I am 15 chapters ahead on my patreón, check it out if you are interested.
Patréon.com/emperordragon
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Chapter 1: Ghost
Ethan jolted awake, his breath catching in his chest like a twig snapping underfoot. His body shook, not from cold, not from illness, but from something deeper—a residue of fear, confusion, and raw adrenaline that clung to him like a second skin.
Around him, the bedroom lay in its familiar, comforting chaos: posters plastered unevenly on the walls, models of spaceships and dinosaurs half-assembled on shelves, a small lamp in the corner that flickered intermittently, as though it had its own dramatic timing. This was the kingdom of a ten-year-old boy, a space of safety and imagination. But none of it mattered. His heart thudded violently, hammering a rhythm too erratic, too ragged, like that of someone who had run for their life in a place that didn't—or shouldn't—exist.
Except it had existed. He knew it had.
With shaking hands, he pressed his palms against his eyes, hoping that darkness could erase the images etched behind his eyelids. Twenty-eight long years, compressed into a single, shuddering dream, lay heavy across his mind. Years that had belonged to a man named No.7. Not a man's name, he realized—it was a designation. A label. A number.
Fragments of memory assaulted him in sharp, staccato bursts. Sterile metal corridors reeked faintly of bleach and something colder, something darker. Rows upon rows of children, lined up and measured, sorted like flawed products on an assembly line. In that place, childhood wasn't cherished or celebrated—it was a liability, something to be trimmed away layer by layer, until nothing remained but the instrument the organization wanted it to become. Drills were presented as lessons, punishments as discipline. Compassion was a weakness. Innocence, a mistake.
Hundreds of children entered in that batch. Only three survived the first stage.
No.1.
No.2.
No.7.
He remembered the training with vivid, nauseating clarity—the oppressive silence that could choke, the sudden snaps of orders that cut through the air, the bruises and pain that were never allowed time to heal. He remembered resistance: small, secret acts of rebellion. Not enough to escape, certainly, but enough to leave invisible marks on the people who thought they had stripped him bare. They wanted weapons. They wanted tools. They wanted obedient shells of humanity. He gave them what they demanded on the surface, while guarding a single stubborn ember of himself deep inside, where no scalpel, no drill, no method of conditioning could reach.
But even embers can be starved into darkness.
And then came the mission—the one that would fracture everything. Snow fell around them like cold ash, muffling the world in an unnatural hush. And No.2—fast, ruthless, honed by the same fires of hell—fell. No final words. No heroic flourish. Just a soft, cruel sound as his body hit the frozen ground.
Something inside No.7 ignited then, a spark that flared through every layer of conditioning, every imposed limitation. Grief, raw and unrelenting, became a weapon.
He faked his death. From obedient asset, he became ghost. And ghosts, once disturbed, do not forgive. One by one, he hunted the architects of his torment, dismantling their empire with patient, meticulous ruthlessness. Not for glory. Not for the empty satisfaction of justice. But for the simple, merciless arithmetic of vengeance.
Years passed. Too short for a life, too long for a torment. Eventually, he found himself standing in the snow again. This time, though, there was fire behind him, and nothing ahead. Twenty-eight years old, feeling older than any human should, his body and soul hollowed, worn raw by the relentless weight of what he had endured. Bone-deep exhaustion settled into him—the kind of exhaustion that comes from having spent every ounce of purpose, every fragment of will, and found nothing left.
He collapsed. Not with fanfare, not with dramatics. Simply with the quiet inevitability of a man finally allowed to stop.
Even now, Ethan could feel it—the cold of that last breath curling deep in his lungs, ghostly and real.
He sat upright in his bed, heart hammering as if to break free of his chest. The room around him was warm. Safe. Real. And yet the sting of tears pricked at his eyes. They weren't his tears, he told himself. They were No.7's. The ghost's.
The clock on his nightstand blinked 3:17 AM, utterly indifferent to the fact that a child had lived and died in the space of a single dream. A dream that did not feel like a dream at all.
Ethan swallowed hard, palms clammy, as a singular, impossible truth pressed down on him:
That was not merely a story.
He knew things—felt things—no ten-year-old should ever know.
And somewhere in the quiet, as the house slept on, the faint echo of No.7's final breath faded into the night—but it did not truly vanish. It lingered, patient, waiting, watching, a silent remnant of a man who had been broken and remade by fire.