Dawn was breaking.

  Dima was lying on a pile of branches beneath a tree. Nearby, a campfire smoldered, giving off a thin trail of smoke. A beam of sunlight hit him straight in the eyes, and he winced, waking abruptly.

  He pushed himself up and looked around.

  “So… not a dream,” he muttered.

  The ruins, the forest, the fire—all of it was still there.

  “So what do I call you now? Master?” a voice came from the side.

  Dima flinched and turned his head. Stasyan was sitting by the fire, poking at the embers with a stick.

  “What? Why?” Dima frowned. “Just call me Dima. Slavery and serfdom were abolished a long time ago.”

  “Well… maybe in your time,” Stasyan muttered without looking up. “Things are different now.”

  Dima didn’t like the sound of that.

  He’d never thought of himself as a bad person—at least, he really wanted to believe that.

  “So who are you, really, Dima?” Stasyan asked after a pause. “How does someone like you…” he hesitated, “…a pretty boy like that, manage to take all of us down?”

  “To be honest, I don’t really get it myself,” Dima sighed. “It just kind of… happened. On autopilot.”

  He paused, then added:

  “Probably helped that I played a lot. Matches. Reaction time, timing.”

  “Matches?” Stasyan asked warily.

  “Games,” Dima explained. “Like training, but for your head and reflexes. Stuff like… Beat Saber.”

  “Beet… seiber?” Stasyan repeated slowly.

  “Something like that. A game.”

  Stasyan frowned.

  “A game?”

  “You don’t know what games are?” Dima asked, surprised. “As a kid—hide-and-seek, tag, anything like that?”

  Stasyan didn’t answer. He stood up, brushing ash from his clothes.

  Dima stood as well—not because he wanted to, but because his body tensed on instinct.

  “You’re not… going to attack me, are you?” he asked.

  Stasyan looked at him, tired.

  “I wouldn’t survive on my own,” he said. “If they catch me—they’ll eat me. Or worse.”

  He stepped closer to the fire, pulled a wooden skewer from the embers, and held it out to Dima.

  “Here.”

  “What is it?” Dima asked cautiously.

  “Carrot. Potato,” Stasyan shrugged.

  Dima looked at the charred vegetables, then at the skewer.

  “Breakfast of champions,” he muttered, forcing a crooked smile.

  After eating, Dima pulled the pistol from his belt and began examining it—testing the weight, the shape, the strange crystal embedded inside.

  “How long have you and Borya been on the roads?” he asked suddenly. “You know… robbing people.”

  Stasyan shrugged.

  “About twenty years. With Lena—eight. Didn’t really have a choice. Either that, or die.”

  “And why is Lena called Lena, anyway?” Dima couldn’t help himself. “That’s a woman’s name.”

  Stasyan looked at him, confused.

  “Perfectly normal man’s name. Don’t see what’s so funny.”

  You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

  “In my time, it was a woman’s name,” Dima explained. “So to me, it sounds… weird.”

  Stasyan snorted, but didn’t argue.

  They sat by the fire, warming themselves, talking a little at a time. No rush. No threats. Just because there was nothing else to do.

  Dima learned that Lena had always been restless. He’d grown up among people who survived by robbing others. During one raid, almost all of them were killed—and after that, Lena was left alone.

  With Stasyan, it had been different.

  He had lived with Borya in a small town until they were attacked by bandits—ones much like Lena’s gang. Borya spoke poorly and often mixed up his words, but it was him who said first that if they didn’t run right then, they would die.

  They tried joining other villages they passed along the way, but everywhere they were chased off. People were afraid. It was too easy to mistake them for bandits.

  Eventually, they met Lena—at a market where anything and everything was traded.

  And they decided to follow him.

  “We didn’t see any other way to survive back then,” Stasyan finished quietly.

  Dima apologized for Borya for a long time afterward. Stasyan listened in silence. For a bandit, he seemed surprisingly calm—he spoke plainly, without deception in his voice, as if everything he said was simply the truth. Still, Dima didn’t fully relax; somewhere deep inside lingered the fear that Stasyan might attack.

  They walked through the forest.

  “At least the forests are still the same,” Dima remarked with a faint smile, looking around. “Though… they feel denser. In my time, this was a massive concrete megacity. If you wanted to breathe properly, you had to leave it.”

  “And what did you eat in those… mega-lo-poles?” Stasyan asked.

  “Carrots. Potatoes,” Dima joked.

  He turned the pistol over in his hands, studying the crystal.

