The morning after didn't feel like victory.
It felt like the echo of a fire that hadn't fully gone out.
We stayed in Helene's clinic longer than we should have. The snow outside had grown heavier overnight, thickening into soft drifts along the windowsills. Light barely filtered in through the frost-laced glass.
Konrad stood by the front door, coat on, hands behind his back. Erich sat in the armchair, motionless, his eyes fixed on a crack in the floorboard. Clara brewed tea at the counter. She moved like she'd done it a hundred times, though none of us had ever seen her do it before.
I sat at the small table, journal open, charcoal pencil in hand. The page was blank. Nothing stirred beneath it.
Not today.
"Is everyone here?" Helene's voice floated in from the side room. She stepped in a moment later, her coat draped over one arm. Calm. Serene. Watching.
Clara nodded. "More or less."
"Good," Helene said. "Then we should talk."
We gathered loosely—Konrad stayed near the door, Clara beside me. Erich didn't move from the chair.
"I know this isn't easy," Helene began. "But the four of you are together now. That means something. It means the world hasn't completely broken yet."
"You talk like you've seen it happen before," Erich said quietly.
Helene met his gaze. "I've seen what happens when people forget who they are."
Konrad said nothing. But his eyes narrowed, just slightly.
"We still don't know where it leads," I said. "The visions, the powers… the threads."
"We don't have to know everything,' Clara replied. "We just have to follow what we have."
It sounded simple. It sounded right.
But it didn't feel complete.
Helene smiled faintly. "What you have is stronger than you realize. Four threads knotted in time. You've all survived it before."
Something shifted in the air.
Erich looked at her. "How do you know all this?"
"I know what it means to be caught between timelines," she said. "And what it means to feel a life that isn't fully yours."
Konrad stepped forward. "You've felt it too."
She hesitated—just enough to feel authentic. "I have. A long time ago."
Clara's eyes softened. "Then you're one of us."
"I never said that," Helene replied.
"But you've used the thread," I said. "In the clinic. During the collapse. You bent time."
Helene nodded once. "I did what I had to do to keep you all safe."
Erich's voice was low. "That power—where does it come from?"
There was a pause. Then Helene answered, quiet but certain. "Memory."
Clara stepped closer to her, slowly. "Then you're…"
She didn't finish the sentence.
But we all felt it.
The idea settled into the room like dust.
Shuji.
None of us said it out loud. Not yet. But the silence that followed carried the weight of belief.
***
We made a plan to leave by evening. We would go east, toward the outlying districts, where rumors of visions and disappearances had quietly multiplied. Helene offered to gather what she could—records, patterns, maps.
We accepted.
Because who else could we trust, if not the one who guided us before?
But later, as the sky dimmed and we prepared to leave, I caught Clara staring at the window. The same look from before.
"What is it?" I asked.
"I don't know," she said. "I just… feel like someone's alone… an outcast."
I took out my journal, and opened it—turning to a fresh page.
Who's the outcast?
I wrote. Hoping the thread would answer.
And it did.
A second after I wrote the question—
The charcoal shifted beneath my hand.
A new line appeared, faint at first, then darker, etched as though by pressure from a hand that wasn't mine.
The Shadow of Silent Grief.
My breath caught. Clara turned toward me.
"What is it?" she asked.
I angled the journal so she could see.
She read it slowly. Once. Then again.
Her voice was quiet. "That's not a name."
"No," I said. "It's a title."
Clara pressed her hand to the window, eyes distant.
"Then they're still out there."
I looked down at the journal one last time.
The words didn't fade.
And for the first time, I realized—
The silence we'd been carrying wasn't just memory. It was absence.
***
Helene entered the room as the light outside dimmed to a soft violet. She carried with her a folded cloth and a notebook, pages marked and corners creased with use.
"I've compiled everything I have," she said. "Timelines. Patterns. Recurring symptoms. Places that fold around memory."
She sat it on the table. The room grew still.
Erich leaned forward first, flipping through the pages. His brow furrowed.
"These are patient files," he said.
Helene nodded. "Anonymized. But each one reflects a thread that might've touched the same current."
Konrad crossed his arms. "And what exactly do you want us to do with this?"
"Find them," Helene said. "See if they've awakened. If they've disappeared, follow the trail."
Clara moved beside me. Her expression had shifted—not quite trust, not quite doubt. A quiet tension.
I looked to Konrad. Then Erich.
"We'll go," I affirmed.
We left the clinic just after dusk, a map, marked, folded between my fingers.
Helene didn't say goodbye.
She didn't need to.
She'd already become the one we followed.