The air was thick with smoke, neon flickers, and the scent of sweat and burnt tires. In the slums of East Kairo, deep in the forgotten belly of the megacity, you didn't breathe to live — you breathed to survive.
Jayden Cross stood under the flickering orange light of a busted streetlamp, his hoodie pulled low over his face, eyes locked on the three boys blocking his way home.
They weren't strangers. They were wolves in school uniforms — teeth bared, fists always itching. Kamal, the biggest of them, cracked his knuckles like it was a ritual. The others — Yao and Drex — flanked him, grinning like predators that knew the kill was already theirs.
"You think you're better than us?" Kamal's voice rumbled like a subway train under the asphalt. "Walkin' around with that silent look. Like you're untouchable."
Jayden didn't speak.
He never did.
Not when words were cheap, and fists were currency.
Kamal rushed first, his fists swinging like wild hammers — heavy, loud, all rage and no rhythm.
Jayden didn't think.
He moved.
And that's what always scared people the most.
There was no training. No fighting lessons. Not from anyone alive.
But when Kamal's fist came at him, Jayden's body just knew. His spine turned, feet pivoted, and his right elbow snapped forward in a clean arc that cracked Kamal's jaw with brutal precision.
Drex blinked. Too late.
Jayden's foot rose in a blur, a rising knee strike catching Drex in the ribs. A sickening thunk followed. The boy stumbled back, windless, eyes wide in disbelief.
Yao hesitated. He should've run.
Jayden's fist moved like water, wrapping behind Yao's head, pulling him down into a savage headbutt. Blood. Lights. Silence.
Three boys. Ten seconds.
Jayden stood there breathing slow, like none of it surprised him. But deep down, it always did.
Every time he moved like that — every time his body reacted with the grace of a trained master — it frightened him more than the ones he fought.
No one taught him how to fight.
So why did he move like someone who had?
At home, silence reigned.
His mother worked two jobs. Sometimes three. She was already gone before he woke, and came back long after midnight. The only thing she ever asked was that he stay out of trouble.
Jayden washed his bloodied hands in cold water, staring at his reflection in the cracked mirror. His knuckles were barely bruised. His pulse already calm.
What was wrong with him?
Why did fighting feel… natural?
Why did the world slow down when fists flew?
Later that night, rain drummed on the rooftop like a thousand tiny drummers. Jayden sat on the floor of his room, eyes closed, trying to breathe slower, deeper — the way his father used to.
Before he vanished.
Before everything changed.
He could still remember that night. Jayden had been twelve. His father had stood by the door, saying nothing, staring at something far away that Jayden couldn't see.
Then he was gone.
No trace. No word. Not even a body.
And his mother never spoke of it again.
The next morning, Jayden took the long way to school. Something about the alley behind Lotus Row always pulled at him. The old temple at the end — boarded up, long forgotten — hummed with a silence too deep to ignore.
He'd been here before, but today felt different.
Like the air itself was watching him.
He pushed open the warped wooden door and stepped inside.
Dust filled his lungs. The stone walls were cracked, etched with symbols no one in the city could read. At the center of the temple was a stone basin, and resting inside it — impossibly untouched by dust or time — was a scroll.
Not paper. Something harder. Smoother. Metallic almost.
Jayden stepped closer. The air grew thick with pressure, like gravity had tripled.
His fingers touched the scroll.
And the world exploded.
A flash of heat. A flood of memory — not his own.
Monks in crimson robes. Warriors flying through mountain air. A dragon curling around a stone tower. A man who looked just like his father — standing at the heart of a battlefield, eyes burning with golden light.
Jayden gasped, falling to his knees, the scroll clutched to his chest.
When he opened his eyes, the temple wasn't empty anymore.
An old man stood in the doorway, arms folded, white robes barely stirring in the wind. His eyes — pale as clouds — studied Jayden like a puzzle long unsolved.
"I've waited sixteen years for this," the man said.
Jayden's voice caught. "Who are you?"
The man stepped forward. "I knew your father. I trained with him. Bled with him. Watched him disappear."
Jayden rose to his feet. "Where is he?"
"That," the old man said, "is a story buried in shadows. But if you want to know the truth… if you want to find him…"
He gestured to the scroll in Jayden's hands.
"Then you must learn what he never finished."
The next few weeks blurred into pain and purpose.
Jayden trained under the old man — who called himself Master Kellan, last surviving elder of the Dragon Form.
"You are the last blood heir," Kellan said, eyes hard as steel. "And you have much to reclaim."
Every morning, Jayden woke before sunrise to meditate. To listen. To breathe. To feel the chi flow in from the earth, through his lungs, into his blood.
He learned stances — graceful, predatory, like a dragon coiling before it strikes. He learned how to move with silence, how to explode with precision, how to feel energy in others before they struck.
He also began absorbing chi through breathwork and plants — rare roots and bitter leaves that Kellan supplied from hidden mountains.
They burned his insides. But afterward, his muscles pulsed with power. His bones felt lighter. His reflexes sharper.
One day, Master Kellan placed a glowing red ember in Jayden's hand.
"This is a sliver of a god-tier flame. You must learn to tame it. If you do, it will help you forge pills of power — tools that will grow your strength beyond any mortal."
Jayden tried. And failed.
The pill cracked. The flame raged. His palm burned.
But he didn't stop.
He tried again.
And again.
And on the third night — eyes bloodshot, hands trembling — the pill shimmered in his palm. Perfect. Complete.
Master Kellan nodded. "You are your father's son."
On the seventh week, Jayden stood balanced on one leg atop a bamboo post, rain pelting down as Master Kellan stabbed needles into his back.
"Acupuncture," the master said, "is not just healing. It is control. You learn it, you control not just your own energy… but others'. You become surgeon and soldier."
Jayden screamed — not from pain, but from the flood of chi rushing through his spine.
He could feel everything.
The heartbeat of the tree behind him.
The shift in wind three streets over.
It was like waking up in a world he'd only half-lived in before.
And still, the dreams kept coming.
Of a battlefield swallowed by ash.
Of his father, wounded and roaring with fire in his veins.
Of a black-robed man with silver eyes whispering, "He will never return. You will never be ready."
Jayden opened his eyes, breathing hard.
The Dragon Form had awoken.
The old system that hunted his father still watched from the shadows.
But now, the last heir had begun his rise.
And this time, they would not be ready.