The Unbecoming Part 2

"Metal does not lie. It remembers the touch of the dead."

Jack's voice cut through the weight of the room—soft, precise.

"There you are."

His words peeled back the silence, a scalpel across flesh.

Step 4: The Unbecoming Chant

The chant followed—

Not a roar. Not a cry.

A quiet unraveling.

Like the poem of reversing death, welcoming back a soul into the afterlife.

"Quod textum est, filo dissolvo.

Quod seminatum est, fame pereo.

Quod non pertinet, solvam.

Terra radicem repudiet.

Os clavum exspuat.

Sanguis saporem alienum obliviscatur."

(Translation: What was woven, I unthread.

What was seeded, I starve.

What does not belong, I loosen.

Let the soil reject the root.

Let the bone spit out the nail.

Let the blood forget the foreign taste.)

The words slid like wire beneath skin.

Precise. Cold. Relentless.

Jack glanced toward Victor.

"Open the cage."

Victor's jaw tightened.

"That thing will rip through us. Lucas isn't here. Cant you handle him?."

Jack's smirk came slow. Crooked.

"So you underestimated me, Victor?"

His tone dipped into mockery—

"I shall prove you wrong. Open it."

Victor hesitated, then signaled his men.

The lock came open.

Caleb lunged—a violent snap, a beast ready to tear—

But Jack raised his hand, the bullet gleaming in his palm, and spoke words that didn't belong to this century.

Words carved from the roots of forgotten tongues.

"Enthis'val rhemora. Vesht tal'ith. Norrak ven'dral."

Translation: "Bound in the marrow. Held in the thread. Kneel before the seal."

The sound didn't echo. It stuck.

It rooted.

Caleb froze mid-lunge, locked in place as if something ancient had tightened around his bones.

Jack turned his head slightly toward Victor, his smirk sharpening.

"How you like that?"

Step 5: The Bullet

Jack turned to Caleb—the boy, the cage, the writhing tangle of selves—and pressed the cold mouth of Lucas Cain's bullet to his sternum.

The bullet wasn't just brass.

It was a ledger stone.

A counterweight to the spiraling strain.

A final price set aside.

A death deferred, but not forgotten.

The bullet didn't just sit there.

It drank.

The weight, the cost, the unraveling—it sank into the metal, bleeding ice through Caleb's skin, through Jack's palm.

It pulsed.

Slow. Heavy.

Like a dormant heart, patient in its promise.

Jack's voice folded into the ritual's silence, low, near a whisper, but shaped like a blade.

Not a vow.

Not a threat.

A plea.

"If I fail—this finishes it.

But if you're still in there…

Take back what's yours."

There was no answer.

Not yet.

But the bullet waited.

—

Step 6: The Rupture

The mirrors began trembling.

Thin, deliberate cracks veined across each glass.

They didn't shatter.

They splintered.

Like the weight inside Caleb was pulling too tight—like his seams couldn't hold.

His body jolted—violent, stuttering spasms.

His skin paled to the edge of collapse.

The grin slipped. Faded.

But not fully.

Not yet.

Beneath the surface, Vanessa's root still pulsed.

Still fed.

Still wanted.

Jack's hands didn't waver.

His breathing clipped sharp—but he kept peeling.

He repeated the chant.

Low. Surgical.

A scalpel's whisper slicing through the stitched layers, pulling back the grafted seams.

The more he pulled, the blacker Caleb's veins ran.

Spidering ink beneath the skin.

Tether lines.

Feeding lines.

And then Jack saw it.

The root didn't just hold.

It fed.

Vanessa wasn't just inside him.

She was still feeding him.

Even now. Even here.

Even against Jack's knife.

Even if Jack severed every thread—

The taste would remain.

The ache would remain.

The wanting would remain.

He stopped.

Not because the ritual was finished—

But because if he cut any deeper, there'd be no Caleb left to come back.

Jack stepped away, the bullet still ice-cold in his palm. 

He closed the glass cage, inside Caleb was lying unconscious from the sideffect of the ritual.

His voice when he finally spoke to Victor was sanded raw, worn down by the weight of what he'd seen.

"I pulled out what I could.

But her roots…

She didn't just grow inside him.

She made sure he'd miss her when she's gone."

Victor stood completely still after hearing Jack. 

"Can my brother even be saved?"

A question that Victor was bothered by.

Jack and Victor both stared at Caleb while he rested unconsciously.

Can he be saved at all?

End of Chapter 14.