God's Blessing is a Curse

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.