I am 15 chapters ahead on my patreón, check it out if you are interested.
Patréon.com/emperordragon
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Chapter 149: The Essence of Shadows
The first light of morning crept hesitantly through the cracked blinds of Lucas's room, filtering in as thin, golden blades that cut across the chaos of his desk. The glow touched the corners of scattered notebooks, curling maps, and Deaton's half-translated runic pages — each covered in symbols that seemed to shift under the eye, as if reluctant to be understood. Dust motes drifted lazily in the beams of light, suspended between silence and motion, like thoughts that refused to settle.
Lucas sat on the edge of his unmade bed, staring at the papers as though they might rearrange themselves into something that made sense. His phone lay beside him, screen dark, until it buzzed once — a steady, expectant vibration that sliced through the stillness. He didn't wait for a second ring. His thumb slid across the screen almost automatically.
"Emily," he said, his voice low, rough from a night with little sleep.
Her reply came after a heartbeat — calm, composed, yet carrying that faint, familiar static that always made the distance between them feel both infinite and fragile. "Lucas. I read your message. Tell me everything."
He did. He told her about the corpse being a puppet, the thing that had once been human but now was something else entirely. The parasite that clung to it and pulsed with some impossible rhythm, of Deaton's discovery — the regenerating cells that shouldn't have been alive, the visions that weren't his but came to him anyway, flickering in the dark behind his eyes. He spoke until the room felt smaller, the air heavier, until even the static on the line seemed to fade, as if the signal itself was holding its breath.
When he finally stopped, there was a long, almost reverent silence.
"I've seen many things in our world," Emily said at last, her tone thoughtful, distant — the way she always sounded when her mind was walking somewhere far beyond the reach of language. "But nothing quite like this. Still…" A pause. "Your description reminds me of something old. Something that doesn't belong to science or to magic alone. The entities that persist after death — they aren't merely biological. They exist partly in the veil between life and thought."
Lucas frowned, rubbing a hand across his temple. "Meaning it's not just flesh."
"Exactly." Her voice sharpened slightly, gaining a strange gravity. "If it can reform after dying, then it's not entirely bound to matter. You're dealing with something that leaves a physical echo — a shell, a remnant — but its true self isn't there. It survives in what the druids once called the metaphysical essence."
He leaned back in his chair, the old wood creaking beneath him. "So even if I burn every trace," he murmured, "it could still come back."
"If the essence isn't severed, yes." There was a faint edge of warning now, an undertone of something like fear. "And that essence could be tethered to its fragments — the 'seeds' you mentioned. They might act as anchors, binding the entity to this plane. Destroying them without understanding where they connect could be dangerous. You might sever one path and open another. Worse, you could scatter its presence — make it impossible to track."
Lucas didn't respond immediately. The silence stretched, filled only by the distant hum of morning outside the window. He could almost feel the parasite's unseen pulse in the back of his skull, that quiet, nauseating sense of being observed. The idea that something incorporeal might still be watching him — something intelligent — explained the unease that had haunted him ever since they'd left the lodge.
"How do I find it?" he asked finally.
"You'll need to locate its metaphysical signature," Emily said. "Every being that crosses the threshold between worlds leaves an imprint. It isn't energy in the scientific sense, and it isn't what we call magic. It's something in between — a residue of intention, existence, and memory all tangled together. If Deaton can stabilize one of those fragments, it might resonate with that signature. That could lead you to the core of it." She hesitated then, and when she spoke again, her voice softened. "But, Lucas… if your visions are genuine, then the essence has already touched your mind. That connection could grow stronger with time."
Lucas's voice was quiet but cold. "Then it's already coming after me."
"Yes." The word was barely more than a breath. "Either way — find the seeds. They'll lead you to its heart. I'll start my own research on this parasite from here. There's bound to be some record of entities like this, even if the stories are buried."
The line went quiet. A moment later, the call ended, leaving behind only the soft, mechanical hum of the dial tone, steady and indifferent.
Lucas lowered the phone onto the bed beside him. His chest rose and fell once, sharply, before he exhaled and pressed a hand over his eyes. The morning light had shifted; it now stretched across the floor like a blade, thin and cold.
He didn't know how many "seeds" there were. He didn't know how far the parasite's reach extended — or whether one of its fragments might already be near. But he knew one thing with an iron certainty:
If he wanted to destroy the parasite for good, he would have to hunt something that wasn't truly alive.
Something that had learned to hide not in the body, but in the spaces between thought and being.
Something that might already be hunting him back.