Chapter 51: The One We Followed, II
The journal had answered.
Not in the moment I wrote her name. Not even that night. But when I opened the book the next morning, it was there—written beneath the words—
Dr. Helene Eberhardt.
In the same hand that wasn't mine.
The Shepherd of Timelines.
I stared at it until the others stirred. I didn't show them. Not yet.
We set out before daylight, the road slick with frost and wheel ruts.
Helene led us north through a thinned forest trail that ended in a crumbling rail yard. The tracks split and converged again like tangled threads, looping toward a building half-swallowed by snow and bramble.
An old transfer station. Concrete and rust. The kind of place time tries to forget.
Helene stopped at the edge of the platform and faced us. Her coat caught the wind like a shadow trailing her voice.
"This place was tied to something that never finished waking," she said. "A thread that failed to stabilize. We may find echoes. Traces of what might've been."