Domine descended the stairs slowly, feeling the chill of the dawn touch his skin in contrast to the warmth that still resided within him. The fire never slept, and that night, it seemed to have become more insatiable than ever. Yet, something else troubled him. The silence of the house was heavy, dense. He had expected to find only shadows, but there sat his father, at the table, beneath the flickering light of a lantern.
The man did not move immediately when Domine entered the room. He appeared lost in thought, his eyes fixed on something distant, as if he saw beyond time and space. His fingers rested on an old book, its cover worn, but he was not flipping through it. Domine hesitated for a moment; the sight of his father there, at that hour, caused him an inexplicable discomfort.
"Can't sleep?" Domine's voice broke the silence, but it sounded quieter than he intended.
His father raised his eyes, his expression calm, yet tinged with a shadow of fatigue. "And you?"
Domine did not respond immediately. He did not want to lie, but he could not explain what burned inside him. The fire had never given him rest. However, his father's presence there unsettled him. The man seemed... different. There was something in the rigidity of his shoulders, in the subtle sheen of sweat on his brow, in the way his fingers clenched on the table without him realising. It was as if something invisible was consuming him.
"Sometimes, the night seems too long," Domine said at last, letting his words linger in the air.
His father nodded slowly. "Yes." Then, almost imperceptibly, he placed his hand over his chest, as if repressing a silent pain, a burden that could not be shared. Domine noticed, but said nothing.
The silence returned, but this time it was a heavy, dense silence, filled with unasked questions. Domine wanted to speak, wanted to ask. Why was his father awake too? Why did his gaze seem so distant? But above all, why did Domine feel that this moment carried a significance greater than his words could reach?
Then, as if sensing the weight of his son's unrest, his father shifted his gaze and murmured, almost as if thinking aloud, "Not all fire needs to be fed."
Domine furrowed his brow. The phrase lingered between them like a riddle, like a veiled secret he was not permitted to unravel. He wanted to ask, but his father was already rising, moving away slowly, but with a weight in his steps that Domine had never noticed before.
Alone, Domine stood still, staring at the empty space where his father had been. The lantern's flame flickered, and for a moment, he had the strange sensation that something invisible was consuming that man—just as the fire consumed him.
But if this fire was the same... Domine still did not know.
[...]
Domine woke again, the remnants of sleep dissolving into a strange stillness that filled the air. The heat had not left him, nor had the weight that settled on his chest—something unseen, yet deeply felt. It was a presence without shape, a pressure without source. It was not fire, not entirely. It was something else, something that lingered at the edges of perception, just beyond his grasp.
The morning had arrived, but he could not call it day. The light was there, but it did not soothe. It stretched across the room in thin slivers, cutting through the shadows yet failing to dispel them. And in that fragile balance, something waited.
He felt it before he heard it. A hum—not a sound, but a tremor in the air, a pulse that carried no rhythm. It was as if the world had stilled, yet within that stillness, something vibrated, something pressed inward, tightening around him like an unseen coil. It was everywhere, and yet it did not move. The village, the walls, the very air he breathed—everything seemed wrapped in this unseen force, silent, unseen, yet undeniable.
A feeling, sharp and immediate, curled in his chest. Not fear. Not entirely. It was the expectation of something inevitable, something just out of reach. The hunter watching the prey. The silence before the strike. He lay still, unwilling to move, unwilling to break whatever fragile state the world had settled into. He searched within himself for a reason, a purpose, a compulsion to rise. There was none. The weight of the moment held him fast.
And then, the knock.
It was not loud. It did not shatter the silence, nor did it seek permission. It simply was. Three measured beats against the wood, steady, deliberate. It carried no urgency, no aggression. But it was enough.
Something shifted. The air no longer hummed, but it did not return to stillness. It had changed, subtly, irrevocably.
Domine did not rise at once. He let the moment settle, feeling its shape, its weight. The presence at the edge of his mind did not retreat, did not speak, but it was there. Watching. Waiting. Just as he was.
And beyond the door, the knock hung in the air, unanswered.