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The pounding at the front door began long after midnight. Each blow was deliberate and unhurried, like the careful stroke of a sculptor’s chisel against glass. Not a summons but a demand. Brazen. Insistent.

He didn’t rise. He lay still in the attic room, letting the sound seep into him, inevitable as tide against stone. He counted the interval between strikes until his heartbeat followed the rhythm. The house trembled. Thunder muttered beyond the horizon, folding the knock into something larger—an unmeasured tide, washing through the marrow of his bones.

Then the room split open. He stood on a windswept shore. Salt spray stung his lips; the wind tasted of copper and regret. Mist curled along the sea, thin as gauze, trembling as if it hid another world.

A horse exhaled. Its breath rolled heavy as storm clouds, hooves thudding like a buried drum. Damp wool and brine clung to the air. He tasted fear, sharp and metallic, like sucking a coin.

Through the haze came a glint of battered armor—silver rubbed to pewter, seams cracked, catching light from a sun that didn’t exist. The rider’s silhouette wavered, impossibly tall, visor down, face unreadable.

The pounding at the door merged with hoofbeats. Frost rimed his lashes. His boots sank into sand that softened into ink, black and iridescent as beetle shell. The rider advanced, and with each step the sea receded, exposing bones and wire in the seabed’s muck. The air stank of rot and possibility.

A question swelled in his throat, too heavy to voice. Another strike at the door—and the dream collapsed.

He jolted upright at his desk. Shelves stood skeletal, spines stripped bare. Dust clung stubbornly to the air, as if the room refused to surrender its memories.

Only the inkwell remained. Obsidian glass, gleaming like a pool of midnight.

It spoke—not in words but as a tremor in his bones: You are the one I belong to.

Ink leapt upward, coiling into the suggestion of a figure, a face more idea than flesh. Its eyes were ancient and exact, pinning him to his chair.

Are you the writer? The question was absurd and infinite.

The shelves rattled as though books clawed to return. Each knock at the door struck like a punctuation mark, vibrating his jaw.

The room thinned. Corners bent inward. He clapped his hands to his ears, but the pounding only burrowed deeper, lodging itself behind his temples, merging with the pulse behind his eyes.

He tried to stand but found himself rooted. The ink-figure grew, head brushing the ceiling, mouth curling in some half-expression—amusement, hunger, pity.

In the mirror above the desk, his reflection wept. Ink streamed from its sockets, streaking cheeks until the face dissolved into a blur.

The whisper gained teeth. Are you the writer? Answer. Answer. ANSWER.

His tongue flooded with ink, bitter as spoiled wine. He gagged, then finally let the words tumble out, steady as confession:
“Yes. I am the writer. I am the Muse.”

For an instant, silence. The sea stilled. The door hushed. The world held its breath.

But silence bears weight. And weight cracks.

The pounding resumed—faster, furious, like a heart hammering against bone. Shelves pitched forward, gnashing their empty spines. The rider’s visor leaked tar; waves behind him thickened into oil. Seafoam crawled across the rug.

The lamp shrank to a pinprick. Walls bowed outward, then snapped back, leaving him gasping.

He clutched the inkwell. Its glass was fever-hot, pulsing like it contained a second heart. Each knock rattled his skull, more intimate now, less house than body.

He tried to scream, but ink poured out, running down his chin, soaking his shirt. The inkwell slipped and shattered. The spill spread, black and inexorable, birthing the rider whole, towering, boots leaving prints that hissed as they seared into the rug.

He dropped to his knees. Through the cracks between floorboards, he glimpsed writhing shadows—half-finished stories, worlds waiting for permission. The window rattled behind him, panes shaking like teeth in a jaw.

The pounding stopped.

Silence swallowed the room. Every particle of air strained toward the door. A gauntleted hand hovered just beyond the wood. The whisper softened, almost tender: Are you the writer?

He staggered forward, each step leaving an ink-black footprint. His hand shook on the knob, slick with sweat. The ceiling sagged, the house groaning as if it would collapse if he refused.

He swallowed fear and turned the handle.

No pounding. Only the slow, splintering sigh of wood.

The door was not being knocked upon.

It was being opened.

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Author’s Note:
Thanks to Fandango for another amazing Fandango’s Story Starter #218 (FSS) prompt. Some doors you knock on, others knock on you. This one wouldn’t stop pounding until I opened it. Funny how a single line can spiral into something that feels less like a story and more like a confession in ink. Appreciate the spark, Fandango — and the reminder that prompts aren’t just exercises; sometimes they’re invitations we can’t ignore.