My world, for three hundred years of my family's history, had been built on a single, unshakeable truth: dragons were the enemy. They were fire, death, and ruin. They were the monsters that stole our food, burned our homes, and took our people. It was a truth as solid as the stone of Berk itself, as real as the hammer in my hand.
And in the space of a single, silent moment, my son shattered it.
He laid his hand on the snout of a Monstrous Nightmare. The beast, a creature I had seen melt catapults and set longships ablaze without a second thought, did not recoil. It did not attack. It leaned into his touch, its hellish eyes closing in something that looked disturbingly like contentment. The fire in its throat, which should have been roaring to life to incinerate my son, died with a soft, pathetic hiss. The beast submitted. Willingly. To my Hiccup.
My mind refused to process what my eyes were seeing. It was a trick of the light. A strange, suicidal form of hypnosis. It had to be anything other than what it appeared to be: a boy calming a dragon with a touch.
The silence in the arena lasted only a moment before it was broken by a single, ugly word shouted from the stands.
"Traitor!"
It was like a spark on dry tinder. Another voice joined in. "He's one of them!" Then another, and another, until the entire arena was a roaring chorus of accusation and fear. "Liar!" "Witchcraft!" "He's betrayed us!"
The words were hammer blows against my heart. They were shouting at my son. My people, the people I led and protected, were looking at my boy not as the unlikely champion he had become, but as a conspirator, a turncoat. A deep, primal rage began to boil in my chest, a father's instinct to protect his own. But I was not just a father. I was the Chief. And deep in the part of my mind that wore the horned helmet, a cold, terrible thought echoed the cries of the crowd: What if they're right?
Had it all been a lie? The sudden skill, the impossible victories, the way these beasts seemed to simply fall down before him? Had he made some dark pact? Had he chosen these monsters over his own kind? I didn't want to believe it. I couldn't. But the evidence was there, a docile monster at my son's feet. I needed an explanation. I needed to get him away from that thing.
"SILENCE!" My voice was a thunderclap that cracked through the din, born of a chieftain's authority and a father's desperation. The crowd quieted, their angry shouts turning to fearful, suspicious murmurs. "Open the gate!" I roared at the men below. "Get in there! Get the boy!"
My men, loyal and brave, did as they were commanded. They flooded into the ring, axes and maces raised. The moment they entered, the Monstrous Nightmare's docile state vanished. With a speed that belied its size, it unfurled its massive wings, creating a living shield of leather and scale around my son, hiding him from view. A loud, menacing snarl, like grinding stones, shouted from its chest. It was protecting him. From us.
"Stop!" Hiccup's voice, small but clear, came from behind the dragon's wing. "Don't come any closer! Don't hurt him!"
The crowd erupted again, their fears confirmed. "He's protecting the beast!"
"Calm down!" I shouted again, my own control fraying. I strode into the ring myself, my heart a cold stone of dread in my chest. I stopped a safe distance from the dragon, its glowing yellow eyes tracking my every move. It was a standoff. My best warriors on one side, and a single dragon with my son tucked safely under its wing on the other. "Hiccup!" I demanded, my voice tight with an anger I was using to mask my terror. "Explain yourself. What is the meaning of this?"
The dragon shifted, allowing Hiccup to step forward, though it remained close, a fiery guardian angel. He looked so small, so fragile, standing before that monster.
"So everything in this ring... A trick?!" I demanded, the words tearing from my throat. "A lie?"
"Look dad, I'm sorry," he said, his voice pleading. "I should have told you before now. Take this out on me, be mad at me, but please... just don't hurt the dragon."
The words were so absurd, so fundamentally backward to everything I knew, that I could barely comprehend them. "The dragon?" I asked, my voice dangerously low. "That... thing ? is what you're worried about? Not your father? Not your people who think you're a traitor?"
"He's just protecting me!" Hiccup insisted, his voice rising with a passion I hadn't heard from him in years. "He's not dangerous."
"They've killed HUNDREDS OF US!" I roared, the ghosts of fallen Vikings rising in my memory.
"AND WE'VE KILLED THOUSANDS OF THEM!" he shouted back, and the force of it stunned me into silence. "They defend themselves, that's all! They raid us because they have to! If they don't bring enough food back, they'll be eaten themselves."
The statement was so outlandish, so utterly contrary to three centuries of war, that I could only stare at him. Eaten? By what? "How do you know that?" I asked, my voice barely a whisper.
And so he told us. He mentions of another dragon by name, speak of a friend in a hidden cove. He spoke of following the dragons, of finding their Nest, a great volcano in the sea. He described a cavern filled with thousands of them, all living in fear. He told us of a Queen, a beast of such impossible size that the dragons we fought were like mice in comparison. He explained that the raids, the war that had defined our lives, was not an act of aggression, but a tax. A tithe of food paid to this monstrous tyrant, and any dragon that failed to bring enough was devoured.
As he spoke, the arena fell utterly silent. The Vikings around me lowered their weapons, their faces a mixture of disbelief and dawning horror. They were listening. We were all listening. He spoke of the dragons not as monsters, but as slaves, as victims in a war they were being forced to fight. He painted a picture of a world so different from the one we knew, it felt like a myth.
He pleaded with us, his voice ringing with a desperate sincerity. He said we didn't have to kill them, that there could be peace, that the real enemy was the Queen in the Nest.
And as I watched him, standing there, bravely defending his impossible truth against the weight of our entire history, I saw something else. The way he stood, the fire in his eyes, the passionate, unshakeable conviction in his voice… it was like seeing a ghost.
I saw Valka.
My wife, his mother. The woman who had always argued that dragons were more than just mindless beasts. The woman who believed there was a better way, who saw understanding where the rest of us saw only violence. She had stood on this very spot, years ago, arguing with me, pleading with me to find another way. I had dismissed her, called her naive. And then a dragon had taken her, proving me right. Or so I had thought.
Now, her spirit was standing before me, reborn in our son. The same impossible hope. The same radical compassion. The same stubborn refusal to accept the world as it was. He looked at me, his green eyes—her eyes—begging me to believe him, to see the evidence right in front of me.
And the evidence was a Monstrous Nightmare , protecting my son from what it saw as a danger to him.
The fortress of my certainty, already cracked by his touch, crumbled into dust. Three hundred years of history, of war, of hatred… could it all have been a mistake? A tragic, bloody misunderstanding?
My son, my strange, disappointing, brilliant son, had not betrayed us. He had discovered a truth so profound it could save us all. He hadn't become one of them. He had simply been the first of us to truly see them.
A decision rose in me, a choice that went against every instinct I had as a Viking, but felt undeniably right as a father, and as a Chief who had just been shown a path to end a forever war.
I looked at Hiccup, at the living proof of his words huddled protectively around him. I looked at the stunned, confused faces of my people. I took a deep breath, the salty air tasting of change.
Stoick the Vast, the great dragon slayer, was dead. In his place stood a father who believed his son.
"Enough," I said, my voice quiet but carrying across the silent arena. The men looked at me, awaiting the order to attack, to subdue the beast and seize the traitor.
I gave them a different order.
"Lower your weapons."