It had been three weeks since we left the clinic.
The days bled together—fog-heavy mornings, iron-gray skies, the sound of train tracks splitting silence. We moved from district to district, following rumors and coordinates Helene supplied. Each location offered just enough to keep us believing we were close.
We weren't.
There were no awakenings. No new threads. Just empty buildings, half-formed stories, and records that contradicted themselves.
But none of us questioned.
Not yet.
Helene led without leading. Never commanded—only suggested. She stood just far enough behind to never be the center, and yet the whole rhythm of our movement bent around her.
Konrad said little. He kept his rifle close now, though he never said why. His eyes scanned shadows like they'd started whispering back.
Erich drifted between silence and sharpness, like he couldn't quite settle into who he'd become. Some days, he walked ahead of us, cutting through frost without a sword. Other times, he fell behind and said he needed air. He had not spoken of the fight—not to us, not to Helene. As though saying it aloud would make it real.
Clara was harder to read. She didn't smile, not really. But she was always present. Always aware. When she walked beside me, I could feel the thread hum between us like a breath we hadn't taken yet.
And me—
I wrote.
Every night I opened my journal. Sometimes it answered. Most nights it didn't.
Still, I wrote.
We stayed in inns and borrowed rooms, sometimes under our real names, sometimes not. Time passed differently on the road. Days felt like weeks. Weeks felt like misinterpreted dreams.
The snow didn't fall heavy—but it never stopped. Just enough to keep us cold.
We visited a small town outside Konigs Wusterhausen. A man there had reportedly vanished mid-conversation. His wife said he "blurred". As if he stepped backward into the wrong second. We investigated. We asked questions. Helene reviewed his medical history.
He never existed. Not in any records. Not in any census.
And still—we passed on.
Because Helene said so.
***
We camped outside the next city. A train strike had closed the route, and no one wanted to wait. Konrad built a fire in a windbreak behind a stone mill. Clara sat beside it, quiet. I sat beside her while the others scouted ahead.
"I keep thinking," she said. "Maybe we're walking in circles."
"Circles still lead somewhere," I said. "Eventually."
Clara didn't respond.
The fire crackled.
The wind whispered past the stone.
"She always knows where to loop," she said eventually.
I looked at her.
"Do you think she remembers more than she says?"
I paused for a moment, watching the fire.
"I think we all do," I replied.
We didn't say more.
But later that night, I tried the journal again.
I wrote—
Are we on the right path?
I waited a moment.
The ink hadn't moved.
The page stayed cold.
No warmth beneath my palm. No pull. No breath.
Just stillness.
And silence.
And snow.
***
We arrived in Eberswalde two days later.
It was a town defined by shadows and chimneys—factories curling smoke into the low winter sky, alleys too narrow to trust. Helene said the signals were stronger here. The municipal records hinted at three unexplained disappearances, all tied to a closed psychiatric archive from two decades prior.
The four of us split up that morning. Erich and Konrad went to the old hospital grounds. Clara and I searched through the local archives.
We found a map drawn on butcher's paper, a note scribbled in shorthand none of us could decipher, and a ledger that ended mid-sentence.
Helene said this was good.
Evidence of distortion, she called it.
Clara leaned over the ledger as I copied it into my journal. Her hand brushed mine once—unintentionally. But she didn't move away.
"We're not going to find them this way," she whispered.
I said nothing.
Later that evening, we regrouped outside a bakery. Konrad reported the hospital had been demolished. No new records existed. Erich said the entire district had been scrubbed clean—no tenant rosters, no power usage, no birth records for six blocks.
Helene nodded. "Exactly what I expected."
Erich blinked. "That's not good."
"No," she said. "But it's confirmation. A strong anomaly wipes traces. It breaks narrative continuity.
I saw the others glance at each other. Even Konrad seemed to pause.
"Tomorrow," Helene continued, "we go north. There's a station near the edge of the district that hasn't operated in years. I believe something was left behind there."
She didn't elaborate.
She didn't have to.
We nodded.
We followed.
Even if something inside each of us had already started asking whether we should.
Even if none of us wanted to be the first to stop.
That night, when I opened my journal again, I didn't ask a question.
I wrote a name.
Dr. Helene Eberhardt.
And waited.
Nothing happened.
But in the silence that followed, I felt it.
The thread didn't stir.
But something behind it did.