The Lecture on Fate, III

I returned to my studies the next day. Not out of obligation, but because routine has gravity. When the world becomes uncertain, even the smallest rituals feel like anchors. A sharpened pencil. The smell of Ink. The creak of a library chair worn smooth by a hundred other restless minds.

The university library had become my second apartment. I spent hours drifting through narrow aisles between shelves that had outlived their authors. Their spines were faded, some missing entirely, like ghosts of titles long forgotten. The smell of leather and dust kept me grounded. It reminded me that time, at least there, still moved in one direction.

But even the library had changed.

The ticking of the central clock sounded softer. Some books felt misfiled, as if someone had replaced them slightly out of order—just enough to unsettle, never enough to confirm. I caught myself staring at empty chairs, certain they had been occupied a moment ago. Once, I thought I heard someone whispering in the theology wing. But no one was there.

The world felt a little off—just a degree or two. Like the sun rose at a slightly wrong angle. Conversations didn't sync the way they should. People laughed half a second too late. Footsteps echoed longer than they should have, especially in the older lecture halls with the cracked molding and flickering lamps.

Still, I told no one.

Dr. Eberhardt hadn't offered solutions. But she'd listened. And maybe that was the point. Maybe I didn't want to be understood. Just seen. And she had seen me—clearly, deeply, and without interruption. As though she were searching for something between the words I said and the ones I didn't.

***

By Thursday, I found myself rereading old notes I barely remembered writing. Pages from the last semester, essays annotated in the margins, diagrams drawn with care I didn't recall having. My handwriting looked like mine, but sharper. More deliberate. Less rushed.

One margin scribble read: "The shadow arrives before the form."

I didn't remember writing it. The ink had faded slightly, as if it had been there for weeks—or longer.

The sentence followed me everywhere. Into my lectures, where I couldn't focus on the blackboard without those words looping through my mind. Into my walk home, where each passing figure seemed to drag a second shadow behind them. Into the tram, where the windows reflected more than just faces.

At one point, I thought I recognized someone—a man in a coat that looked familiar, standing just far enough away that I couldn't see his face. He was still, like a photograph wedged between frames of motion. Something in his posture unsettled me. He wasn't looking at me. Not directly. But I felt seen.

I shifted in my seat, trying to get a better angle. The tram lurched forward.

When I looked again, he was gone.

No one near the back. No open door. Just condensation on the glass and my own reflection, drawn by pale winter light.

***

That night, I returned to my journal. Clara's name was still there, untouched. I wrote beneath it:

"What do you remember?"

There was no answer.

Just silence.

I stared at the page for a long while, half-expecting something to change. But the ink held its shape. The paper stayed still.

Still, something about it felt unfinished. Like the act of writing had stirred something just beneath the surface—something that hadn't quite found the words to answer yet.

***

I went to sleep earlier than usual. The kind of sleep that arrives not out of rest, but retreat.

I dreamt of a forest.

Pines rose like spears into a pale, washed-out sky. Their silhouettes swayed with no wind. The ground beneath me was damp, soft with fallen needles, and yet my footsteps made no sound. Somewhere behind the trees, a bell was ringing. It didn't chrome—it pulsed. Low and distant, like it was buried in the roots.

I followed it.

Each step felt familiar. The turns came to me without thought. I wasn't navigating—I was remembering. The trail bent toward a ridge, then dropped down into a clearing wrapped in mist. A narrow stream threaded through it, cutting silver through the undergrowth.

And then I saw her.

She stood at the edge of the stream, motionless. Her hands were clasped around something I couldn't see—maybe a charm, maybe nothing at all. Her face was turned slightly away, as though listening to something I wasn't meant to hear. There was no wind, but her hair moved.

I didn't call out.

I was afraid that if I spoke, she would vanish.

The water at her feet shimmered. Threads—thin, glowing, and alive—curled across the surface like veins of light tracing time itself. They reached toward her, brushing her shadow like a recognition.

I took one step closer.

Then I blinked.

And she was gone.