The city of Solara was a labyrinth of neon lights, its skyline piercing the twilight like shards of forgotten dreams. Among the thrumming beats of a bustling metropolis, Elara Walken maneuvered through the holographic advertisements and displays, her pulse synced with the electric energy of the crowds around her. Here, memories had become the ultimate currency, traded in cafés, bars, and underground markets.
Elara, with her short-cropped silver hair and piercing blue eyes, was known as one of the best memory curators in Solara. Her talent lay in her ability to extract the most potent moments from the tangled web of a person's past. Those who sought her services often left her small, dimly lit studio changed—lost in nostalgia or awakened by insights they'd long buried.
But as Elara meticulously curated memories for her clients, one late evening, she stumbled upon a haunting echo buried deep within a man named Theo, a regular at her studio. It unraveled unexpectedly—a memory not just of joy or sorrow, but a fragmented glimpse of something sinister: a shadowy figure with an emblem of a rising phoenix, a symbol long thought to be forgotten.