At that time, the dragon was a revelation.
It was not feared — it was awaited.
It was not spoken of as a monster. It was called a sign, a symbol, an answer to a question that no one dared to formulate directly. In books, it appeared not as flesh and fire, but as a scheme: seven heads — as completeness, ten horns — as power, a tail — as history, sweeping away stars that had long ceased to shine.
The hero was still just a man.
He lived in a place without geography. It could have been a village, a city, a barracks, a monastery — it made no difference. What mattered was different: the world there was understandable. Simple, not in essence, but in interface. Do — and there will be consequence. Pray — and there will be silence. Be silent — and you will be taken for wise.
He could read. That alone set him apart.
Texts gravitated toward him, as if sensing weakness. He read Scripture not as faith, but as an instruction missing pages. The more he read, the clearer it became: meaning did not disappear — it was simply distributed unevenly.
One day he was given a choice.
Not a formal one — not "yes or no."
A real, the most dangerous one:
to participate or remain aside.
— This is not war, — they told him. — This is necessity.
— This is not violence, — they told him. — This is order.
— This is not against God, — they told him. — This is for Him.
The arguments were neat, like shelves in a library. Each stood in its place, and there were no gaps between them. He noticed this only later — gaps always appear after.
He said "yes."
Not loudly.
Without pomp.
Almost mechanically.
And in that moment, history unfolded, though he did not notice it.
In another layer — because layers were already beginning to appear — an old man wrote a commentary on an ancient text. He knew he was not writing the truth, but a version, yet he hoped it would outlive him.
— People always confuse the sign and the signified, — he muttered. — The dragon is not an enemy. It is the shape fear takes when it is given a name.
No one listened to him.
In yet another layer, engineers assembled something enormous. They believed neither in signs nor in fear. They believed in calculation. But calculation required an image to be validated, and the image came from old books.
Thus the myth gained a body.
Thus the symbol was given wings.
The hero was somewhere in between.
He still thought he was doing the right things for the right reasons. He did not yet know that reasons are a luxury applied backward.
Sometimes he dreamed a dream.
He stood in a field, and above him circled the dragon — not frightening, not majestic, but weary. The dragon looked at him with something like reproach, but without accusation.
— Did you know? — the dream asked.
— No, — he answered.
And it was true.
But not an excuse.
When he woke, the world became slightly more complicated. Not immediately. Slowly. Like water in which something bitter is dissolved.
He began to notice cracks in words.
Shifts in meanings.
Moments where "in the name of" became more important than "for whom."
But there was no going back.
Because back — is also a choice.
And he had already once said "yes."