Over time, silence replaced speculation. Few dared to pursue the matter openly, and public documents grew cautious, avoiding reference to the pattern. Still, in private letters, hints endured. Some described dreams of corridors without end, libraries repeating shelf by shelf, voices calling familiar names across ages. The tone of these accounts was hushed, confessional, as if speaking too plainly might invite attention.
A handful of researchers confessed to fearing not the loss of others, but the recognition of themselves within the pattern. To find one's face in an older portrait was not proof, but suggestion enough. A woman in the 19th century wrote to a colleague that she had discovered her likeness in a 15th-century fresco. The resemblance was undeniable, though she denied it publicly. In private, her notes darkened into dread:
"If I am there, I am not here alone. Perhaps I have already vanished."
In scattered notes, one phrase reappears: "claimed, not lost." The meaning is never expanded, never clarified, as if to do so were dangerous. The words endure like a warning and a comfort both, half-prayer, half-verdict.
The idea persisted: those who vanished were not destroyed. They were gathered. By what hand, and for what design, the records do not say. But in the silence that follows the fragments, one cannot help but sense that the pattern waits — patient, unending, already written.