Dragon Seed by James Osiris Baldwin

Hector Park, a combat-hardened veteran conscripted into the turmoil of the Third World War, now fights a war more personal and insidious — the battle against an unforgiving virus threatening to obliterate humankind. He has three days to live.

When all hope seems lost, a lifeline emerges from the darkness: Hector’s estranged brother offers him a chance to transcend mortality itself with a one-way trip into the revolutionary virtual reality of Archemi.

Hector embraces the experimental digital transformation and chooses the difficult path of the Dragon Knight. But Hector isn’t the only one with dreams of taking to Archemi’s skies. Vicious, ambitious fellow players, corrupt knights and ancient gods make Archemi a battlefield just as dangerous as the war Hector left behind. But if he succeeds? He will earn the trust of a dragon hatchling and forge an impenetrable psychic bond,