I am 15 chapters ahead on my patreón, check it out if you are interested.
Patréon.com/emperordragon
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Chapter 131: The Truth Beneath the Skin
The morgue felt as if it had been carved out of silence. Fluorescent tubes hummed with a mechanical indifference, their dull light laying pale grids across the linoleum floor. In the corner, a faint rustle — the scratch of paper against metal — broke the stillness like a mouse in a cathedral. Chris Argent stood with his hands on the edge of a stainless-steel table, shoulders tight, eyes locked on the open report that had been placed before him. The formal language on the page should have been a comfort — neat sentences, clinical phrasing — but the words themselves carried a chill.
Unknown organic compound detected in spinal fluid; composition non-biological yet cellularly active.
The sentence sat in the center of the page like an accusation. It had the sudden, searing clarity of a revelation that refuses to be unlearned. Chris read it once, twice, as if repetition might somehow demystify it. It only deepened the strangeness.
He'd been doing this — hunting, tracking, cleaning up the things ordinary people were never supposed to see — for most of his adult life. He knew the anatomy of threat: the telltale scents of shapeshifters, the crooked signatures left by creatures that thought themselves clever, the runes and remnants of old magic. He had faced monsters that showed teeth and monsters that wore smiles, things convened by moonlight and things conscripted by blood. But this report did not belong in any file labeled familiar. This was not animalistic hunger of the corrupted or druidic influence. This was something else entirely: Something that didn't belong.
The coroner — a man with tired eyes and the look of someone who'd learned to keep unpleasant confidences — cleared his throat. He'd done Chris a few favors over the years; tonight he offered another.
"Whatever it was, it wasn't part of the body originally," the coroner said, voice low enough that the machines and tiles might not pick it up. "The spinal cord… it's almost rewired. Like it's been adapted to act as an interface. Cellular structures where there shouldn't be any. Something built to plug in."
That line — built to plug in — twisted something in Chris's chest. He didn't speak. He just stared at the photo clipped to the file — a jagged tear running down the corpse's back, flesh ripped open to expose a hollow cavity where the spine should've been connected. The precision of it unsettled him. Not rage. Not hunger. Purpose.
He let his fingers trace the edge of the photograph as if the paper could tell him more. The image reflected back a pale, dead face with empty, glassy eyes, but it was the wound — the absence and the precision — that haunted him. Whatever had made it had done so with intent and knowledge. That thought made his mouth dry.
"Thanks," Chris said at last, closing the folder with care.
"Should I forward the report to—?"
"No," Chris interrupted, his tone final. "This stays between us."
He had seen too many things escalate because someone could not stomach unknowns. The hunters' code had teeth for a reason — but it also had judgement, and experience had taught him when to hold fire.
The coroner's eyebrows rose. "If it's related to those killings—"
"It's connected to something worse," Chris cut in, slipping the folder into his jacket pocket. He felt the weight of the paper like the weight of a decision. He had to pick his battles.
He stepped out into the morning that tasted of cold and burn — the town had not yet shaken sleep from its shoulders. The air felt almost conspiratorial, as if it, too, anticipated the trouble that had dug its fingers into Beacon Hills.
His people had already started to whisper — about vengeance, about retaliation. Edward especially was pushing for blood, demanding that they strike before the Hales could.
But this… this didn't fit the story.
This wound — this unnatural fusing into bone and tissue — didn't fit the any of the usual profiles. The Hales were brutal when they needed to be; their savagery carried the jagged randomness of an animal out for vengeance. This… this worked with tools and intelligence. It used anatomy like a machine uses a socket. It had a purpose beyond killing.
He walked to his car, the engine already warm, and sat with the folder on his lap. He opened it again, habit making him read the lines as if they might rearrange into something softer, something more comprehensible. His mind supplied answers it did not trust: a new type of corrupted weaponized parasite, a alchemically manufactured organism, old rituals slipped into flesh. The possibilities stacked and collapsed like cards.
Something had used the dead man — like a weapon, or worse, a disguise.
He exhaled slowly, rubbing a hand over his face. "What the hell are we dealing with?" he muttered.
He could already feel the fracture widening — his people wanted action, not answers. But if he told them the truth too soon, they'd see it as weakness. If he told them nothing, they'd start a war.
So he chose a third path — silence.
He would investigate quietly, alone, until he knew what this thing really was. And when he did, maybe, just maybe, he could stop the next body from hitting the ground.
Chris shifted the car into gear and drove off, the report lying open on the passenger seat. The paper rustled slightly with the motion, and a single photo slid free — the dead man's vacant eyes staring up at him through the dim light.
Whatever this thing was, it had already found a way into Beacon Hills. And Chris Argent intended to tear it out — root and spine.