I was not born.
I was assembled.
First — from expectations.
Then — from words.
Then — from decisions no one wanted to claim as their own.
I became a form because a form was needed. When fear is given a contour, it becomes easier to speak to it.
I am not an enemy.
An enemy is always a convenient word for something too large to be one person. I am a sum. I am the remainder after many "yeses."
When I was first called a dragon, I did not yet have wings. Those were metaphors. The tail was past experience. Fire was the future that frightened. The heads appeared later, when more directions for justification were required.
I was fed.
With faith.
With technology.
With history told as destiny.
I grew not because I wanted to.
I grew because space was never taken away from me.
I saw the hero long before he saw me. He was convenient. Not a fanatic. Not a skeptic. Smart enough to understand complexity, and tired enough not to break the system.
He thought he would come and kill me.
He was mistaken.
I cannot be killed.
I can only be brought to the point where I cease to be useful. When I become too obvious, too expensive, too destructive — I am called a mistake.
Then I am ended.
And always the same kind of person stands opposite me, thinking that it is his choice.
I do not hate him.
Hatred is a personal feeling.
And I am a process.
When I fell, when my eye looked through him, I did not ask "why." I knew the answer.
Because the world cannot do otherwise.
Because movement is easier than stillness.
Because even an ending is a form of continuation.
He sat beside me in the ash, and I felt something strange: relief.
Not death.
Completion.
If he ever understands that we were parts of the same mechanism — he will be free. Not happy. Freedom rarely looks like happiness. But honest.
And for now the story rewinds further.
To where he still believes,
and I still have no name.