I used to believe life would give me time — time to grow, time to change, time to become someone worth remembering. But life rarely waits for anyone, and mine certainly didn't.
Looking back, I can see the signs — the quiet warnings, the subtle nudges — but at the time, I was just drifting. A young man with too many dreams and not enough courage to chase them. My days were predictable. Wake up, work, come home, read, sleep. Repeat. It wasn't a bad life, just… small. Safe. I told myself I was saving money, preparing for something bigger, but deep down I knew I was hiding. Hiding from failure, from disappointment, from the world.
Back then, I was just a young man with too many dreams and not enough courage to chase them. I worked, I read, I slept. That was my cycle. Books were my escape, especially the ones filled with magic, kingdoms, and dragons soaring above the world. Dragons fascinated me — powerful, ancient, untamed. Everything I wasn't. They lived above the world, not beneath it.
Maybe that's why I spent so much time reading instead of living.
"You're going to read yourself into an early grave," my friend Lena joked one evening as we sat in our usual café. She stirred her tea with the same lazy rhythm she used for everything in life. We were in our usual café, a small place tucked between a bakery and a thrift shop. The kind of place where the chairs wobbled and the coffee tasted like failed dreams, but it was quiet and familiar.
I smirked over the rim of my cup. "There are worse ways to go."
"Sure," she said, leaning back. "But you could try living a little. Go out. Meet people. Do something reckless."
"I'm not the reckless type."
"That's the problem," she shot back. "You're always waiting for something to happen. News flash — nothing happens unless you make it happen."
I smirked. "You sound like a motivational poster."
"And you sound like someone who's afraid of his own shadow."
I shrugged, pretending her words didn't hit as hard as they did. "I like my quiet life."
"You like safe," she corrected. "But safe isn't living."
I didn't have an answer for that. I never did. She always saw through me too easily.
She leaned forward, her expression softening. "I'm not saying you need to jump off a cliff or go on 100 dates in 1 day. Just… take a chance. On something. On yourself."
I shrugged. "I'll think about it."
As we walked out into the cold night, she nudged my shoulder. "Promise me something."
"What?"
"If life ever gives you a chance to be more than this… take it. Don't hesitate."
I laughed it off. "Yeah, sure. If destiny knocks on my door, I'll let it in."
She rolled her eyes. "I'm serious."
"I know," I said softly. "And I'll try."
It was the last real conversation I ever had.
We walked out together, parting ways at the corner. She waved, I waved back, and that was it. A simple goodbye. I didn't know it would be the last time I saw her alive. I didn't know that the next time I thought of her, I'd be bleeding out on cold pavement.
Hours later, I was walking home alone. The street was quiet, the kind of quiet that made you feel like the only person left alive after an apocalypse occurred. My breath fogged in the air as I passed the alley — the one I should've ignored.
A crash. A cry. A man shouting.
I froze.
Lena's voice echoed in my mind. If life ever gives you a chance to be more… take it.
Maybe it was stupid. Maybe it was instinct. Maybe it was the first time I actually listened to her.
I stepped into the alley.
A man towered over a woman curled on the ground, his arm raised, a glint of metal in his hand. I didn't think. I just shouted.
"Hey! Leave her alone!"
He turned. His eyes were wild, unfocused. The knife flashed.
I barely saw him move.
Pain exploded in my chest. My legs buckled. The world tilted. I hit the ground hard, the cold seeping into my bones.
The woman screamed. Footsteps pounded away. My vision blurred.
I thought of Lena. Of dragons. Of all the stories I never got to finish.
I wasn't afraid. Not really. Just… sad. Sad that I never did anything. Sad that I never took a chance. Sad that my life ended in an alley, unnoticed and unremarkable.
…And saddest of all, I never confessed to Lena. I tried to speak, past the blood pooling in my throat, to force her name out one last time, but my voice cracked into a weak, breathless mumble that vanished into the wind, destined to only be heard by the silent but calming night.
My vision blurred, the world shrinking to a narrow tunnel of fading light.
Somewhere in that darkness, I thought I heard a voice. Soft. Familiar. Irritated in the way only one person ever managed.
People always said that in your last moments, you hear the voices of those closest to you. A final comfort before the end. Maybe that's why, in the darkness creeping in, I thought I heard her. Lena.
"You idiot… when I said take a chance, I didn't mean this."
A weak laugh escaped me — or maybe it was just a breath. Of course she'd scold me, even in my imagination. Truly, she was everything to me. Everything I never had the courage to reach for.
"Get up…" the voice whispered, softer now. "Come on… get up."
I wanted to. God, I wanted to. But my body felt so heavy, so cold. My fingers twitched uselessly against the pavement.
"I'm sorry, Lena," I whispered, or thought I whispered. "I don't… I don't think I'm getting up anymore."
The darkness pressed closer, swallowing the edges of the world. The voice faded with it, slipping away like a memory I couldn't hold onto.
Maybe it was real. Maybe it was just my mind trying to comfort itself. Either way… hearing her one last time made the end a little less lonely.
The darkness swallowed me whole. And the echo of her voice — real or imagined — followed me into it.
My breath grew shallow. The world dimmed.
Then… silence.
Not death. Not exactly. Something deeper. A void without fear or pain.
A warmth stirred within it — ancient, powerful, alive.
A heartbeat that wasn't mine.
Then a voice, felt rather than heard:
"Rise."
Light swallowed me whole. My body dissolved, reshaped, reforged in fire and magic. Wings. Claws. Scales. Power.
A new heartbeat thundered in my chest.
I wasn't human anymore.
And far beneath London, in the depths of Gringotts, an egg began to crack.