Every Sunday, the bells call him back. They begin low—distant, almost merciful—before rising into something impossible to ignore. The sound moves through the town like a command, and Matthias always answers it.

The church stands at the center of everything. It is older than the homes around it, older than the names carved into the graves behind it. Its stone walls seem to swallow light rather than reflect it. Inside, the air is thick—heavy with incense, silence, and expectation.

Matthias stands beneath stained glass and watches the colors break apart across the floor. Red, gold, blue—none of them feel warm. He folds his hands, bows his head, and speaks the familiar words without thinking. “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned”. But even as he says it, it feels distant, like something meant for someone else.

They call him lord of the land. A title that follows him everywhere outside these walls. Inside the church, it means nothing. Here, he is not powerful. Here, he is measured, watched, corrected.

The sermons are always the same. Sin. Purity. Damnation. Salvation. Words that are spoken as if they are simple, as if people are simple. But Matthias has never believed that. He thinks everyone is broken in ways they refuse to see.

Then he meets the boy.

He notices him first by his laughter—too loud for such a quiet place. People turn when they hear it. Some disapprove. Some look away. The boy doesn’t care. That is what makes him impossible not to notice.

He moves through the world without hesitation, without fear of taking up space. Everything Matthias has been taught to suppress, the boy does freely. And Matthias finds himself watching him more than he means to.

It becomes small things at first. A glance that lasts too long. A voice heard across a hall. A presence that lingers even after he’s gone. Then it becomes something heavier—something Matthias can’t easily name, and definitely cannot ignore.

They meet behind the chapel, where the stone is cracked and ivy grows without permission. It feels quieter there, but not like the church. Not controlled. Just real.

“You always look like you hate it in there,” the boy says once.

Matthias doesn’t answer at first. Then quietly, he says, “It doesn’t feel like hate. Just… pressure.”

The boy nods like he understands that better than any sermon could explain. “If there’s a God,” he says, “I don’t think He sounds like them.”

That thought stays with Matthias longer than he expects.

What happens between them is not sudden. It’s not loud. It grows in silence, in shared moments, in things neither of them says out loud. It feels less like a choice and more like something that was always going to happen.

But guilt follows.

Every time Matthias leaves him, it returns—sharp, practiced, familiar. He kneels, he prays, he repeats the words he was raised on. “Forgive me. Forgive me. Forgive me”, but they don’t land the same way anymore. They feel hollow, like they are bouncing off something that no longer believes in them.

The church notices change before Matthias says anything. His family notices too. The way he hesitates. The way his silence shifts.

Then, one Sunday, everything tightens.

The priest speaks more sharply than usual. About sin. About love that leads people astray. About things that must be removed before they spread.

Matthias listens. For the first time, he doesn’t feel small.

Something in him settles instead.

When the service ends, he doesn’t follow the others out in the same way. He steps back—just slightly, just enough to break what is expected.

“I won’t confess this,” he says.

His voice is not loud. But it carries.

Silence fills the church like water rising.

Matthias doesn’t wait for judgment. He turns and walks out.