It was four in the afternoon. The sun was already turning orange above the pines, and the dirt road smelled of wet pine and cut grass.
Elena had been complaining for ten minutes as she dragged a sack of potatoes.
“I swear, next time your father asks me for help, I’m telling him to go die. It’s not normal for a fifty-year-old man to have the back of an oak tree and still ask favors of two seventeen-year-olds.”
Alexis grabbed the other end of the sack without looking at her. “You said yes. Nobody forced you.” “I said yes because you were coming. If I’d known you were going to stay quiet the whole way, I would’ve stayed home reading magic books.”
He smiled a little. It was always the same. She talked. He listened. They’d been doing exactly that for sixteen years. Since they were one year old and threw dirt in each other’s faces in the grandmother’s yard.
They left the sack beside the shed. Elena sat on a log, pulled a bandage off her wrist, and started cleaning the mud from her hands. “You kept training this morning, didn’t you?” Alexis shrugged. “A little.” “Three hours. I saw you leave before sunrise. Don’t play dumb.”
He didn’t answer. He didn’t like talking about it. No one in the village knew that every morning, two hours before anyone woke up, he went to the forest clearing and struck a tree a thousand times. Not his father. No one. Only her.
Elena sighed. She pulled a piece of bread from her pocket and broke it in half. “You’re still planning to leave, right?”
The question fell slowly. Alexis took the bread and stared at the ants climbing the log. “Yes.” “And when?” “Next spring.”
She nodded. She wasn’t surprised. She didn’t yell at him. She didn’t call him an idiot. She just bit into the bread very slowly. “Okay. Then I’m leaving too.”
That made Alexis raise his head. “What?” “You don’t seriously think I’m going to let you go out into the world alone so you can get yourself killed in the first week, do you? Please. You don’t even know how to negotiate the price of an onion. Without me, you’ll be dead in three days.”
He laughed. For real. That was the only time he ever truly laughed. “Your mother’s going to kill you.” “My mother already wants me dead. Besides, I’m not going to be your maid. I’m going to be a mage. You’ll be the lumberjack who hits things, and I’ll be the one throwing fire from her hands and saving your ass every time. Deal.”
Neither of them said anything for a while. The sun kept sinking. Sheep could be heard on the hill. A bird sang. For one second, everything was perfect. For one second, it seemed like that moment would stay that way forever.
Then the world fell silent.
There was no roar first. No scream. Only silence. Suddenly, the birds stopped singing. The wind died. Even the flies went still.
Alexis shot to his feet. “Elena.”
She was already looking at him. Her face was white. “What is that?”
They didn’t hear it. They felt it. A weight that fell over the entire valley. Something that squeezed your chest, made your knees tremble, told you inside your head without words: stay still. Don’t move. Die well.
When they looked up, they saw it.
It was a black dragon. So black it devoured the sunlight. It wasn’t flying. It was simply passing by. A hundred meters above the trees. Its wings made no sound. When it moved its tail, three pine trees split in half as if they were straw.
Alexis couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t move. He’d heard stories about dragons his whole life. No one had ever told him that the first thing you feel isn’t anger. It isn’t courage. It’s just fear. A fear so huge you forget who you are.
Then he heard the first scream.
The dragon hadn’t attacked yet. It had only passed by. And the village was already burning.
Elena rose to her feet, trembling. “Alexis, we have to go.”
They ran downhill the entire way. Smoke was already stinging their eyes. They heard screams. They heard things breaking. When they reached the village entrance, Alexis stopped.
His house was on fire.
He didn’t run. He didn’t scream. He just stood there. The ax still in his hand. Watching the roof collapse. Watching Mrs. Marta run down the street with her hair on fire. Watching old Tomás, who had taught him to chop wood when he was seven, lying in the mud and not moving.
A man came running out of a house. A second later, something black fell on top of him. It wasn’t the dragon. It was the things that came behind it. Lizards as big as horses, with black teeth. One of them turned and saw him.
Alexis tightened his grip on the ax.
He didn’t think. There was no moment of heroism. He just moved forward. He struck. The ax slammed into the monster’s head and bounced off. It didn’t even leave a scratch. The monster hit him with its tail, and he went flying three meters.
“Alexis!” Elena screamed.
He landed in the mud. His entire chest hurt. He couldn’t breathe. The monster approached slowly. Alexis clenched his teeth. He grabbed the ax again. He knew he was going to die. He knew he had no chance. And even so, he stood up.
Then an arrow pierced the monster’s head.
It fell dead beside him.
Alexis looked up. Four people stood at the entrance to the village. A man in a gray cloak. A girl with a bow. A boy with a sword. An old man with a staff.
The man in the gray cloak looked at him. He wasn’t in a hurry. He wasn’t afraid. “Get away. This isn’t for you.”
No one said anything else. The four of them advanced. The swordsman cut down three monsters with a single blow. The girl fired arrows without missing once. The old man raised his hand, and a wall of fire rose between them and the village flames.
The man in the gray cloak kept walking alone toward the center of the village. Toward the dragon.
When the dragon saw the man in the gray cloak, it left.
The dragon was gone. The village was ash. Twenty-seven people out of a hundred twenty had survived.
Alexis sat on the same log where he’d been eating bread two hours earlier. The ax was broken. Elena sat beside him. She wasn’t crying. Neither was he.
The man in the gray cloak approached. His name was Gareth. Alexis didn’t know that yet. But he would remember it for the rest of his life.
He stopped in front of him. “You were the one who stood up. Everyone else ran. You stood up knowing you were going to die.”
Alexis didn’t raise his head. “I was useless.” “No one’s useful the first time.”
Gareth tossed him a small leather pouch. There were coins inside. “A carriage leaves for the capital at dawn the day after tomorrow. If you come, I’ll teach you how to strike so the ax won’t bounce off next time. If you don’t come, no one will blame you.”
He turned and walked away.
Elena and he stayed sitting there for a long time. The sun had already set. The stars were coming out. No one spoke.
Finally, Alexis said very quietly: “A thousand strikes a day weren’t enough.”
Elena took his hand. “Then we’ll do two thousand.”
He nodded. He didn’t talk about revenge. He didn’t talk about justice. He didn’t talk about being a hero. He only thought about numbers. About strikes. About getting up an hour earlier tomorrow. About never being that helpless again.
He didn’t sleep that night.
And when the sun rose the next day, his backpack was already packed.