  “So what kind of stone is this?” he asked. “Could you make a sword out of it, for example?”

  “No idea,” Stasyan shrugged. “We stole that gun off someone.”

  “Fun…” Dima muttered. “And why was Borya swinging the rifle instead of shooting? Ran out of ammo?”

  “There haven’t been bullets in it for a long time,” Stasyan replied calmly.

  He paused, then added:

  “That pistol of yours—pretty sure it used to belong to a sorcerer. Lena knocked him out first.”

  “WHAT SORCERERS?!” Dima stopped and spun around sharply. “Magic doesn’t exist.”

  Stasyan studied him closely.

  “Well… looks like it does. That pistol of yours is anything but ordinary.”

  “I don’t believe it,” Dima said stubbornly. “There is no magic. I know that for a fact.”

  They argued about the existence of magic for a long time, each refusing to give ground. Eventually, the conversation died out on its own, and they simply kept walking.

  Stasyan led him toward the nearest village.

  They walked in silence.

  Dima kept catching himself staring at the crystals jutting out of the ground. Large ones, in many colors—some almost transparent, others reflecting him and Stasyan back in distorted silhouettes. Between the trees and the crystals lay piles of stone and concrete—remnants of something vast that had once been whole. Everything was covered in moss and grass, partly buried under soil.

  The forest clearly hadn’t grown on its own — it had simply taken the city’s place.

  “Listen…” Dima finally broke the silence. “Why is everything destroyed? What actually happened in the past?”

  Stasyan shrugged without stopping.

  “I was always told there was some kind of big war. So everything got wiped out.”

  Dima grew somber.

  He remembered how not long ago he’d been sitting at his computer — playing, laughing, cursing at teammates — never once thinking that a real war could be starting somewhere. Never suspecting it. Never preparing. Just living.

  “Who was fighting?” he asked after a pause. “Who were we fighting against?”

  Stasyan stopped and looked at him.

  “And who is we?”

  Dima didn’t answer.

  He suddenly realized that if so much time had passed, there was simply no one left here who could remember his country at all.

  “And these crystals…” Dima nodded toward the stones jutting from the ground. “You consider them magical too?”

  He stopped beside a violet crystal. It was taller than a man and faintly shimmered from within.

  “Yes,” Stasyan replied. “I was told sorcerers can use their power.”

  “And how exactly?”

  “In different ways. In some places, crops grow better — potatoes don’t rot. In others, wounds can be healed. And the bad ones…” Stasyan grimaced. “The bad ones can turn all the food to dust overnight.”

  Dima listened carefully, though inside it all sounded like nonsense. Too much like fairy tales.

  And yet… something felt wrong.

  From deep inside the crystal came a strange sound — a dull echo, like a reflected whisper. For a moment, Dima thought it was a voice.

  He reached out and touched the cold surface.

  “You don’t seem like a sorcerer,” Stasyan said cautiously. “Why are you touching it?”

  At that very instant, a burst of energy erupted from the crystal. It shot upward, hung in the air for a fraction of a second, then tore over their heads, burning holes through the trees. Branches flared and collapsed, and the beam vanished as suddenly as it had appeared.

  They stood in silence for several seconds.

  “I didn’t understand anything,” Dima finally said, slowly turning his head. “But it definitely pointed somewhere.”

  He nodded in the direction the surge had gone.

  “In my experience…” he gave a nervous chuckle, “there’s usually something over there.”

  Stasyan took a step back.

  “You’re some kind of sorcerer…” he muttered, fearfully shifting his gaze between the crystal and Dima.

  “Well…” Dima shrugged, still not fully believing what had happened. “Looks like it. I don’t understand it myself, but for now, let’s assume I’m this rock’s apprentice.”

  He tried to joke.

  It didn’t work very well.

  The shimmer inside the crystal faded. The stone dulled, as if it had discharged, turning into an ordinary chunk of glass.

  “Do you know what’s over there?” Dima asked, staring in that direction.

  Stasyan thought for a moment, glanced back, as if trying to pull a memory from the depths of his mind.

  “I think there used to be a small village there,” he said slowly. “But I’m not sure. I haven’t been that way in a long time.”

  “Shall we go?” Dima suggested.

  Stasyan hesitated.

  “I don’t know…” he answered honestly. “It’s interesting. And scary.”

  Dima noticed that along with the burst of energy, the echo had disappeared as well. The forest felt normal again — only the scorched branches quietly smoldered on the ground.

  They took one last look at the burned traces and, without a word, started moving in the direction the beam of energy had gone.