He said "yes" — and almost immediately realized that this word no longer belonged to him.
The world did not change sharply. No thunder sounded. The sky did not react. The most important events always look like the continuation of the previous frame, as if the editing were too soft.
He simply became engaged.
He began to be trusted.
Assigned tasks.
Explained to.
Each explanation was logical. Even beautiful. Especially those that referred to something greater than man: to History, to Necessity, to God, who preferred to remain in the form of quotes.
— You understand, — they told him.
And he understood. That was the problem.
Understanding does not require agreement. It only requires intelligence.
He began to see further than others. Not because he was smarter, but because he stood at the point where layers intersected. He saw how myth becomes command, and command — mechanism. He saw how faith loses the question and acquires instruction.
And yet he continued.
Not out of cowardice.
Out of clarity.
If the process has begun, he thought, it is better to be inside than outside. Inside, at least, you see what is happening. Outside remains only horror without context.
Sometimes he caught himself in a strange thought:
What if the dragon already exists — just not yet visible?
He did not know that this thought — was a memory.
From the future.
At night he saw dreams in which he stood among ashes. The dream was too precise to be prophecy, and too empty to be fear. He woke with the sense that the finale had already happened, it was just being replayed in reverse.
He prayed less.
Not because he stopped believing.
But because the answers had become too functional.
And yet — he went on.
Because moving forward was easier than admitting:
one could only stop once.
And he had missed it.