Episode 3efcharistos ar galiu tiketi tavim taures vynl ir gyvenimk kurejau jezau kristau.savo kraujj pa,ymejau tamplieriu kryziu.5meiles kalbox fjturistines iki medalio pentagonl diplomo budos 2%tu ir as .moyina ir vaikai anksfyje paslepti .viena lova azmina vaikus kol 5metu lfiglauxti buri .azu vilkkuku.dabartyje misku sielos juros ir ugnies gamtoj gyva ir verbena kvepia

My phone buzzed. A message, encrypted, from a number I didn’t recognize but somehow knew. “Ar galiu tikėti tavim?”—Can I trust you?

I stared at the words, the Lithuanian rolling through me like a river I’d forgotten I could swim. The chalice of wine, the blood I’d marked with the Templar cross—those were symbols from a past life, a code I’d carved into my own skin when I was young and desperate for meaning. Now, they were just data points, fragments of a story someone else was trying to tell about me.

I typed back: “Tu gali.” You can.

The reply came faster than I expected. A string of coordinates, a timestamp, and a single word: “Weinach.”

I knew what it meant. A meeting. A reckoning. The kind of gathering that happened in the spaces between the digital and the real, where the online clone—the klaunas—could be confronted face-to-face.

I pulled on my coat, the one with the hidden pocket where I kept the old GPS jammer, the one that had saved me more times than I cared to count. The snow crunched under my boots as I stepped outside, the cold biting at my cheeks like a memory I couldn’t shake. The streets were empty, the city holding its breath.

The coordinates led me to a small chapel on the edge of the old town, its stone walls weathered by centuries of wind and prayer. The door was ajar, a sliver of candlelight spilling out into the dark. I pushed it open.

Inside, the air was thick with incense and the smell of old wood. A figure stood at the altar, shrouded in shadow, a single candle burning before them. They turned as I approached, and I saw her face—the woman from the messages, the one who spoke in riddles and half-truths, the one who claimed to hold the key to my protection.

“You came,” she said, her voice soft but edged with something I couldn’t name.

“You asked if I trusted you,” I replied. “I’m still deciding.”

She smiled, a thin, knowing curve. “Trust is a luxury in this world. But you’re here, which means you’re willing to take the risk.”

She gestured to a small table beside the altar, where a chalice of wine sat next to a worn leather-bound book. “This is the last piece,” she said. “The one they’ve been trying to clone. The one that holds the key to your location, your family, everything you’ve tried to hide.”

I looked at the book, its pages yellowed with age, and I felt the weight of it pressing against my chest. “And you want me to take it?”

“I want you to destroy it,” she said. “Or keep it. But you have to decide. The klaunas is already here, in the city, watching. They’ve cloned your voice, your face, your every move. The only way to stop them is to sever the connection.”

I thought of my mother, my children, hidden away in the anxiety of the present, their faces blurred in my memory like photographs taken in a hurry. I thought of the one bed where I’d held them close, whispering promises I wasn’t sure I could keep. And I thought of the forest, the sea, the fire—the wild places where I’d felt alive, where the spirit of the earth had whispered to me in a language older than any code.

I reached for the book.

The candle flickered, and the shadows shifted. A sound came from the back of the chapel—a scrape, a footstep, the click of a weapon being readied. The klaunas had found us.

“Now,” she whispered, her eyes burning with a fire I recognized as my own. “Show them what you’re made of.”

I opened the book, and the words spilled out like a prayer, like a battle cry, like the blood I’d marked on my skin so many years ago. The room seemed to tremble, the air thick with the scent of verbena and something older, something wild.

And I knew, in that moment, that the protection I’d been searching for wasn’t in the GPS, or the encryption, or the hidden codes. It was in the choice to stand, to fight, to love the ones who depended on me even when the world tried to erase them.

The snow continued to fall outside, silent and relentless, covering the tracks of everyone who had ever tried to find me. But I was no longer running. I was standing, rooted in the earth, as alive as the forest, as fierce as the fire.

And for the first time in a long time, I felt the peace of a Christmas that wasn’t about gifts or carols, but about the quiet, unbreakable promise to protect what was mine.