NOVEL NEXT Chapter 6: No Altar But the Blade
His throat was sealed shut, choked by the sheer, overwhelming magnitude of the horror.
Words were impossible.
There was only the sight, the smell, the sound echoing in his skull, and the creeping warmth of the blood slowly spreading towards his knees.
Jack knew.
This was the end.
No escape. No desperate run through burning streets.
And the bitter truth?
He felt… empty. Not fear. Hollowness.
Where would I even go?
No home waited. No lover's face. No friend's voice.
His death would leave no ripple.
No memory.
Nothing.
Yet…
One question chewed through the numbness.
A worm in the core of his resignation.
He dredged up the last dregs of will.
His voice scraped out, slow, cracked:
"Why…?"
The Goat-Mask tilted its horned head. A grotesque parody of curiosity.
"Did you say something, 'Hero'?"The sweet voice dripped honey.
Jack swallowed.
Throat raw.
"Why… me?"
The words were stones dropped into a dark well.
"Why choose me… for this… grand fucking mission?"
The Masked Man emitted a low, vibrating chuckle. Like stones grinding in honey.
"Reasons, little lamb. Precise reasons."
He gestured vaguely at the chalk circle, the candles.
"The ritual demands a specific sacrifice. Certain… qualities."
He began to count them on gloved fingers:
1. "First…"The gloved finger stabbed the air.
"Born before the Fall. Under the eye of the full moon."
A detail Jack never knew. His birthday.
2. "Second…"Another finger rose.
"A heart steeped in hatred."
The voice turned clinical.
"Hatred for the world that broke you. Hatred for the people who failed you. And above all…"
The mask seemed to lean closer, the void-eyes swallowing the candlelight.
"…a perfect, burning hatred… for the ones who birthed you into this hell."
Cultist parents. Neglect. The foundational rot of his life. Of course they needed that.
3. "And third…"
A pause. Deliberate.
The masked head tilted again. Jack sensed the amusement radiating off him.
"…they must be untouched. Pure."
"Virgins."
The word hung in the thick air.
Absurd.
Cruel.
The final, humiliating twist of the knife.
Jack's thirty years of survival, his sins, his pain…
Reduced to a punchline about what he'd never done.
Jack let the words sink in.
They pooled in his gut like cold, toxic sludge.
Bitter realization twisted his lips into something too grim to be a smile.
"So that's it?"
His voice was ground glass.
"You picked me… because nobody else fit your sick little checklist? The right birthday, the right hate… the right lack?"
The Goat-Mask was utterly still.
A statue of tanned hide and shadow.
The silence stretched, thick with wax fumes and anticipation.
Candle flames jittered.
Finally, the honeyed voice slithered out:
"No. Not exactly, my reluctant hero."
A gloved hand gestured vaguely. "You are not… unique in meeting the criteria. There are others."
The mask tilted, a predator considering prey.
"You… are simply the one I chose."**
Jack's eyes narrowed to flinty slits.
"Why?"
A single syllable.
Brittle.
"Because of your will, Jack."
The Goat-Mask took one deliberate step closer.
The air around him seemed to congeal.
"You loathe this existence. You curse the breath in your lungs.You see only suffering."
Another step.
The void-eyes pinned him.
"And yet… you cling. Desperately. Savagely. You don't even know you do it.
But you do. Every scar. Every sin. Every sunrise fought for… it screams it."
The voice dropped, intimate.
"The others? They've surrendered. Their hatred is cold ash.
They welcome the blade. They yearn for the end."
The horned head tilted, studying him.
"But you… oh, Jack. You still care. Even as you lie to yourself.
That spark… that furious, useless spark of defiance against the dark… that is what I need."
Silence crashed down.
Suffocating.
Only the soft hiss of melting wax filled the space between them.
"Is that all, my destined hero?"the Goat-Mask inquired, sweetness laced with impatience.
"The Sacrifice approaches its zenith. Delay… is no longer permitted."
He took one step back.
A ritualistic retreat.
"Do you have… any last words for this world? Any final utterance?"
Jack met the abyssal gaze behind the mask.
His face was a mask of its own—weathered stone, etched deep with exhaustion, yet utterly unreadable.
No fear. No plea.
Just…void.
Then…
He drew the thick, waxy air deep into his ruined lungs.
He leaned forward, muscles coiling like rusted springs.
And with every ounce of venom, every scrap of bile, every curse he'd swallowed over thirty damned years…
He spat.
A thick glob of phlegm and blood-streaked saliva
Smeared across the polished curve of the goat mask's jaw,
Glistening obscenely in the candlelight.
"Go fuck yourself."
The Goat-Mask turned, ignoring the spit glistening on his jawline like a perverse jewel.
He picked up the open book.
Its cracked leather binding seemed to pulse in the candlelight.
He held it aloft, fingers tracing lines of ink that seemed to writhe.
Then, he began to speak.
Not words.
Not any language Jack knew.
Guttural, grating syllables that scraped like stones down a chalkboard.
Hissing consonants like serpents in a pit.
Vowels that dropped like stones into a bottomless well.
The sound vibrated in Jack's teeth.
It warped the air, making the candle flames jitter and stretch into unnatural, spindly shapes.
Terror, primal and cold, flooded Jack's veins.
Instinct, honed by a thousand near-deaths, screamed:
RUN! FIGHT! DOOM!
The Goat-Mask gave a slow, nod.
The robed figures moved.
Mechanically.
In unison.
They stepped closer, encircling him tighter than the chalk line.
Their chant began, a low, discordant drone beneath the Goat-Mask's alien recitation:
"Khar…"
"Neth…"
"Vog…"
One word. One beat. Synchronized. Soulless.
Three broke from the chanting circle.
Hands seized Jack.
Cold.
Strong.
Impersonal.
Like butchers grabbing livestock.
They forced him down.
Onto his back.
The rough wooden floor bit into his spine.
He bucked.
Twisted.
Muscles strained, cords standing out on his neck.
Useless.
Too many hands. Too much weight.
Pinning limbs, crushing ribs.
He was trapped. Spread-eagled.Vulnerable.
The remaining chanters didn't pause.
"Gul..."
"Dra…"
"Zan…"
Their hands vanished into the depths of their black robes.
Re-emerged.
Holding knives.
Not combat blades.
Ritual tools.
Bone handles,yellowed and worn smooth by desperate grips.
Blades dark, pitted with age and old, dried blood.
Edges honed to a cruel, shimmering sharpness.
They knelt.
One at each shoulder.
One at each hip.
One near his head.
The points of their knives hovered.
A hair's breadth from his skin.
Waiting.
The chant thrummed:
"Mor…"
"Thal…"
"Kai…"
Jack knew.
With absolute, icy certainty.
Jack knew, without a doubt, that whatever ritual this was, it was going to be painful. Excruciatingly painful.
They would carve the spark from him while he screamed.
The Sacrifice had begun.