Domine woke to the sound of knocking—a dull, steady rhythm that broke through the weight of his lingering unrest. The sun had risen, but he had not. He had not dared to, not after the night before. Yet now, something demanded him, something beyond his own doubts.
The knock was sharp, echoing through the silence of morning. Domine stirred, his body still sluggish with the weight of restless sleep. The air had changed. Heavy. Stifling. As though something beyond the door had reached inside the room before even stepping through. He hesitated. And then, another knock. More forceful.
He forced himself up, the remnants of uneasy dreams dissolving into the waking world. His feet met the cool ground, steadying him, though his thoughts still swayed with the remnants of lingering tension. Each step toward the door felt heavier than it should. As if something unseen resisted his movement. As if the very air between him and the threshold had thickened. He hesitated before moving. The knocking did not stop. A presence waited beyond the door. A presence that should not be there.
Slowly, he pushed himself up, feet touching the cold floor, body still heavy with the burden of that lingering, unseen tension. His hand found the door, but he did not open it at once. He listened. There was only silence beyond the knocking—not even breath, not even the rustling of cloth. Just the sound of knuckles against wood, demanding, waiting.
He pulled the door open, and for a moment, saw nothing. The figure before him stood motionless, features unreadable, as though the world itself had not yet fully granted it permission to exist. It was only when the morning light crept forward, stretching across the threshold, that the shape became clear—a man, pale as if carved from old stone, his form stiff, unmoving, eyes deep-set and watching.
A Petrosii.
His voice was strange. Deep, but textured with unfamiliar weight. A presence wrapped in a language not his own, bending to a rhythm unnatural to it. Certain sounds tripped on his tongue, softened where they should be hard, hardened where they should be soft. The 'r's curled too much, thick in his throat. The 's' too flat. And every 'h' that should have been a breath was swallowed whole.
Domine did not speak at first. The presence of such a man in his village, at his door, in the breaking light of day, was not something to be taken lightly. He watched as the man's lips parted, a voice emerging like the shifting of gravel beneath weight.
"You are... Domine? Son of Ignavius, of this place?"
"I am," Domine replied, though the words felt small against the weight of the presence before him. The words were in the tongue of the empire, but twisted, reshaped, heavy with a foreign strain. Some sounds were dragged, others cut too short. The "r" curled too deep in the throat, the vowels bent as though shaped by a mouth unaccustomed to their shape. Harder consonants softened, softened ones struck too sharply. It was speech that bore weight, thick with the residue of another language, another world.
Domine felt the unease coil tighter in his chest.
The man's lips pressed together, assessing, then—
"I am a messenger." He shifted slightly, his form catching the light in a way that made the stillness of his body seem unnatural. "I bring... letter. Very... much important. To you. You must take." The man extended his hand, fingers stiff, as though unused to offering anything freely. In his grip, a sealed letter, marked with an insignia Domine did not immediately recognize.
Domine took a step back. Not out of fear. Not yet. But the foreignness of the man's speech—its forced precision, its careful shaping—felt more like a veil than an accident.
The silence that followed was taut, stretched thin between them. Domine did not reach for the letter. Not yet. There was something else here, something unspoken. The way the man stood—unnaturally still. The way his gaze did not waver, did not blink. He studied the man's face—or tried to. There was something in the way the light touched him that felt wrong, something in the way his presence filled the space but did not belong to it. Even his manner of standing seemed calculated, precise, as though he were more used to being still than moving.
"Who sent this?" Domine asked at last, his own voice quiet, steady.
The man's head tilted slightly, a motion too slow, too deliberate. "A hand of great importance. You must take. You must read."
Domine did not move.
Domine's fingers twitched at his side. He should take it. Should read it. Should know what lay behind this strange arrival. But all he could think of was the way the man had spoken. The presence of this man, his strange tongue, his rigid posture, all of it felt like the outer layer of something vast, something unseen. His father's name, spoken so plainly by a stranger, was a thread that pulled toward something larger. The way the question was posed felt not as one asks a question, but as one confirms a truth already known. And that's a dangerous sign. This was not merely a letter. It was a summons. A warning. A key to something yet unknown.
It was a move played before the game had even begun. A stolen tempo, like a masterful trick—when black, refusing submission, seizes the initiative from white, leaving it scrambling for footing.
The pawn had moved first, yet with the certainty of an opening already studied, already prepared. A violation of the expected flow, executed with silent inevitability, not as defiance, but as design.
And a suspicion began to form in his mind. Who was the king hiding behind this moving pawn? What was the true force behind this apparent subordination, disguised as a simple opening? He could feel the weight of the question growing, as though each move of the adversary was revealing something far more complex, something that lay beyond the mere play of pieces and rules.
Ironically, this did not seem to be a man of orthodoxy, one who adhered strictly to the rules.
But Domine had hesitated. He had remained in bed, the warmth of indolence keeping him there, until only the sound of the doorbell stirred him to action. He rose, not to face the game, but merely to answer the door—a triviality that would, in time, prove decisive. While he slept through the opening moves, the other side had advanced, seizing the moment. And now, the inevitable had come to pass.
This provoked a certain unease, for it revealed the aggressive nature of the player on the other side. He was not merely playing; he was declaring his intention not just to participate but to dominate, positioning himself like a predator waiting for the right moment. In such a simple move, he revealed what many would only realise after several turns: the game was not only about what would happen, but about what had already been planned.
Finally, Domine reached out and took the letter, not without internally beginning to regret his decision. His fingers closed around the parchment, the weight of it colder than it should have been.
The man did not blink. Did not move. Only watched, as if waiting for something beyond the act of taking the letter. As if waiting for something to change.
Domine looks down as if the ground were dissolving into water, a turbulent torrent, a whirlpool about to form. He feels the weight of unease, as if the very earth beneath his feet were on the verge of disintegrating. Every small movement around him seems amplified, imbued with a meaning he cannot quite decipher. He finds himself engulfed in a mystery that seems unwilling to let him pass unnoticed. Something, in that moment, demands his attention, like a whisper growing in intensity until it becomes a silent scream within his mind. He cannot shake the feeling that, by averting his gaze, something important will slip away from him, and yet, by looking too closely, he will lose himself even further. The whirlpool begins to take shape in his mind, just as on the surface of the ground, and doubt pulls him into it, as though it were an abyss.
Isn't it said that abysses call to abysses? What comes next is the only thought that occupies his mind at this moment.
Domine swallowed the rising unease. The fire within him, long a presence of its own, flickered at the edges of his mind. It recognized something in this moment, something unspoken.
And then, just as the thought surfaced, the man turned, stepping back into the shadows as though the morning light had never touched him at all.