when she smiled, he knew her. He wanted to call out her name, but it refused to come. Yet still, he mourned the loss of his sister. But he’d never had a sister.
As he staggered closer to the rolling mist, more vivid memories flooded into his mind. With each new one, his legs quivered.
He was whisked through the world to stand on a hillside with a silver-feathered hawk perched upon his arm. The bird’s head twisted to him as its talons dug into the thick leather glove wrapped about his arm. While the pressure on Calen’s forearm squeezed, its eyes mirrored his own resolve. Not affection, not command, but allegiance. It seemed the bird traversed centuries to locate him.
Once he understood the connection between him and the raptor, something whisked Calen to a stiffening desert. He pulled his collar away from his neck as he looked toward the sun. He collapsed to his knees as he found a black spot with a ring of fire staring down at him.
Between breaths, the desert vanished, being replaced with a crib that somehow seemed appropriate for him. As the soft lullaby washed over him, Calen turned, discovering a woman who appeared to be his own age, singing in a language he didn’t know, yet could understand as if he’d spoken it his entire life. The woman turned her gaze on him, and his breath caught. She wasn’t his mother, yet something about her eyes told him she’d sung this song a thousand times before.
Calen rolled onto his stomach and rose to his hands and knees, finding the source of the mist, a stream that glowed with light from nowhere. A reflection shimmered on the surface, but it felt wrong. He reached up, unfamiliar fingers brushing a beard he’d never grown. He shook his head and reopened his eyes to find his face staring back at him.
“Whose lives did I see?”
A breeze stirred the leaves, and the forest seemed to sigh. “Lives lived before us.”
Calen wiped his face and stood. In another blink of his eyes, he wove between ancient tree trunks thick with ivy. The trees seemed to part for him, guiding rather than hindering. He no longer checked anything other than his instincts.
As he took another step forward, Calen fell and plunged into the water. Instantly, the stream whisked Calen downstream. After several long seconds, he was tossed onto land. Calen rose to his hands and knees, discovering a hollow ringed by stones older than kings. In its center stood a tree, unlike the rest. Its pale bark veined with light and its roots sunk deep into similarly pale soil. Its branches shimmered with translucent leaves, each etched with moving runes.
He’d found the archive.
He stepped forward, and the forest didn’t wait to answer his motion.
A cascade of visions poured through him. Generations of wolves, their howls carried by a wind. A mountain shattered by a giant who’d broken his oath. Then he witnessed the joy of a child’s first step. Followed by the last breath of a dying god.
He fell back, gasping as his heart hammered with truths that weren’t his. Calen flipped onto his stomach and stared at the rushing stream beneath him. He gripped his collar and shut his eyes as more memories flooded in.
“How can I hold on to myself with so many lives flooding through me?”
The voice that had previously whispered to him from deep within the forest. Now resonated from deep within Calen, not audibly, but from the depths of his soul.
“The forest does not lie. What you remember… is what was.”
Calen wept, not because the memories were false. But because they weren’t his. Somehow, pieces of himself were scattered throughout time, forgotten by everyone, waiting here beneath the leaves. He dipped his hands into the stream and let the water run through his fingers. Finally, Calen knew his future, and who he’d follow. He and these memories would persist.
“Is this how you protect your secrets?”
“Your story will whisper through the leaves of the archive forever.”