A/N: Ok, So I was given a question by a reviewer that is easy enough to answer but too much detail may spoil upcoming chapters, so I will be brief. The quick answer is no, Jarek is not Dragonborn and Léna is not his sister by blood. I'm sorry that's the only information I can give but mystery and suspense is an art form that I find myself as a slave to obey.
This chapter is quite short, so I hope it sates the audience's appetite for a while but leaves them asking for what I have planned for both the Dragonborn and this "shadow" of a man.
Chapter 3 - Remember Shadows
A fresh breeze caressed my clammy brow. A way out, I may have been hallucinating again. The stabbing agony in my bones had me going delirious, another day, another hour and I would end it myself. It was torture and death felt so tantalizing to be free from this waking nightmare.
We had fought spiders of gigantic size, their black glistening eyes as large as my fist. Luckily the bear did not wake as we passed, Léna and Ralof could have h handled it but my failing body draped across both their shoulders was a vulnerable hindrance.
The light blinded me as Léna pulls me through the mouth of the cave. I swore I heard a roar and the pumping of colossal wings but I could not be sure. The state of my mind made it hard to distinguish false from reality.
I don't remember running. My legs felt like fire and it was hard to breathe. Was that a walkway? My head tilts up as we pass under what may have been real. I needed rest, my brain was fried and my body exhausted. When we stopped I slumped to the ground, grass itching my bare back and neck.
I heard the voices around me, all melting together into muffled slurring inside my head. I paid no attention to them, sleep slowly taking over. A blackness so soothing, my senses dissipating to nothing and I was floating amidst emptiness.
"You are not you," a disembodied voice echoes around me. I found I was standing in a desolate place, grey smoke eluding all but a few inches from around me. "You are but a shadow," the voice spoke again.
I'm wearing leathern armour, metal plates donned to shins, bracers and epaulets that fit so well it felt that the garments were made for me, a part of me. I trace along the runes etched into the steel, so familiar but a memory I have never known. The armour is black, darker than a covered night devoid of stars and light.
The smoke swirls and solidifies, a human figure cast in pure shadow now stands before me. I instinctively unsheathe the weapon strapped to my hip. A short handled axe, the weight distributed evenly so as the head is balanced against the full length of the shaft.
The shadow cocks its head and I feel the axe disappear, disintegrating into sand and slipping through my fingers. "You cannot even grasp your own weapons," the shadow's monotonous voice unnerving and filled with disapproval.
I make ready for a fight. "Who are you?" I command, wishing I could see the face beyond the black concealing hood.
It turns from me and glides through the smoke. "Find who you are," the shadow whispers. "Remember."
I run after the apparition, a slow and cumbersome movement as if wading through water. "Wait!" I plead, "what do you want?" My run slowing to a walk. "Why am I here?"
"Remember." The whisper echoing from everywhere and nowhere, even the smoke shimmering with the reverberation.
I wake with a start, gasping in the fresh air and covered in sweat. "A dream," I pant, wiping my brow, "just a dream."