Ajax ¹

They met by accident.
One of those things that don't seem important... until they are everything.
It was in a small library, one of those that smells of old paper and cold coffee. You were sitting on the floor, leaning against a shelf, surrounded by notes and loose sheets of paper. You were frustrated, biting your lip, trying to understand something that just wouldn't sink in.
Ajax arrived looking for a book he didn't even need.
I just wanted a quiet place.
As he turned down the hall, he didn't see you. He tripped over your notebooks and almost fell.
"Hey!" you said, more surprised than annoyed.
"I'm sorry!" he replied quickly, bending down. "I really didn't see you."
He clumsily began to gather your pages. He read a couple by mistake and frowned.
—Is this calculation?
—Yes… and I hate it —you answered without thinking.
That made him laugh. An easy, honest laugh.—If it's any consolation, I was terrible at it too.
He sat right there on the floor, without asking permission. He explained what he could, poorly, with strange examples and crooked drawings in the margins. He wasn't the best at explaining... but he tried hard.
And you, without realizing it, stopped being stressed.
Before leaving, he handed you back the last sheet of paper and said, as if it were the most natural thing in the world:
—I'll come tomorrow at this time. In case you want to keep hating calculus with company. They didn't exchange numbers.
There were no promises.
Just an impromptu date disguised as a study session.
And the next day…
The two of them returned.
That's where it all began.
Before the letters.
Before the goodbyes.
Before you get surprised.

Before he was called Tartaglia, before the echo of water and the edge, he was just Ajax.
A boy from the north, raised amidst snow and silence. The sea wasn't a landscape: it was a promise. Ajax learned early that the cold hardens the body, but sharpens the heart. He laughed loudly, dreamed big, and didn't fear danger; on the contrary, he sought it out, as if something inside him needed to prove itself again and again.
The day he fell into the abyss was no ordinary accident. It was a turning point. The world he knew closed in on him, and another, dark and merciless, opened before him. There he learned to survive, to fight, to never look back. There he ceased to be just a child.
When he returned, he was no longer the same.
Her smile remained intact, yes, but behind it dwelt something deeper… something that had learned to love chaos as much as calm.
They called him Tartaglia, the eleventh herald. A perfect weapon, some say. An elegant monster, others say. But few remember—or want to remember—that before all that, Ajax was still someone who wrote his name in the sand and gazed at the sea as if it were giving him answers. He loves battle not because it is cruel, but because it is the only place where he feels truly alive. Without masks. Without lies. Only strength, will, and truth.
And yet, in the silences, when no one is watching, Ajax is still there.
The boy who once dreamed of something more than war.
The one who smiles as if the world weighs nothing, even though it does.
Because even the most dangerous ones…
They were also children who learned too early not to fall.