The morning after his game, Alexei woke to the sound of rain tapping lightly against the hotel window. He turned over, bleary-eyed, to see Elena sitting by the small desk, replaying the match on her laptop with narrowed eyes and a steaming cup of tea in her hand.
"You broke the internet," she said without turning around.
"I did what?"
She looked over her shoulder, half amused, half in awe. "There's a storm on ChessTalk. Grandmasters are analyzing your sixth-round game and... they can't explain half of it. At first, they thought you'd blundered. Then came move 27... and everything flipped."
Alexei sat up. The memory of the game surged in him—the confusion on his opponent's face, the ticking clock, the moment the board felt alive.
"That variation," he said, voice low. "It came to me like a whisper. Almost like Tal was watching."
Elena walked over and sat beside him, her voice hushed. "You didn't just win. You changed the rhythm. Like you were playing against a different logic."
Just then, a notification pinged. A message. No sender. No name. Just a single sentence:
"The board remembers. Keep listening."
They stared at each other.
Press Conference and the Enigma
Later that afternoon, Alexei entered the press room. The air was thick with tension and excitement. Cameras flashed. Dozens of hands shot up.
"Alexei, was your 18th move planned?"
"Was the knight sacrifice a bluff or genius?"
"Did you prepare this line at all?!"
Alexei smiled slowly, eyes scanning the eager faces. Then he leaned toward the microphone.
"I didn't prepare it," he said. "But someone did. A long time ago."
The room went still.
"Who?" a reporter asked.
He paused. "Let's just say... I play with ghosts."
The hotel room was dim, lit only by the soft yellow glow of a bedside lamp. Outside, the rain still whispered against the glass. Elena sat cross-legged on the bed, laptop closed, her eyes fixed on the chessboard Alexei had set up in the middle of the room. The position was frozen—move 27 of his sixth-round masterpiece.
Alexei stood by the window, arms crossed, watching droplets race each other down the pane.
"Do you really believe it was him?" Elena finally asked. "Tal?"
He turned, his eyes shadowed with something both electric and uncertain. "It felt like it. Like someone else was guiding my hand. But not controlling me. More like… unlocking something."
She reached over and touched the queen on the board, the piece that had changed everything. "The press conference," she said, "was bold. Saying you play with ghosts? It's going viral."
"I wasn't being clever," he said, stepping closer. "I meant it. You saw what happened. That wasn't prep. That was something else—pure intuition, or maybe... something older than us."
Elena looked up at him. Her voice dropped to a whisper. "Then maybe that's why we're here. Why we were chosen."
Alexei sat beside her, close enough to feel her warmth. "There's something I haven't told you."
She tilted her head, curious.
"That first shadow game—the one I told you about, the one I played as a kid when I thought I was dreaming?"
Her breath caught. "Tal."
He nodded slowly. "I'm sure of it now. The patterns. The rhythm. The sacrifice. Last night's match—it echoed that first game. Almost move for move."
They stared at the board together. The pieces no longer looked like wood and lacquer. They looked like memory. Like fate.
Elena's hand found his under the table.
"So what now?" she whispered.
Alexei's eyes burned with excitement. "Now… we challenge them. The ones in the boards."
"You mean—"
"Yes," he said. "You and me. Against Tal and Anya."
Her lips curled into a slow smile. "A team match against legends?"
"Exactly," Alexei said. "And this time, we play not just to learn—but to win."