When your blood starts burning, that means it has arrived
Lin Jin heard the dragon for the first time at 3:17 in the morning.
It wasn't really a sound — at least not the kind ears can catch. It was more like something vibrating deep inside his bones, like a plucked guitar string humming through his spine all the way up to the top of his skull. He jerked awake, heart hammering, sheets soaked through.
His fingers were glowing.
Not phone-screen blue. This came from inside the skin itself — deep violet, liquid and shifting, like a nebula trapped in his hands.
"No no no no no—" He shoved his hands under the blanket, pressing down, as if that could smother the light. It only burned hotter. A fire locked in a cage. The harder you crush it, the brighter it gets.
Hummm—
Every window in the apartment building rattled at once.
Lin Jin held his breath. Waited for something to explode. For the ceiling to crack. For some disaster he couldn't name.
Nothing happened. The city slept on outside his window, neon lights bleeding into puddles of rain.
He pulled his hands out from under the blanket.
The light was gone. His fingers looked completely normal — faint calluses, short clean nails. Just a sixteen-year-old's hands. Unremarkable. Ordinary.
He sat there staring at his palm for a very long time.
Then he remembered the last thing his dad had said before he disappeared three years ago:
"Jin — if you ever see something you shouldn't see? Run."
He hadn't explained where.
The next morning, a stranger knocked on their door.
The woman was around thirty-five, black trench coat, sharp haircut, wire-rimmed glasses. She could have passed for a corporate lawyer — except for the thing on her wrist. Lin Jin thought it was a tattoo at first. Then he looked closer.
It was moving. A complex pattern flowing beneath her skin, slow as a river, like something alive that had decided to live under there.
"Lin Jin," she said. No greeting, no apology for knocking before eight a.m. "My name is Su Ye. You have fifteen minutes to decide whether you're coming with me."
"Where?"
"DragonLab."
He'd never heard those two words strung together. But the moment she said them, something in his chest vibrated — that same deep hum from the night before.
"Why me?"
"Because your blood is broadcasting a dragon core awakening signal, and our pulse scanner locked onto it last night," she said, without blinking. "We're not the only ones who picked it up."
A pause.
"The others " she added, " aren't coming to pick you up."
Lin Jin looked at the door. At the clock. At the old photograph on the bookshelf — his dad grinning like he had absolutely no idea he was going to vanish three years later.
He grabbed his bag.
"Can I bring my cat?"
Su Ye's expression didn't change, but something shifted at the corner of her eye. A tiny flicker. "No."
"Then I'm not going."
The silence stretched.
Su Ye exhaled. Very slowly. "... Fine. Bring the cat."