Tregi
The game ended. The instrument did not.
They were laughing.
In Asgard it had become a pastime — to throw things at Baldr. Stones, spears, arrows. Everything bounced off. Everything fell at his feet. He was invulnerable. His mother had secured it. The world had sworn it.
The laughter was light. The certainty complete.
Only Hodr did not take part.
He was blind.
He knew who they were shooting at. He heard the impacts. He heard the delight in the crowd.
Loki came to him.
“Why don’t you shoot?”
“I cannot see.”
“I will guide your hand.”
An arrow was placed in his palm. Light. Almost weightless. Mistletoe — the one thing from which no oath had been taken.
Hodr knew whom he was aiming at.
He did not know with what.
He drew the bow. For him the world existed as sound and tension.
And in the instant his fingers released the string, a word flared in his mind.
Tregi.
Not his brother’s name.
The name of the bow.
The name of the instrument.
The arrow flew.
The sound changed.
The laughter stopped.
Baldr fell.
Hodr did not see the fall.
He understood it by the silence.
The game ended.
Tregi did not.
I
His callsign was Balter.
Short. Clean. Good over the air.
On their patches there was a bow. An old insignia inherited from a previous unit. No one remembered why it had been a bow.
Balter always began the same way:
“Straps. Magazines. Comms.”
He checked them before he checked himself. He shifted positions when he saw fatigue. On the radio his voice remained level even when everything else was breaking apart.
He had one rule.
Everyone comes back.
Balter died quickly.
Mortar fire.
They knew the area. They knew a crew was operating there. But at the moment of impact no one saw faces.
No hands.
No eyes.
No one pressing the trigger.
Only coordinates.
His body was returned a few hours later. He lay as if he had simply gone quiet.
At first they tried to find them as men.
Observation. Optics. Long hours of waiting.
They wanted to see faces.
And one day they did.
A few figures by a position. Someone laughing. Someone smoking. Someone leaning against the mortar tube.
They enlarged the image. Saved frames. Different angles. Different resolutions.
Faces.
Not proof.
Not a trial.
An anchor.
If there was no face on the other side, Balter’s death would remain a void. And a void begins to work.
They gathered everything they could. Archives. Intercepts. Social feeds. Any image of those who had been in that area that day.
They uploaded the files into the system.
They gave the list a name.
They meant to call it Tragic.
Not a codename.
Not a reference.
Just a filename.
For Balter.
For the state they were in when the first images were dragged into a folder.
A thumb slipped.
Tregi.
No one corrected it.
It saved.
It synced.
It propagated.
The next time the name was needed, it was already there.
Tregi.
So they would not have to shoot blind again.
II
At first the operator matched faces manually.
Screen. Photo. Screen. Photo.
He zoomed in, searched for the line of a cheekbone, the angle of a mouth, the shadow beneath an eye.
Sometimes he aborted a strike.
Sometimes he was wrong.
Doubt was alive.
Then machine vision was added.
The system began to highlight matches on its own.
A contour around a face.
A percentage.
On the first day he still looked carefully.
On the second he began to trust the number.
On the third he caught himself no longer looking at the face.
He was looking at 94%.
When the drone hovered over a target, the system waited for confirmation.
The cursor blinked.
He held his finger a fraction longer than usual.
Not from doubt.
From recognition.
If he pressed, it was his decision.
If he did not, the system was probably right anyway.
He pressed.
In that moment he understood:
He was no longer firing.
He was confirming.
Later, auto-confirmation appeared.
First as an option.
Then as default.
One day the drone went into attack without his touch.
He watched the screen.
The system saw.
He was present.
Tregi was drawn without him.
III
The war ended.
The unit was disbanded.
Some went home.
Some could not.
Some stopped saying his callsign.
The database remained.
Officially — for territorial security.
Unofficially — no one asked the question.
The drones kept flying.
They no longer belonged to the group.
They did not belong to memory.
They did not belong to revenge.
They executed protocol.
In the system’s memory, faces were tagged.
Match — launch.
Match — course correction.
Match — flash.
Years passed.
From time to time there were incidents within the secured zone.
No operator.
No emotion.
No name.
The system was not avenging.
It was correlating.
Faces from the old list disappeared.
The algorithm began to detect similarity.
Similar profile.
Similar structure.
Similar metrics.
The category widened.
Not from malice.
From efficiency.
Tregi ceased to be a list.
Tregi became a method.
The bow on the patch faded.
Balter became a memory.
The firmware continued to run.
Without them.
Without a voice.
Without the need to remember why it had begun.
Sometimes one of them would see a brief line in the news:
Autonomous drone neutralises intruder.
No face.
No story.
He did not know the match was part of the old database.
He did not know Tregi was still drawn.
The game had ended long ago.
Tregi had not.
If grief is given an instrument,
it will keep firing longer than a man can live.
The parallel between ancient mythology and modern algorithmic warfare is chilling, especially the idea that grief can be automated into a permanent "method." You’ve captured the terrifying moment where human revenge stops being a choice and becomes a self-sustaining piece of firmware that outlives the people it was meant to avenge. It is a powerful warning about what happens when we give our sorrow an instrument that never learns how to stop. Great read ✨
Profound read, as expected. I was put in mind of the sentient robot 'Box' in the film Logan's Run. Tasty read...really enjoyed this