They Called Him Savior

Disclaimer:

This chapter includes intense scenes of torture, gore, psychological horror, and ritual sacrifice.

Descriptions of bodily mutilation, existential dread, and emotional trauma may disturb some readers. Proceed with caution.

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The chanting swelled, a suffocating wave of sound crashing over Jack.

He lay pinned on the freezing stone floor, the masked figures a tightening ring of shadow above him.

Their grip on his limbs was iron.

Kneeling close, their knives glinting wickedly in the torchlight as they pointed them upwards, the followers spoke as one, their voices a hollow drone:

"May the Great Soul accept this vessel's light."

In a single, synchronized motion, the blades descended.

Driven– hard, precise, unforgiving steel into the soft, yielding orbs.

Jack's scream erupted, not a sound of pain, but a raw, animalistic shredding of his own throat – a sound torn from the very root of being.

It echoed, horrifying, against the walls.

Mad laughter erupted from the masked figures, a grotesque counterpoint to Jack's agony.

Their chanting resumed, unwavering, a dreadful liturgy.

"Oh, Great Martyr!" their voices boomed, thick with perverse reverence.

"With the offering of your Sight, you bestow Vision upon blind generations!"

Another blade flashed down – not a stab, but a piercing thrust deep into the canals of his ears.

"AAAAAGGGHHH—!"

The scream choked, dissolving into wet, ragged gasps as the world plunged into muffled horror.

"Oh, Great Martyr!" the chant continued, oblivious.

"With the offering of your Hearing, you grant the Clarion Call to deafened souls!"

Salt tears, hot and involuntary, streamed from his ruined eyes, mingling with the blood.

"Oh, Great Martyr! With the sacred Waters of your Sorrow, you quench the eternal thirst of mankind!"

Then came the knives again, not for stabbing now, but for work.

Cold edges bit into the skin at his temple. A sickening rip echoed in Jack's muffled world as flesh peeled away from muscle like old parchment, lifted and torn in ragged strips.

"Oh, Great Martyr! With the blessed Offering of your Flesh, you banish the specter of Hunger from the world forevermore!"

Deeper the knives carved, methodical butchers stripping the offering.

Muscle glistened obscenely where skin had been.

"Oh, Great Martyr! With the sacred Wine of your Suffering, you pour Joy into the empty hearts of your devoted!"

A warm, sticky lake spread beneath him, seeping into his hair, his clothes.

The cold stone drank it greedily.

"Oh, Great Martyr! With the Final Gift of your Sacred Life..."

the chant reached a crescendo, a fervent, ecstatic roar,

"...WE ARE MADE WHOLE! WE ENDURE!"

Pain was the only world left.

A smothering, all-consuming haze where sight and sound had been violently erased.

Only feeling remained—a relentless tide of agony that crested but never broke.

Jack's shattered mind screamed for the void, for the mercy of oblivion… but something refused him.

Something cold and deliberate pinned his consciousness to the butcher's block,

forcing him to endure every excruciating slice,

every nerve screaming against the air.

Through the red-black static of his ruined senses, the chanting vibrated in his bones, a dreadful, rhythmic pulse:

"O GREAT HERO!" the voices thrummed, a distorted hymn in his skull.

"WEEP NO MORE! SCREAM NO MORE! DESPAIR IS NOT FOR YOU!"

Cold steel kissed exposed muscle somewhere near his collarbone.

A new line of fire bloomed.

"YOU HAVE ASCENDED YOUR PURPOSE! EMBRACE THE GLORY OF YOUR DESTINY!"

Another cut.

Deeper.

"YOU ARE IMMORTAL NOW!"

the chant swelled, fervent, ecstatic.

"ENSHRINED IN ETERNITY AS HUMANITY'S SALVATION!"

His body was a ruined map of flayed skin, severed tendons, and glistening meat.

Systems were failing – breath a ragged, wet gasp; heartbeat a frantic, weakening flutter against his ribs.

Yet death remained a taunting specter, held just beyond reach.

The agony had transcended pain.

It was a living entity now, monstrous and absolute, feasting on what remained of him.

His nerves, raw and exposed to the cold chamber air, shrieked with every fractional movement, every brush of fabric from his tormentors.

His mind flickered – brief, deceptive plunges toward black nothingness – only to be viciously yanked back to the surface of hell each time by that something.

Then he felt it.

Not pain. Not cold.

Something else.

A pressure.

A presence.

Deep within the ravaged core of him, beneath the screaming nerves and the pooling blood,

something stirred.

It wasn't the knives biting deeper.

It wasn't the masked men's hands holding his ruined flesh.

This was other.

An unseen force.

It coiled around him like serpents forged from pure cold and dread.

Not physical chains, yet undeniable – wrapping, binding, sinking into the ravaged core of his being.

Cold that stole his breath.

Weight that crushed his spirit.

Endless and suffocating.

His breath hitched – a raw, useless reflex.

The sensation slithered through his hollowed carcass, tightening like spectral fingers around his soul.

It wasn't just constraint; it was consumption. A vast, hungry presence pulling him towards an abyss he couldn't see.

He tried to scream.

Only a wet rattle escaped his ruined throat.

The masked men still chanted, their blades still carved, but their voices were muffled, distant thunder.

Their ritual felt small now. Insignificant.

As if something immeasurably older and darker had finally turned its gaze.

The unseen chains cinched tighter.

He felt them – cold, vibrating filaments wrapping his spine, threading through his shattered ribs, coiling deep within the empty caverns of his eyes.

They pulsed with terrible purpose, dragging him down… down into a suffocating depth beyond comprehension.

His body was a dying vessel, adrift.

But his soul… his soul was being harvested.

The blinding agony of the knives… it was still there, a dull, persistent echo, but it no longer dominated.

It was background noise to this soul-deep violation.

He willed his remaining leg to thrash, to find purchase, to kick against the void – but there was no floor.

No solidity.

Only the terrible, sucking pull of the abyss.

Panic, pure and primal, seized him.

It gnawed at the edges of his fading mind, whispering a truth colder than the chains:

If you yield… if you stop fighting now… what awaits is not oblivion. It is an eternity far worse than any blade.

A fate he could not face.

With the last, desperate shred of his will – the essence of Jack refusing to be extinguished – he struggled.

Not against flesh and bone, but against the crushing dark.

He raged silently against the chains of oblivion.