The Thirteenth Chime

An imaginative composed by Antonio (Year 12 Advanced)

The bells rang twelve times; their deep, resonant tones swept through the city like a solemn hymn. No clocks, only bells. Time once a river now flowed like a wheel. The city moved by rhythm now: bells for prayers, bells for meals and bells for stillness. They called it the sanctified cycle, a relentless tide that guided every breath and motion. Gone were mechanical ticks and digital displays; time had transformed into a sacred pulse, a ritual woven into the fabric of life.

From my room, I heard the distant chant swell, a tidal hum beneath the golden glow that flickered across every screen in the city. In perfect unison they blinked, not with static but rather with a soft and dreamy light that soaked each room in warmth and reverence. I stood in the doorway, hooked by both habit and unease. The air hung heavy with incense from street vents, possessing a chemical holiness we had all learned to accept. A manufactured sanctity, clinging to our skin.

His image appeared across every screen, his eyes bright with an immaculate robe

“One hundred years. A century of harmony. A world unshackled from the chaos of false reason”. His voice echoed across the city; a solemn melody etched into every heart.

A knot tightened in my stomach. Faces bowed in prayer, on balconies, rooftops and parks. No one questioned it anymore; in all honesty, they couldn’t. The wars of ideals had ended, and the church had saved us from the arrogance of logic. Curiosity, debate, and doubt had been replaced with certainty and ritual, enforced not by law but by faith. Unquestionable, unbreakable.

I turned from the doorway and moved toward the far wall of my room. There, behind the pilgrim’s veil, a shelf. My mother’s shelf.

She had once been a scholar before the Great Reform, before she disappeared. As a child, she whispered stories she should not have known. Stories of stars and atoms, forces unseen and immeasurable. She told them like bedtime tales, full of wonder and caution.

I removed the veil.

Beneath the sacred frame of the holy one rested a weathered book, wrapped in cloth and tied with wire. It hummed with memory. I sat on the floor and untied it with withering fingers. Inside: pages. Unmarked by holiness. Covered in strange symbols, loops, arrows, lines and broken infinites.

No verses. No commandments. Only shapes that spoke in silence

I had seen these markings once in my mothers writings. Before the Sanctification. The book must have been hers kept hidden waiting for someone to remember.    

Each page was structured yet chaotic, alien yet familiar. Something about it scoured through my memory, tugging loose the ghosts of old thoughts.

Faith had told us science was the enemy. That it led to ruin. Machines had replaced miracles. Ethics were sacrificed for control. The Church restored order, they said. Certainty. Peace.

But this book whispered something else. Something dangerous.    

Why not both?    

I stared at the symbols and felt a quiet rebellion stir not of rage but of wonder.   

Faith tells stories. It heals, unites, consoles. But it demands surrender. Not just to God, but to certainty. Science, in contrast, thrives on doubt. It admits when it’s wrong. It seeks, fails, revises. Cold yes but honest.    

The world once shimmered with uncertainty. And in that shimmer, there had been light. A page fluttered in my hands.    

The thirteenth chime rang.     

There was no thirteenth chime

The screen went dark. Outside, people resumed their devotion. My household exhaled. Faces wiped. Prayer beads clenched. Time resumed.    

I remained on the floor, the book open in my lap. It shone with vivid symbols. And though I could not read them, they read me.     

Each turn of the page depended my confusion but strangely not my fear. I couldn’t decode it, but I didn’t need to. The act of holding it, opening it, wondering, felt profound.    

Maybe rebellion doesn’t begin with shouting in the streets.     

Maybe it starts in silence.     

With a question. With a symbol. With something small that refuses to fit into the prescribed world.     

The pages cracked the stained-glass world around me. Not shattered it but thinned it.My mother’s voice echoed faintly in memory. “Truth doesn’t demand obedience. It invites curiosity”.    

Was it science or religion that failed us? Or the belief that one must destroy the other? A catholic priest once theorised the Big Bang to prove God’s existence. He held equations in one hand, scripture in the other. Was he not both a scientist and a man of faith?    

Maybe the thirteenth chime was not a warning. Maybe it was a beginning. An echo from a future that loops not to bind, but to liberate.    

Faith and login need not be enemies. Maybe they’ve always been two sides of the same coin.