Previously on Renzo: After Hours: In Berlin, the trio uncovered Afterlight — Jules’s final recorded message warning that the story wasn’t over. The film ended with a future date stamped across its final frame: June 2026. As the art world begins whispering about the reel, a new name surfaces: Elias, a young archivist with connections to the original Project Muse database — and possibly to Jules himself.
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Berlin’s spring arrived late.
The city thawed reluctantly, its streets shining with meltwater that reflected neon and smoke like a living photograph.
Renzo had taken to walking the narrow streets before dawn, camera in hand but never raised.
Sometimes the world didn’t need to be captured — just watched long enough to remember it existed.
One morning, he returned to the apartment and found Xander at the window, half-dressed, reading a letter with trembling hands.
Sebastian, sitting cross-legged on the table, looked up. “It’s him.”
Renzo closed the door quietly. “Jules?”
Xander shook his head. “No. Someone new. He says Jules sent him.”
He handed over the letter. The handwriting was precise, almost architectural.
My name is Elias Moser. I was an assistant in the RVB Archive during its final days. Jules told me if anyone ever recovered the Afterlight reel, I was to contact you immediately.
There’s another vault — one you haven’t found. It contains not just names, but images that were never meant to be seen.
If we don’t recover them before they surface, history will rewrite itself the wrong way again.
A meeting place followed: Kreuzberg, Thursday, 10 p.m.
When Elias arrived, he looked younger than they expected — mid-twenties, clean-shaven, eyes pale grey like undeveloped film.
He wore gloves, not out of affectation but habit, the way archivists protect what they touch.
“I didn’t think you’d come,” he said softly, in German-accented English.
Renzo studied him. “You mentioned Jules.”
Elias nodded. “He’s alive. But he’s hiding, and not from you. There’s a second buyer — someone
who wants to release the original Muse archives publicly, without context. Every image, every ledger entry. If that happens, none of you will have a life left to return to.”
Sebastian’s tone sharpened. “And you know where this vault is?”
“I do. But it’s not digital anymore.” Elias glanced around the empty bar. “He moved it to film. Hard copies. Labeled Project Lumen. It’s here in Berlin — deep under the old museum quarter.”
Xander frowned. “Why tell us?”
“Because Jules said you were the only ones who’d understand what not to show.”
The days that followed felt like moving through exposed negatives — everything inverted, familiar but ghosted.
Elias joined them in the apartment, spreading old floorplans across the table. His movements were careful, his speech spare. But when he spoke of film, his precision softened into reverence.
Renzo found himself watching him more than the maps — the concentration in his face, the way he handled every scrap of paper like memory itself. He reminded Renzo of Jules in the early days, when obsession still felt like faith.
That night, while Xander and Sebastian argued over how to bypass the archive’s lower vault locks, Renzo and Elias stood by the window, the city lights cutting their reflections into fragments.
Elias said quietly, “He told me you’d changed.”
Renzo looked out at the rain. “I’m still trying to.”
Elias smiled, small and unsure. “He said you’d say that, too.”
The silence that followed wasn’t uncomfortable — it was weighted, charged, the kind of silence that made words unnecessary.
By the weekend, they had a plan.
The vault lay beneath an abandoned cinema that once hosted Muse screenings. Elias had access codes to the upper levels; the rest would rely on timing and nerve.
Sebastian packed tools. “Feels like Paris again.”
Xander handed him a small flashlight. “Except this time, we’re the ones breaking in for the truth.”
Renzo turned to Elias. “And if what we find is too dangerous to show?”
Elias met his gaze without hesitation. “Then we burn it. Together.”
The way he said together held something Renzo hadn’t heard in a long time — quiet certainty, belief that none of them would walk away alone this time.
They reached the cinema after midnight.
Inside, dust hung in the air like fine grain on old film. The projector still stood in the booth above the empty seats. Elias led them to a hidden door behind the screen. Down a stairwell of concrete and silence, they found the vault — a massive door carved with the same RVB insignia Jules had always used.
Elias keyed in the code. The lock clicked open.
Rows of canisters lined the shelves, each labeled in Jules’s handwriting. Muse. Lumen.
Afterlight. And at the far end — one marked simply Epilogue.
Renzo reached for it. His fingers brushed dust away, revealing a line of faint gold ink beneath the label: Not an ending. A reflection.
Xander whispered, “He’s still speaking to you.”
Renzo smiled, tired and full. “No — to all of us.”
He turned to Elias. “Let’s bring this one back carefully. It’s not just history now. It’s legacy.”
And as they carried the reel up the steps into the early light of morning, the city outside flickered in the puddles — a film still running, waiting for its next frame.
Next On Renzo: After Hours: Epilogue (PUBLISH DATE: Will be March 5, 2026)
Inside the Epilogue reel lies a single unfinished scene that connects Jules, Elias, and the mysterious patrons who funded Project Muse. As the men prepare to decode its meaning, someone else begins following them — another survivor of the original project.
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