The dragon was still breathing.
This was the first thing the hero realized, although the breath was not air, but time. Each exhale pulled after it memories that belonged to no one in particular: childhoods without faces, prayers without an addressee, orders without a signature.
The sky here was not yet torn.
It cracked slowly, like ice in spring, and through the fissures, something old peered out — not hell, not heaven, but a warehouse of forgotten expectations.
The war went on.
But not as it is drawn.
Not in fronts — but in layers.
On one level, people shot each other with weapons made to avoid seeing faces. On another — priests argued over wording, because one extra word could decide who would be called a beast. On a third — children played soldiers, not knowing they were playing the past.
The hero walked through all of it, and each layer overlapped him like tracing paper. Sometimes he was a soldier. Sometimes — a witness. Sometimes — the cause.
He had a name.
Sometimes.
When called by one name — he believed.
When by another — he doubted.
When by a number — he acted without questions.
He wore a cross, but not always as a symbol. Sometimes — as a mark. Sometimes — as justification. Sometimes — as a burden convenient to carry because it explained the pain.
In one of the layers he stood in a trench.
The ground was wet, and it already contained bones — not from the war, but from previous explanations of the world. Next to him sat a man reading the Bible aloud, because silence was scarier than artillery.
— "And the great dragon was cast down…" — he began.
— Don't read further, — said the hero.
— Why?
— Because if you finish, it will appear.
The man smirked.
— It's already here.
And it was true.
The dragon had not flown.
It was built.
It was assembled from fear, metal, old myths, and very modern calculations. It had wings, because that made superiority easier to explain. It had fire, because fire can always be called purification.
But the scariest thing — it had justification.
The hero participated in this.
Not directly.
He simply took steps that were logical at that moment.
— If I don't, someone else will.
— If not now, then later.
— If not like this, then worse.
These phrases formed a prayer with no god, but with structure.
In another layer he stood in a ruined city.
The city resembled Jerusalem, Berlin, and any place where someone once decided that history must learn something. On the wall someone had written:
— "God is dead,"
and next to it, with another hand:
— "So are we."
There he first saw the dragon not as an enemy, but as a consequence.
— You cannot kill it, — someone said beside him. — You can only finish it.
— How? — asked the hero.
— By bringing it to the end.
It was a bad answer, but there was no other.
Sometimes the hero prayed.
Sometimes — gave orders.
Sometimes — simply watched books burn, because there was no one to read them.
He still believed there was an ending.
That there was a moment where everything would make sense.
That the battle would be the last.
And somewhere deep, in a place that would later become ashes, a scene already existed where he stood alone, and the dragon lay before him, and it had all already happened.
But not yet.
While the dragon breathed.
While the war explained itself.
While the hero walked not because he must, but because stopping would mean thinking.
And thinking was dangerous.