A form began to take shape in the void.
It wasn't much—barely a whisper of existence, the size and shape of a wisp. No body, no flesh, no bones. Just… awareness. Consciousness without form. A thought without a brain to think it.
"Is this hell?" Jordan whispered, though he had no mouth to speak with.
Looking around—if you could call it looking without eyes—Jordan could see nothing. Just darkness. The type you see when you close your eyes for a long time and press your palms against them. Pure, absolute black. He'd just gotten here, and it already felt like he'd been floating forever.
The silence was perfect. Complete. Not even the sound of his own heartbeat, because he had no heart.
Jordan loved three things in life, in this order: fighting, sleeping, and being alone. He couldn't stand people—how they lied constantly, let their emotions control them, and believed whatever the internet told them without question. Everyone was so fake, so exhausting.
So this? This was perfect.
"Finally, some peace and quiet," Jordan said to the nothing. "I don't have to worry about going to work, taking baths, or eating food. I'm free!"
The word echoed in his consciousness. Free. No bills. No alarm clocks. No awkward conversations. No pretending to care about small talk and no forcing himself to smile at customers. No more anything.
Jordan floated—or maybe he was still, and the void moved around him. It was impossible to tell. Time meant nothing here. Had he been here for minutes? Hours? Years? The concepts felt meaningless.
He explored his new existence, such as it was. He could think, obviously. He could remember his life—every fight, every lonely night, every moment of chaos he'd chased. But he couldn't feel anything physical. No hunger, no pain, no exhaustion.
If he'd had a face, it would've worn the biggest smile.
There was nothing to do. Nobody to talk to. No responsibilities. No expectations. Just him and his thoughts, floating in an endless sea of black. Some people would call this torture. Jordan called it paradise.
He drifted, letting his mind wander. Remembered the gas station, the gunmen, the bullet. Wondered if Twin had thrown his party. If Naomi had shown up. If anyone had even noticed he was gone yet. Probably not. When you lived alone, died alone, it took a while for people to realize you were missing.
The darkness stretched on. And on. And on.
Jordan started counting, just to have something to do. Got to a million. Lost track. Started over. Got bored. Stopped.
He tried to sleep, which was weird when you didn't have a body. Couldn't tell if he succeeded or not. Everything felt like sleeping and being awake at the same time.
Perfect silence. Perfect solitude. Perfect—
BOOM.
Something crashed into the space around him. The void itself seemed to shudder.
Jordan turned—spun?—toward the sound. The void had cracked. It actually cracked, as if someone had punched an old box TV. Spider web fractures spreading through the darkness, revealing… something else beyond.
A giant claw pushed through. Four enormous fingers, each one the size of multiple galaxies, scales that shimmered with colors that shouldn't exist. The claw grabbed him—grabbed his wisp form like it was solid—and yanked.
Jordan flew through the crack and into… everything.
Stars blazed past him—entire suns whipped by like streetlights on a highway. Galaxies spun in the distance, their spiral arms stretching across impossible distances. He passed moons covered in crystal, planets made of pure water, and asteroid fields that sang as he flew through them.
The journey felt longer than his entire time in the void. Universes bloomed and died in his peripheral vision. Realities layered on top of each other like transparent sheets. His wisp form was being pulled through the very fabric of existence.
Then it stopped.
The claw held him before a planet that made Earth look like a marble. It could have easily fit ten Earths inside it. The surface was a patchwork of impossibilities—forests that glowed with bioluminescence, oceans that flowed upward into the sky, mountain ranges that floated freely above the clouds. Deserts of golden sand bordered tundras of black ice. Cities of crystal sprouted next to villages of living wood.
"You interest me, little soul."
The voice didn't come from anywhere. It simply was, vibrating through Jordan's consciousness.
Jordan could see the speaker better now. Two enormous reptilian eyes, green as emeralds and large as lakes, stared at him from the darkness. Each eye held intelligence older than Earth itself. The rest of the being was hidden in shadow, but those eyes alone should have been terrifying.
Instead, Jordan thought they were kind of cool.
"I am ⊗⟡◈▽◉⬡⟐," the being said, its name a collection of sounds that shouldn't exist. "You sat in the void for fifty eons, wandering."
"What else was I supposed to do?" Jordan asked. "Sit there?"
A rumble that might have been laughter shook the space around them.
"I suppose not. But a lost soul staying there is surprising. Most go mad within the first eon. Some dissolve entirely. You thrived. That patience and comfort with solitude will help you in the future."
The eyes blinked slowly, each blink taking several seconds.
"Let me tell you why I grabbed you. You will be reincarnated into this world." A massive claw pointed at the planet below. "Nilus. Home to every race you can imagine. Dragons. Elves. Vampires.
Angels. Fairies. Devils. Demons. And countless others you cannot imagine."
The being paused, as if savoring the following words.
"You will be born as a dragon."
YES! Jordan screamed internally, though outwardly he tried to play it cool.
"Do I get wishes?"
Another rumble of laughter.
"No. But you will be a Primordial Dragon. That alone will give you a powerful unique skill
Before Jordan could utter another word, the being flicked him.
One moment, he was floating before those massive eyes. Next, he was screaming through Nilus's atmosphere like a shooting star. The world rushed up to meet him—or he ran down to meet it.
As he soared through the sky, the planet revealed itself in all its impossible glory.
He passed over a tree that dwarfed mountains, its trunk so vast that entire cities were built in its bark. The crown stretched above the clouds, disappearing into the upper atmosphere. Birds the size of houses nested in its branches.
The forest below teemed with creatures from every fantasy he'd ever imagined and many he hadn't. Unicorns grazed next to things with too many legs and not enough heads. A pack of wolves made of living shadow chased deer that sparkled like starlight. Fairies danced through the air, leaving trails of golden dust.
He flew over kingdoms where knights in shining armor stood guard on castle walls. Over valleys where giants slept, their snores creating wind patterns. Over lakes where mermaids sang to kraken.
Minutes passed—or maybe hours before he saw it.
An island. But calling it an island was like calling the ocean a puddle.
Dragons. Millions of them.
They filled the sky like living storm clouds. Red ones, blue ones, gold ones, black ones. Some with two wings, some with four, some with none at all, floating through magic alone. They slept on mountain peaks, their bodies so prominent they looked like part of the landscape. They fought in the air, their roars shaking the very ground below.
But what caught his attention was the castle at the center.
It wasn't built. It was grown, carved, sung into existence from a single piece of obsidian that reflected the cosmos. Towers spiraled impossibly high, defying physics—bridges of solidified starlight connected floating segments. The whole structure pulsed with power that made Jordan's wisp form vibrate.
Something pushed him toward it. Not the being's claw this time, but something else. A pull, like gravity, but for his soul.
He passed through walls like they were mist. Through grand halls, dragon statues watched with eyes that tracked his movement. Through libraries where books wrote themselves. Through treasuries where gold wasn't even the least valuable thing.
Finally, he entered a chamber at the castle's heart.
An egg sat in the center of a runic circle that hurt to perceive.
But calling it an egg was almost an insult. It was space itself given form. The shell wasn't a solid color—it was the universe. Stars twinkled across its surface. Nebulae swirled in slow motion. Galaxies spun lazily around its circumference. The patterns moved like waves, cosmic tides flowing across the shell in hypnotic patterns.
It was the most beautiful thing Jordan had ever seen.
His wisp form was pulled toward it, into it, through it.
The last thing he heard before consciousness faded was a song—not heard—felt—a vibration that resonated with every particle of his being. It was ancient, powerful, and hauntingly familiar.
The song of creation.
The song of the Primordials.
And now, his song too.