He stood among the ashes, and the ashes were warm, as if the world had not yet decided — had it died or simply paused to think.
The sky was torn. Not by lightning — but by silence.
Once there had been the roar of pipes, or engines, or wings. Now — nothing. Even the echo was tired of returning.
Before him lay a dragon.
Not the kind from fairy tales, with gold and princesses.
This one was more like the idea of a dragon: enormous, motionless, with wounds that did not bleed. Its scales were scorched as if centuries, not fire, had passed over them. The wing — broken, the head — bowed, the eye open and looking not at a person, but through one.
The hero — if that word was even appropriate here — held a weapon in his hands.
He did not remember his name.
He only knew that the battle was over.
On his clothing were marks that had once meant something: a cross, a number, a name, faded almost to nothing. On his sleeve — the trace of a bandage, worn not out of faith, but because he was told to.
He felt neither victory.
Nor defeat.
Around him lay bodies — human and otherwise. Soldiers in uniforms recognizable only by habit. Bones mixed with metal. Books, torn as if someone had tried to extract their meaning by hand.
Somewhere nearby stood a half-ruined temple.
Without a roof.
Without an altar.
But with a cross, which for some reason had survived and now looked at the sky like a question without an answer.
The hero approached the dragon.
— You thought this was the end too? — he asked, not expecting an answer.
The dragon was not dead.
It had ended.
These were different things.
At that moment the hero realized a strange thing:
everything he had supposedly been moving toward — had already happened.
All prophecies had come true.
All enemies were named.
All words spoken.
And now — silence.
He sat on a stone, placed his weapon beside him, and for the first time in a long while did not know what to do next. Not because he was free — but because freedom had come too late.
Somewhere deep in his memory, a thought flickered:
he had once been told that the journey is more important than the goal.
He smirked.
— Then I did everything right, — he said to the emptiness. — Because I never had a goal.
The wind flipped a page of a burned book at his feet.
It read:
"In the beginning was the Word."
He closed the book.
The story was over.
And that meant — it was time to begin.