Prologue

Dragon

For the first nine years of my life, there was light. There was love. There was kindness.

And then, in the course of one evening, that light was eclipsed forever.

Since then, I’ve lived in a chasm of darkness.

It hasn’t been all bad. Over the years, I’ve been able to escape some of the obscurity. I’ve learned to live my life in the dusk. I found my way to Jesse Pike, a man who not only saw the darkness in me but embraced it. He needed a drummer. I was a drummer. His band had no name. He liked my name, so he used it for the band.

But of course, I went and fucked that up.

Because of the darkness. The black cloud that follows me everywhere I go, perpetually wrapping me in a fog of rain and hail.

That night, the shadows overtook me. I chose to combat it with more darkness. A quick hit of black tar. I threw years of sobriety down the toilet, all because I couldn’t control the dark Dragon within me.

Because I am sin. I am the purest entity of evil. I must be.

Why else would my parents?—?

No. I can’t think about that. Thinking like that is what caused my relapse.

But it’s true.

The Dragon was not born into it, but he will live his life in his own black smoke.

And that’s where he’ll die, too.