March 6, 2005 – New York City
The city that never sleeps was draped in the quiet, pre-dawn hush of early spring. In a residential neighborhood, tucked away in a house that managed to look both mundane and meticulously cared for, Jake Long was losing a battle.
He wasn't fighting a physical foe—not yet. He was fighting his own mind.
Inside his bedroom, the air felt heavy, charged with a heat that didn't belong in a New York March. Jake tossed and turned, his sheets twisted around his limbs like silk restraints. His brow was slick with sweat, and his breath came in jagged, shallow hitches.
He was dreaming of the end.
In the theater of his mind, New York City wasn't the "Big Apple"—it was a funeral pyre. Hell had seemingly surged through the asphalt, unleashing a sea of violet and crimson flames that swallowed the skyscrapers whole. The roar of the fire was deafening, but it couldn't drown out the screams. People—thousands of them—were caught in the inferno, their silhouettes dancing amidst the wreckage of their lives.
Then, the nightmare turned personal.
Out of the smog and ash, faces he loved began to emerge. His parents, his friends, his little sister—they weren't reaching out for help. They were burning. Their skin bubbled and sloughed away like melting wax, their eyes wide with a terrifying, accusing clarity.
"Why didn't you save us, Jake?" their voices echoed, a horrific chorus that vibrated in his very marrow. "You had the power. You were supposed to be the one."
"I... I couldn't..." Jake tried to scream, but his throat felt like it was filled with hot sand.
"Weak," his grandfather's voice boomed over the others, cold and disappointed. "Too weak to protect your own blood."
The ground beneath him suddenly convulsed. A tremor, so violent it felt like the earth was cracking open, shook the city to its foundations. Something was coming—something ancient and gargantuan. From the wall of black smoke, four fiery red eyes ignited. They were predatory, piercing through the soul with the weight of a thousand suns. The silhouette was massive, crowned with obsidian horns, with plumes of searing steam erupting from a mouth that could swallow the sun.
Jake's heart hammered a final, frantic beat against his ribs.
He jolted upright, a strangled gasp tearing from his throat. For a moment, the room was still blurred by the orange glow of the dream-fire. He sat there, chest heaving, lungs burning as if he had actually inhaled the smoke of a dying city. Tears, unbidden and hot, tracked through the sweat on his cheeks.
"Just a dream," he whispered, his voice a raspy ghost of itself. "Just another damn dream."
He ran a trembling hand through his damp hair, pushing the black locks away from his forehead. It took several minutes for the phantom heat to dissipate and for the familiar sounds of the city—the distant hum of a delivery truck, the chirp of a stray bird—to ground him back in reality.
Stumbling out of bed, Jake made his way to the bathroom. He leaned heavily against the cool porcelain of the basin, staring down at the drain for a long beat before splashing his face with freezing water. The shock helped. He grabbed a towel, wiped the moisture away, and finally forced himself to look in the mirror.
The face staring back was handsome, possessing a sharp, athletic grace. At fifteen, Jake Long already carried the lean, well-defined muscle of someone who spent more hours in a dojo than a classroom. His features were a harmonious blend of his heritage—a testament to his Chinese-American roots.
Jake let out a long, weary sigh. To the world, he was just a kid from the city. But the world didn't know his secret. Jake was a reincarnator. The memories of his previous life were fragmented, like a shattered glass floor he had to walk across carefully. He remembered enough to know that this life, despite the nightmares, was a gift he didn't intend to waste.
But there was a second secret—one that carried far more weight.
Jake leaned closer to the glass. As he focused, his pupils didn't just dilate; they shifted. The dark irises bled into a piercing, reptilian gold, the pupils narrowing into vertical slits. When he pulled back his lips, his teeth lengthened into razor-sharp fangs.
Most people would have recoiled in horror. Jake simply tilted his head, inspecting the sharpness of his canines with the detached air of a mechanic checking an engine. He flicked his tongue out; it was long, muscular, and split perfectly at the tip like a serpent's.
"Still there," he muttered.
In a world that was becoming increasingly "super," being a half-dragon might have seemed like a winning hand. But Jake knew better. Power like this didn't come without a price, and the visions of the burning city were a constant reminder that his strength was currently a flickering candle against an approaching hurricane.
Satisfied that his transformation was under control, he let the dragon features recede. His eyes returned to their human obsidian, and his teeth retracted. He turned on the shower, letting the steam wash away the literal and metaphorical grit of the nightmare.
Standing under the spray, he began his morning ritual of mental sharpening. He couldn't afford to be "just" a teenager. He needed to be faster, stronger, and smarter. If those four red eyes from his dream were a glimpse of what was coming, then "handsome and athletic" wasn't going to cut it.
He finished his shower, dried off, and began styling his hair into its signature spiky look. It was a small act of vanity, a bit of the "normal Jake" he held onto.
"March 6th," he said to his reflection, his voice now steady and firm. "Time to get to work."
He had a legacy to uphold and a future to prevent. And he was going to do it one day at a time.