Throughout the fourth year I tried to focus on my studies and training. So much so that even on my days off I spent my time training instead of going to the lake with the others. They had long since forgiven me for my little slip-up with Dal Mah. I still remembered it.

In the end I had come out on top. Everything had gone on as before. I still had my moments with Dal Mah, moments when I was happy. I knew I was in love with her, but I thought that, as long as I didn’t tell her, I would be safe from that danger Master Dun Gar and Dien Phu warned me about.

The fourth test was undoubtedly the hardest of all. I still remember it, albeit in bits and pieces. Just like that recurring nightmare of which you forget some details, but which never ceases to horrify you. It was an individual test. They took me to that place... That dark glacier... That blissful resin... Those people I was trying to forget... Coming back to haunt me... Pointing at me... I saw all of them there, glittering on the hundred walls of that icy cave. I saw my mother. My father even. And I’m making a great effort to tell you all this, know that. There is nothing I feel less like remembering.

It was a cold and inhospitable place. Though everyone there was, that glacier was especially frightening. Beautiful, but scary. Its stalagmites crowded the entrance of the wide cave as if inviting the intrepid to enter its mouth to crush them right there. Once inside, the stalactites were born from the ceiling and dripped trying to stretch to touch the ground.

Well, that’s where the fourth test took place, in that subway glacier. And, to top it off, we had to face this exercise with an added difficulty: goah resin. That sleeping pill that, when you wake up, and now I can attest to it, causes hallucinations.

I woke up in that horrible place with a competitive shiver. I decided to run a little to warm up. With so much ice everywhere, you had to be very careful not to take a souvenir in the form of a lump on the forehead. Or worse, a hole in the skull. And speaking of holes... That was the first thing I saw on the walls. My reflection. My face. My hole.

I was horrified to see myself again with that wound on my cheek. A cheek where hair was already growing, so it couldn’t be just a memory, because that surgeon fixed it when I was thirteen, an age when I barely had any hair on my mustache. I put a hand to my face, felt my cheeks and saw how my finger touched my gums. And I felt it, I swear I felt it!

Behind me the surgeon appeared, laughing loudly.

“Do you think something like that can be fixed? You’re a monster!”

And he was joined by other familiar voices. Voices that had pounded me day in and day out. And at night. I had heard them every night since the accident in the mine turned my life in Ha Gian village into that doom.

“Monster! Monster! Monster! Monster!” the children shouted.

I ran away from there, feeling bitter tears trying to find their way into my eyes and creating a burning lump in my throat. I ran to get away from it, and the more I ran, the more I got lost in the cave, and the more walls appeared. The images on the ice seemed as real as the cold that made my teeth chatter incessantly.

I stopped. My dulled mind set to thinking, at last. I was high. And I was aware of it, but the hallucinations were affecting me in a way I didn’t know how to attenuate, much less reject. Luckily, I remembered that this was a test. The fourth test. There had to be a target. Master Dun Gar liked to play riddles and puzzles. There must have been some message, some clue...

As I felt around, I noticed a bulge in one of the upper pockets of my rider’s pants. I took out that object: it was a stone. On it they had written with chalk and in the common language a message: ‘kill the monster’.

I thought I was going crazy. I looked around, looking for the monster, and then I realized that the shouts and jeers of the children of the village of Ha Gian, those who had marginalized me for so many years, had disappeared.

I could only see myself. I was surrounded by my clones. They were all looking at me. Hundreds of An Long. I knew that look very well. The look of disgust that for so long I had directed at the mirror, before I broke it for good. ‘Kill the monster.’

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My fist landed on a shiny, icy wall. I didn’t feel any pain. And neither did the wall, presumably. Neither did the self I had reflected in it, which was still looking at me haughtily. How to kill the monster - was it me?

I closed my eyes to calm down and start again. And when I opened them, more relaxed, my selves had disappeared. In their place were my friends. The current ones but... somewhat changed. And they were all showing me the tattoo with their dragon’s name written in Khaaz. Dumbfounded, I looked at my forearm: nothing. I had no dragon.

“Your heart is not pure, An Long,” Bong Nam told me with a smirk on his lips. “I knew it from the first moment. We all knew it.”

Heads nodded, including that of Dal Mah. That hurt me more than my knuckles, which were now starting to hurt and even turn a vivid fuchsia color.

