Chapter 3: Nebel Cadit Iterum

Silence settled—tense, heavy, like a coiled wire ready to snap.

The pen in Hugh's hand hovered above the page.

"Mr. Jilfer, what happened in the Black Forest?"

Shawn's lips parted slightly. His voice, dry and thin, barely carried through the quiet room.

"We... planned this exploration a few months ago—"

Suddenly, a sharp knock broke the rhythm.

All eyes shifted to the door.

"Investigator Ruth Fowler," came a woman's voice—measured, composed, with an undertone of authority. Somewhere in her thirties, maybe older. The voice of someone used to asking questions that made people sweat.

The door creaked open.

A woman in a charcoal coat stepped in, followed by a tall, expressionless man carrying a tablet under one arm. Both wore plain visitor badges clipped to their collars, but their demeanor screamed of an official.

"We're here to ask a few questions about Mr. Max Presco," she said, scanning the room with a clinical calm. "But it looks like you're already quite busy."

She paused, letting the tension hang.

"If required, we'll return later—"

"No, it's not required." Shawn's voice interrupted weakly, but firmly. "You can just listen to what happened... during that time."

Hugh hesitated, blinking. He leaned back slightly in his chair, the notepad still open on his lap.

Ruth said nothing, only nodded and stepped to the side of the room with her assistant. Neither sat down. The man tapped something into the tablet without looking up.

The room felt smaller now. Compressed. Claustrophobic. Like something was watching from the corners, waiting for the wrong word.

Dr. Gustavo cleared his throat but said nothing. Nurse Shayla stood by the IV rack, stiff and still.

Shawn swallowed hard.

His hand trembled faintly as he reached for the glass of water by the bedside, but stopped halfway, as if realizing something.

"Alright," he said, eyes fixed ahead. "This is how it started…"

"It all started after we came back from trekking Mount Everest."

Shawn's voice was steadier now, though still hoarse. His gaze drifted past the people in the room, settling on something unseen—something behind his eyes.

"We'd spent nearly three weeks in the Himalayas. Cold, thin air, endless white, and that silence... it gets into your bones. Base Camp was the last bit of civilization before everything turned to ice and instinct. But we made it. We stood at the summit."

He paused, not to build drama—but as if remembering the weight of it.

"When we got back to Kathmandu, still nursing frostbite and exhaustion, Presco looked at me and said—'How about something closer to home next time?'" A faint smile tugged at his lips, more bitter than fond. "He wanted to explore something in Germany. Said we'd been everywhere but the places in our own backyard."

Shawn's eyes darkened slightly.

"He mentioned the Schwarzwald—the Black Forest. Said it had this strange, magnetic energy to it. And that barely anyone had touched the deep parts, especially not on stream."

He looked up slowly, meeting Hugh's gaze. Then glanced at Investigator Fowler, whose expression remained unreadable.

"So... we agreed."

Classified Location

Somewhere within Bundeswehr Intelligence Command – Schwarze Abteilung (Black Division)

11th September 2023 | 18:42 CET

Fluorescent lights hummed quietly overhead, casting sterile white light across the war room. Concrete walls, bare of insignia. A matte-black monitor displayed a frozen frame from Shawn's final livestream—his silhouette blurred in static, mouth mid-scream, eyes wide.

Two men stood over the table. Uniformed. Decorated. Grim.

Generalleutnant Klaus Henninger, his face carved from stone, broke the silence.

"Is there any news from the data we gathered from his streams?"

Across from him, Brigadegeneral Otto Drexler exhaled slowly. His brow was furrowed, a folder clenched in one hand, the other resting near a sealed data drive.

"No," he said, voice taut.

"It's like the footage was… mutating."

"Almost as if someone—or something—was editing it in real time."

"Not just visual distortions—there were temporal discontinuities."

"Frames out of order. Time stamps jumping backwards and forward. Glitches we can't replicate in post."

He tapped the screen. The still image flickered, then shifted—only slightly. Enough to unsettle.

"Our cyber analysts found traces of signal interference not consistent with any civilian or military jamming tech."

"Some packets even carried embedded harmonic patterns. One of our linguists thinks they resemble fragments of Sumerian phonetic sequences—overlaid beneath static."

Henninger's jaw tightened. He looked down at the glowing screen.

"What is happening in this forest..."

No one answered.

Because none of them had the courage to say what they all feared.

Meanwhile at Freiburg Medical Institute

Room 207

11th September 2023 | Evening

The room was quiet, save for the soft beep of the heart monitor and the occasional rustle of paper. Dim amber light from the hallway spilled in through the half-closed blinds, casting blurred stripes on the floor tiles and the foot of the hospital bed.

Shawn sat slightly upright, his back propped against the bedrest. He looked pale—tired—but his voice carried a quiet steadiness. Across from him, Hugh Fredricks sat with his notepad open, pen hovering. Investigator Ruth Fowler stood nearby, hands loosely clasped behind her back. Her male assistant, silent and observant, leaned slightly against the wall, jotting intermittent notes. Dr. Benjamin Gustavo remained close, watching Shawn's demeanor with clinical calm.

Shawn broke the silence.

"That's how we ended up at the Schwarzwald outpost—for trekking."

His voice was low, almost thoughtful. He didn't look at anyone in particular, as if reciting from memory.

"We stayed in a small hotel outside Triberg. Checked in during the afternoon of September 8th. Quiet place. Barely any other guests."

A short pause.

"The next morning… September 9th… we entered the forest."

The way he said it—simple, factual—left no room for follow-up. And yet, something beneath it pulled at the room. A ripple in the stillness.

Ruth's expression didn't change, but her eyes lingered on Shawn for a moment. Hugh, for once, didn't ask another question. His pen rested gently on the page, unmoving.

Outside, a hospital cart rolled past. The corridor lights flickered slightly, unnoticed.

No one spoke. Not yet.

But everyone in the room could feel it:

The real story hadn't begun.