God's Blessing is a Curse

Chapter 41: The Search for the Guide, I

Chapter 41 - The

We stayed there through the night.

None of us spoke for a while. The quiet didn't feel strained—just earned.

Clara pulled her coat tighter and leaned her back against the wall. Her breath came in slow ribbons. I felt her shift beside me.

"Are you alright?" I asked.

She nodded once. "Tired." A pause. "But I'm glad you're here."

I looked at Konrad. He was seated now, checking his rifle—removing the bolt, inspecting the chamber, wiping it down with the hem of his sleeve.

"How long have you had that?" I asked.

"Few years." He didn't look up. "It's not much, but it keeps things that shouldn't get close away."

He slid the bolt back in and checked the mechanism with a practiced click.

Clara smiled faintly. "That thing saved us more than once, didn't it?"

Konrad gave a slight nod. "Maybe. But not tonight."

I shifted slightly, stretching my legs. My body still ached from the vision. The memory. Whatever it was.

"Thanks for saving me," I said.

Konrad nodded.

***

We left the station by morning.

The ground was stiff with frost, brittle beneath our boots. Mist clung low to the cracked rail beds, and the tracks vanished into the fog like memory fading at the edges.

Konrad led. Clara stayed close to me. None of us looked back.

The sky was heavy with cloud, but the snow hadn't started yet. Konrad knew a trail out of the district that avoided the tram lines—an old service path that wound behind the factories and warehouses, silent in the morning hush. We moved through it with practiced quiet.

At one point, Clara touched my arm. "How did we end up here?"

"I'm... not sure," I said.

She didn't question it again, she knew none had the answer.

We followed the trail for half an hour in silence before I finally asked, "What now?"

Clara glanced at me, then at Konrad, who was walking a few paces ahead with his rifle slung across his shoulder.

"We find Shuji," she said.

I nodded. It was the only thing that made sense.

"He'll know what to do," she added. "He always did."

Konrad didn't reply.

We reached a ridgeline that gave a narrow view of Berlin's edge—gray and shivering in the distance, chimney smoke drawing lines through the sky like thread.

None of us said what we were afraid of.

That we'd already passed someone who should have been with us.

That the closer we came to clarity, the more we might forget what was real.