No More Screams

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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Jack clawed toward the light...a single, shrinking pinprick in the suffocating dark. Distant.

Fading.

Panic ignited.

He thrashed his legs in a desperate, swimming motion against the void.

No water. No air. Only resistance.

Yet, impossibly, he moved.

Each kick was agony against the unseen chains dragging him down, but he gained inches.

The light pulsed, weak but defiant.

His thoughts blurred, the edges of his consciousness fraying.

The world dissolved into smears of shadow and fading luminescence.

But the light grew larger. Closer. With a final, silent scream of effort, he lunged—

—And froze.

Beyond the fragile glow lay the ritual chamber.

Unchanged.

Unholy.

The masked figures stood triumphant.

The gathered followers beamed, their smiles not joyous, but rapturous, eyes wide with fanatical ecstasy.

The air still reeked of blood and incense.

His gaze plummeted downward.

There. On the stone floor.

His body.

A ruined, flayed thing. Meat and bone laid bare in a grotesque parody of sacrifice.

Unrecognizable, yet his.

The sheer, visceral wrongness of it stole whatever spectral breath he had left.

Disembodied.

Dead.

Yet…aware.

Trapped in this liminal horror.

Rage detonated within him—a supernova of pure, annihilating fury. Not just for the death, but for the desecration.

The unbearable torture.

The mockery. He wanted to tear them apart, molecule by molecule. To make them feel.

He hurled himself against the barrier of light.

Fists pounded on nothingness.

A silent, agonized scream ripped through his being.

But the light held firm, an impassable veil.

It repelled him.

Each frantic attempt only made the barrier shimmer brighter, colder.

He was a fly beating against glass, forced to watch as his tether to the world—the fading light—shrunk with every passing second.

Helplessness washed over him, colder than the void.

Deeper than the knives.

Something fractured.

Not physically. Essentially.

The fight drained away, leaving a hollow, chilling acceptance.

Resistance was futile.

This was his prison.

These chains, whatever they were, bound him to a fate he couldn't fathom.

But one need burned brighter than the rage, colder than the fear: See his face.

Below, the masked man raised his hands. The chanting ceased.

A profound, expectant silence fell.

Slowly, deliberately, the figure moved to the heavy chair at the chamber's edge.

He sat. Leather creaked.

Then, with slowness, his hands rose to the grotesque goat mask.

Fingers found the edges.

Lifted.

Pulled it away, revealing skin, jawline, lips…

Jack's spectral form recoiled.

No.

The denial wasn't a thought; it was a fundamental tearing of reality.

It couldn't be.

His mind stalled.

Thoughts fragmented like glass shards, scattering before they could form.

The face beneath the mask swam in his vision, warped by tears tracking through grime and sweat.

A face carved into the bedrock of his earliest memories.

A face he'd trusted implicitly, sought approval from, loved with the uncomplicated fervor of a child.

Impossible.

Unthinkable.

The dissonance was a physical blow, a seismic crack tearing through the fragile remains of his sanity.

Recognition.

It hit with the force of a collapsing star.

Father.

The spectral chains binding him—those cold, hungry tendrils of the void—shattered.

Not from external force, but from the sheer, incandescent fury that erupted from his core.

It was a rage born of ultimate betrayal, a howl of the soul denied even the dignity of hatred for a stranger.

He lunged at the dwindling light, not swimming now, but ramming himself against it.

Spectral fists hammered against the impossible barrier, blow after desperate blow fueled by a agony deeper than flaying knives.

A scream tore from his being—a silent, soul-rending shriek that vibrated in the non-space around him, unheard by the monsters below.

LET ME IN!

LET ME IN!

LET ME KILL HIM!

Below, the man who had sired him, raised him, loved him… wiped a tear with the back of a hand still stained with his son's blood.

The gesture was obscene. A final, grotesque punctuation to the ritual.

The light flickered, dimmed… and vanished.

Snuffed out.

Absolute, suffocating darkness swallowed him whole.

In that instant, something fundamental within Jack ruptured.

Not just his mind—that had already been pushed beyond breaking.

His spirit, the resilient core that had endured the knives, the flaying, the soul-chains, the horrifying pull of the abyss… it shattered.

Like fragile crystal dropped onto stone.

The shards dissolved into cold, formless dust.

His will to fight, to rage, to even exist… crumbled.

Reduced to nothing.

What remained wasn't a man, not even a ghost.

It was a hollowed-out vessel.

An echo chamber where only the memory of ultimate betrayal resonated in an endless, silent scream.

Utterly empty.

Utterly broken.

Utterly done.

Behind him, unnoticed in the totality of his collapse, the vortex stirred.

Not the hungry pull he'd fought before, but something colder, vaster.

A whirlpool of pure, starless void spun silently, its event horizon yawning wide.

Its gravity, immense and indifferent, reached for the hollow shell that had been Jack.

He felt it.

The cold.

The pull.

He didn't resist.

He didn't care.

There was nothing left to care.

He simply… ceased struggling.

Let the inertia of despair carry him backwards.

Into the waiting dark.

His physical body, the ruined thing on the cold stone floor thousands of feet below in a reality he no longer inhabited, gave one last, shuddering exhalation.

A final whisper of air escaping ravaged lungs.

The monitors attached to the ritual site, coldly logging data for the cult's archives, recorded it precisely.

Sunday, Year 2233. 01:00:00 AM.

Vital signs ceased.

Neural activity flatlined.

The sacrifice was complete.

Jack Ryder was pronounced dead.

History, written by the victors, would record his death with sterile, triumphant simplicity:

Jack Ryder, Savior of Humanity, gave his life in the Great Offering of 2233.

The hollow shell tumbled into the infinite black, carrying the unspeakable truth into oblivion.