The dream stayed with me after I woke up.
Not like a memory, but like something pressed into the skin—an afterimage I couldn't blink away. The forest, the sound of the bell, the shimmer of the stream… and her. Not a face, not a voice. Just her presence. Like a name I should have known.
I didn't write it down.
I didn't need to.
For the first time since all of this began, I felt certain of something.
She was real.
***
At the university, the air felt heavier than usual. A low fog had settled across the lawns, making the library dome disappear above the trees. I walked slower than usual, half-expecting to see the forest again when I turned a corner. But it was just cobblestone, just students, just Berlin.
I spent most of the morning paging through texts I had no interest in. Nothing held me. Not kant. Not Freud. Not the latest journals from Vienna. Every paragraph slipped away from me. I kept thinking of the bell.
At lunch, Richter found me again.
"You disappeared the other day," he said, setting down his tray across from mine.
"I had an appointment."
"With Eberhardt?"
I nodded.
He studied me for a moment. "Did it help?"
I didn't answer. Not directly.
"I saw someone on the tram," I said. "Familiar, but not. Like a painting you recognize before you know the artist."
"Did you speak to them?"
"No. He vanished before I could."
Richter sipped his tea. "You've always been the quiet type, but lately you look like you're halfway between two rooms."
"I feel like I am."
He leaned back. "If you see them again, maybe speak. It's worse not knowing."
***
That night, I returned home and opened my journal again. The room was quiet, darker than usual. The single lamp on the desk cast a soft, amber ring across the pages. No new words. Just mine—neatly written, underlined only once.
But the page where I'd written to Clara—it looked slightly different. The paper had curled faintly at the edges, like it had been touched by damp air or rested beneath a warm hand too long. The ink had feathered a little, spread delicately outward, as if disturbed not by motion, but by breath.
I leaned in. Examined it closer. It hadn't smudged. Just… softened.
I ran my thumb along the line.
"What do you remember?" I whispered.
The candle flickered—not violently, but as if acknowledging the question. The walls creaked, the way old buildings do when the temperature drops. I turned my head, half-expecting to see someone in the doorway, but there was only shadow.
The clock in the hall struck seven.
I counted the chimes.
One. Two. Three. Four…
By eight, my skin had gone cold.
By the eleventh, I stood up.
Twelve.
Thirteen.
And then silence again.
I waited another minute. Nothing followed.
But the stillness felt too exact. Like the room had been listening.
***
The next morning, I returned to Dr. Eberhardt's office.
This time, there was no assistant at the door. Just the echo of my knock and the slow creak of the hallway beyond. She opened the door herself, hair pulled tighter, expression unreadable.
She ushered me in without a word. The same chairs. The same warmth. The same ticking from no visible source.
"Back so soon?" she asked, not unkindly.
"I had another dream," I said.
Her pen waited above the page.
I described the forest. The stream. The bell. I told her I saw a woman, though I never used the name. Not this time.
She nodded thoughtfully. "Repetition in dreams often signals unresolved thought. The first may be your subconscious returning to a place of origin."
"She felt familiar."
"Perhaps a projection. We assign emotion to symbols to make sense of the undefined."
I didn't respond.
The session ended quietly. She offered no conclusion. Just another question.
"Do you believe she's waiting for you?"
I didn't know how to answer that.
But I left with the sense that I needed to act.
Later that night, I opened my journal again. Clara's name was still there. Beneath it, my question: What do you remember?
I stared at the ink until it blurred.
And then, I made a decision.
I would try to find her.