“Dal Mah... I... I’m sorry...” I said, attributing that misfortune to the bad reaction I had once at the lake, when I accused her of wanting to abandon us.

“What’s the difference if you’re sorry? I’m sorrier, An Long, but you get what you deserve: nothing.”

My head was boiling. I felt like something inside me was about to explode. I wanted to scream. I wanted to do things I would never have thought of before. I wanted to spit on Dal Mah. I wanted to slap Bong Nam. I wanted to insult the children who ostracized me. I wanted to go back and repeat my whole life, trading all those times I ducked my head for bolder, more direct, more... aggressive acts.

And then, Bong Nam and Dal Mah kissed. A kiss on the mouth. Right in front. On the wall. In front of me. As if I wasn’t in front of them. Then, they started to take off their clothes and... it seemed so real... ‘Kill the monster.’ Was it Bong Nam? Of course, that suited me. I was angry with him.

Doubts surfaced in my mind, but I tried to push them away before they confused me completely. Bong Nam was a good person. I had known him for more than four years now and he always acted on the basis of the most scrupulous ethics.

So... Was Dal Mah the monster? I looked at her. She looked at me. She had left her business with Bong Nam for later and seemed to want to flirt with me. She moved towards me, and I towards her, or towards the wall. Whichever way it was, I felt her close, very close. I could smell her hair, feel her breath so close to my cheek...

“Monster,” she whispered in my ear.

It was there. It was. The monster was about to come out. Out of me. From my insides. I felt those gut-wrenching cravings. That sudden anger that turned my heart over and pumped into every nook and cranny of my body, filling my muscles with energy and readying them for whatever task I commanded them to do. Me, or the monster.

I felt my whole body tighten. My fists clenched of their own accord. My teeth stopped chattering and I didn’t even realize I was tearing my lower lip apart.

Just as I was about to break all that ice by punching, kicking and head-butting, something that would have undoubtedly sent me straight to my grave, she appeared.

It was my mother, but she was not alone. The man holding her hand looked a lot like... me. He was smiling at me. So was she. They looked happy.

“How handsome you look son...” Yes, it was my mother.

“Mother...” I felt like crying again, but I smiled instead.

“You’ve got your smile back,” she continued. “I’m so glad. Never stop smiling, son. Tell him that thing you used to say to him when he was little, Shio Ben.”

Then my father moved across the ice, and reached out an arm, as if trying to put it over my shoulder.

“Peace begins with a smile, An Long. And the first peace you have to sign is with yourself.”

“We want to see you at peace, honey.”

“Mother... Fa... Father...”

The walls were filled with screams and a metallic clang that echoed throughout the cave, or that was my impression. My parents turned around; they were surrounded by Darenis. They were encircling them and advancing towards them with spears at the ready. But it was an arrow that stuck in Shio Ben’s chest. A dark stain began to form on his black tunic, around the shaft. He fell to his knees, his eyes empty. Then it was my mother’s turn. They didn’t even give her time to cry for her husband, or to scream or say anything. They riddled her with their spears.

I recognized the monster again. He wanted to get out. He swore he would take revenge on his parents. He swore he would kill every Dareni alive. And then I understood. It was because of them. My parents. I had to kill the monster, not the Darenis. And to do so, a simple gesture was all it took.

Smile. Smile for real. With the heart.

And in doing so, all those soldiers vanished. The walls became tinged with light, as if hundreds of little suns were shining in there. I saw birds passing from one wall to another, green sparrows, purple nightingales... The trees with bluish trunks swayed their branches trying to dance to the melody of the wind. And the wind... it was pushing me. And the wind could only come from one place: from outside.

So, I advanced against the wind, keeping my smile, happy to have finished with the monster and those visions that incited me to hate. Now I only saw absurd things. In fact, my reflection no longer had a hole in my cheek but, instead, a gigantic butterfly whose wings together formed the image of a tiger looking at me.

When I returned, everyone laughed at my bruised knuckles. I was not the only one who had suffered some small fracture. Tui Lam had cuts on her arms and legs, Bahn Mi had several bumps. As I said, you had to be very careful in that cave not to take souvenirs of the stalactites. And Bong Nam, for example, managed to get out of there with multiple burns. The only one who did not tell us about her ordeal was Dal Mah who preferred not to talk about it. Since she was completely unharmed, I didn’t worry too much. I should have.