I am 15 chapters ahead on my patreón, check it out if you are interested.
Patréon.com/emperordragon
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Chapter 121: Irreversible
The night held its breath, unnaturally still, as if even the wind feared to disturb what had just happened. Not a single leaf rustled. Not a single bird called. The silence stretched unnervingly across the desolate road like a shroud.
At the edge of the darkened highway, a car lay broken, its frame twisted and skewed awkwardly against the base of a thick tree. The hood was a mangled mess of metal, steam and smoke curling from beneath it in lazy tendrils, coiling up into the night air like ghosts too tired to rise. The windshield was fractured into a thousand jagged veins, as though the vehicle itself had gone blind in the violence of the crash.
Inside the ruined car, the silence was even heavier—thick, suffocating. Not just the stillness of night, but the kind that comes after chaos. After screams. After something irreversible.
Isaac stirred, a low groan escaping his throat before he even opened his eyes. Pain bloomed in his skull like firecrackers—sharp, relentless, and disorienting. His head throbbed with the deep, aching pulse of trauma. Every breath brought the sour tang of gasoline and the harsher stench of scorched rubber and blood. He gagged on the air but couldn't stop breathing it in.
For a moment, he didn't know where he was. His mind grasped at shadows, fragments. The world around him was a blur of crushed leather seats, splintered glass, and the faint glow of moonlight filtering through a spiderweb of cracks in the windshield. Slowly, shapes began to form. A dashboard. A rearview mirror dangling by a wire. Bodies.
His vision sharpened just enough to see the two slumped figures in the front seats. The men who had attacked him.
Hunters.
One of them—an older man with a jaw like stone—was sagged against the steering wheel, his face turned away, neck twisted at a sickening, unnatural angle. The other sat upright only because the seatbelt held him there, chest still, mouth slightly open, eyes mercifully closed. Both were soaked in blood. It clung to their clothes in dark patches, glinting under the dim light like wet ink. Some of it had dried. Some of it hadn't.
Isaac couldn't move. Couldn't breathe.
His hands—shaking, contorted with the remnants of a transformation he hadn't meant to trigger—rested limply at his sides. Red coated his fingers, smeared into the creases of his palms. Some of it was theirs. Some of it was his. All of it was real.
He stared at the wreckage, and the only words that came out of his mouth were barely more than a whisper. "What... what happened?"
The answer didn't come in words, but in flashes.
A tranquilizer dart caught in his hand. Panic. A fight—brief, brutal. He remembered lunging, claws tearing, then the final blow that sent everything spiraling into black. After that, the memories turned to color and emotion more than image.
Rage.
Uncontrollable, searing rage. Not his. Or not just his. A deep, unnatural fury, as though something had crawled inside him and ripped the reins from his hands.
He remembered the car swerving. The wheel jerking wildly in his hands. Screams—maybe theirs, maybe his. The sharp, stomach-churning spin of metal and momentum. A tree rushing toward them far too fast. And then—impact.
And blood.
It didn't take much to piece the rest together. The two hunters were not expecting him to wake up this quickly; that caught them off guard, and the crash certainly didn't help the situation.
Isaac knew this feeling. This aftermath. This horror. It had happened before. That mysterious person had done it again. Controlling him. Amplifying every dark instinct until there was nothing left but the urge to destroy.
It had made him attack Malia. It had made him lose control.
And now—now it had pushed him further.
He had killed them.
Isaac's entire body went cold, like ice water had been poured straight into his chest. His throat closed, and he gasped, lungs fluttering uselessly. Panic surged, wild and uncontainable. He fumbled with the door handle, shoved it open so hard the hinges shrieked in protest, and stumbled out into the open air.
The forest that bordered the road stood still and silent, unnaturally so. No wind. No animals. Not even the sound of distant traffic. Just quiet. Terrible, oppressive quiet.
Isaac leaned heavily against the side of the wrecked car, barely able to stay upright. His breathing was ragged, every inhale feeling like a punishment. Every exhale carried the taste of blood, of metal, of guilt.
They were hunters. He knew that. Knew that if they'd had their way, he'd be the one lying dead in the front seat. But knowing that didn't help. It didn't undo what he'd done. It didn't erase the images burned into his memory—the fear in their eyes, the moment their lives ended.
And it didn't change the fact that his hands had ended them.
He took off running. Not because he had a destination in mind—he didn't. But the thought of staying still, of letting the weight settle, was unbearable. So he moved. Feet pounding against earth. Trees whipping past. The dark forest closing around him like a tunnel.
But he couldn't outrun the words repeating in his head.
Two dead.
Two hunters.
Two Argent hunters.
He staggered to a stop, lungs burning, as a new realization hit him like a blow to the chest.
Allison.
He stared blankly into the trees, horror seeping in like frostbite.
She might've known them. She might've laughed with them at family gatherings, exchanged stories over coffee, shared memories. These weren't just faceless enemies—they were people. People with lives. With connections. With families.
People Allison might have cared for.
And now—because of him—they were gone.
Even if he tried to explain, even if he told her about the influence, the manipulation, the blinding rage that wasn't entirely his own—how could he expect her to understand? How could he ask her to forgive something so monstrous?
Would she even be able to look at him after this?
Would she see the boy she cared about, or would she only see the thing that tore through her people like a animal out of control?
He started moving again, but his pace had slowed. Each step felt heavier than the last. The trees blurred at the edges of his vision, whether from the cold or from the water in his eyes, he wasn't sure anymore.
By the time he emerged at the edge of town, he was trembling. Exhausted. Hollow.
He wasn't sure which he feared more—
The Argents finding out what he'd done.
Or Allison finding out who he'd become.