The cloaked figure stepped closer, boots crunching against the broken pavement. Jackie tensed, ready to strike, flame already building behind her teeth.
"Stay back!" she warned, lifting her hands again. Smoke curled from her fingertips.
But the figure raised a hand—not threatening, just calm.
"I'm not here to harm you, Jackie," he said, voice like distant thunder. "If I was, you'd already be dead."
Her eyes narrowed. "How do you know my name?"
"You screamed it when the fire took you."
She flinched.
The fire. The pain. The black void. That awful tearing from the inside out.
"Was that... you?" she asked. "Did you do this to me?"
The figure paused. "No. But I'm part of why it happened. And you need to understand what you are now—before it's too late."
He stepped into the light.
He wasn't human either.
His face was sharp, scaled in silver-blue with glowing eyes that didn't look angry—just tired. Ancient. Across his shoulders lay a thick cloak, tattered and scorched. Beneath it, armor fused with bone and claw. His presence radiated heat, but not the kind that burned—more like standing near a campfire in a winter storm.
"You're… like me?" Jackie asked quietly.
He nodded once. "Dragonborn. Like you. Though I've walked this path longer than you can imagine."
Jackie lowered her hands slightly, but her guard stayed up.
"I don't understand," she said. "What happened to the world? This place... it looks like it's been abandoned for years. What is this?"
"You're standing in the fractured edge of your world," the man said. "A piece of it, pulled into what we call the Ash Rift. A realm between life and death—between humanity and what comes after."
Her heart sank. "So I died?"
"You changed," he said, stepping closer. "The dragon within you awoke. It does not ask permission when the world calls it."
Jackie's throat felt tight. "Why me?"
He studied her for a long moment, then turned his head toward the horizon. The sky was cracked—literally. Jagged scars of fire and void slashed through the clouds above the ruined city.
"Because the others failed," he finally said.
"Others?"
"You are not the first to be chosen. But you might be the last."
Jackie's blood ran cold.
Before she could speak again, the ground rumbled beneath them.
The man tensed, eyes glowing brighter. "They've found you. Too soon."
"Who?"
He looked back at her. "The Unmade."
A shriek tore through the air—high, inhuman, hungry. Jackie spun around as shadowy figures began pouring out of alleyways and cracked buildings, eyes glowing red, limbs distorted by scales and bone.
Dozens of them.
"Run?" she asked, already backing up.
"No," the man said, pulling back his cloak and revealing two gleaming swords strapped to his back.
"We fight."