The room was breathless.
Alexei leaned back slightly in his chair, eyes narrowed, a soft gleam in them like he was watching something distant flicker into view. Across the table, Grandmaster Romanov stared at the board in disbelief. The queen was gone—his opponent had just sacrificed the most powerful piece in the game for… what? For a whisper of initiative? For illusion?
The murmurs in the commentary room had evolved into frantic exclamations.
"That cannot be sound—there's no way this works logically."
"Unless… unless he's seeing something ten moves ahead."
But Alexei wasn't counting moves anymore.
In his mind, he wasn't playing Romanov. He was playing fate. The game unfolded like a slow-burning prophecy—one he had already dreamed of in flashes and voices, a shadow guiding him from the past.
And somewhere, just beyond the edge of conscious thought, Tal's voice was laughing softly.
"Good. You've stopped fearing the impossible. Now let's see if you can create it."
The Moves That Shocked the World
With his queen gone, Alexei's remaining pieces surged with eerie precision—his bishops aligned like twin blades, his knights danced into the enemy camp like phantoms. Romanov tried to consolidate, but nothing held.
By move 34, it became clear: the sacrifice wasn't a blunder—it was brilliance cloaked in madness.
The board became a battlefield soaked in tension. Romanov had no idea where the attack would land. Alexei wasn't targeting just one weakness—he was stretching every line, every rank, like a piano wire about to snap.
"He's painting a picture," one analyst whispered. "No. He's writing a story," said another. "And we're all just watching the final chapter unfold."
Then came the knight sacrifice—another gasp. Romanov shook his head, trying to understand. But it was already over.
By move 41, the attack crescendoed. Alexei's rook—quiet all game—sliced through the 7th rank like a guillotine.
Checkmate.
The room exploded.
After the Game
Cameras flashed. Commentators stood up, hands in their hair, pacing, speechless.
"I've never seen anything like that in my life."
"This… this is Tal reincarnated. There's no other explanation."
But Alexei, as usual, didn't stay to bask in the applause. He left the board quietly, his thoughts spinning not with victory, but with something deeper. The dream had shifted. The shadows weren't silent anymore. And tonight, he knew, they would speak.
The Night Whispers Again
In the quiet of his hotel room, with Elena asleep beside a chess magazine on the couch, Alexei sat cross-legged before his old chessboard—the one with the golden trim and strange, dark carvings.
He placed the pieces out slowly. Not his current game. Not Romanov.
The shadow game. The one from long ago.
He closed his eyes.
And then, a whisper.
"Knight to e5," said a voice like smoke and memory.
Alexei opened his eyes. Across from him, half-formed in the flickering lamp light, stood the outline of Mikhail Tal.
Alexei didn't speak. He simply responded on the board.
"Knight to f7."
The board responded. The game had resumed.
"It was you, wasn't it?" Alexei asked, barely above a whisper. "That night in the orphanage. That impossible mate in five."
Tal smiled. His face was not fully there, but the grin—the legendary grin—was unmistakable.
"You knew it then," Tal said, "even before you knew me."
Alexei nodded. The pieces moved faster now. The rhythm of the old match unfolded in both memory and reality. A game unfinished… until now.
Then, finally, as Alexei played the last move—the move he had never found as a boy—Tal stood up.
"Well played," he said. "It took you years, but you saw it."
Alexei looked up.
"Are you real?" "Does it matter?" Tal said. "You brought me back—not with magic, but with the madness of your own mind. And now, I have one request…"
Alexei tilted his head.
"Play me again," Tal said. "This time, bring your best… and bring her."
He vanished.
Alexei sat in stunned silence, then turned to the couch, where Elena stirred.
"Elena," he whispered. "Wake up. I need you."
She blinked. "What's wrong?"
"We've been challenged. You and me… against the shadows."