Jonah signaled Caleb to follow, as they swiftly walked through a living room stained with sadness, tobacco and whiskey, they stopped at a grated door, leading down to what seemed like a cellar, a pit, a place that looked like a torture chamber.
The basement was cold and smelled of rust, mold, and old blood.
A heavy silence filled the space between the hum of a flickering light bulb and the groan of aged pipes behind the walls. Cracked concrete floors bore dark stains that weren't just oil, and the corners of the room felt like they had teeth.
Jonah Caulder stood in front of a wooden locker, wrapping his knuckles in black tape. His left shoulder sagged slightly from an old break. A thick surgical scar coiled down his neck like a white worm. Even still—he looked like a wall carved from war.
"You really think this ends with you walking away?" Jonah asked without turning. "You really think there's a version of this where you kill the men who gutted your family and just… find peace after?"
Caleb sat on a low bench, clutching a towel wrapped tight around his side. Fresh stitches had reopened in the past few days. He could feel them weeping under the gauze.
"I'm not looking for peace," Caleb said. "I'm looking for permanence."
Jonah turned, slowly.
"What you're chasing doesn't come with a clean conscience. This path doesn't turn back. There's no moment where it all feels better. There's no closure. There's only what's left of you after the blood dries."
Caleb stared at the floor for a moment. Then looked up.
"My wife died shielding our son," he said, voice hollow. "I watched them both die. And now every night I see more people I can't save. I wake up, and they're real. Gone. If this is what I've become—then I want to make sure I'm something those bastards fear."
Jonah stood for a moment, finally, he muttered, "Stubborn gets you killed."
Caleb stood.
"So train me to survive."
Jonah stepped onto the mat and gestured. Caleb followed.
The rubber floor was stained and cracked, duct-taped over old tears. Jonah stripped off his jacket, revealing a body held together by scar tissue and discipline. His left leg had a slight hitch. His right hand looked arthritic. Still, he stood like gravity feared him.
"No gloves," Jonah said. "No pads."
"You sure?" Caleb asked.
Jonah cracked his neck.
"I want you to feel it."
Caleb came in fast. Jab to the temple. Right hook to the body. A burst of anger with just enough form to look competent.
Jonah didn't block. He disappeared.
In one fluid motion, Jonah caught Caleb's wrist, twisted it until the bone ground like chalk, and shoved him face-first into the mat. Caleb's cheek bounced off the floor, lip splitting open on impact.
Before he could breathe, Jonah's knee jammed into his spine, and a taped fist hovered an inch above his exposed throat.
"Dead," Jonah said flatly.
Caleb spat blood and rolled to his feet.
Second round.
He tried to fake low, go high. A burst of elbows, fast and close. He aimed for the neck, the jaw, the solar plexus.
Jonah slipped everything.
Then he stepped inside.
His fist landed clean across Caleb's face — not with rage, but precision.
A crunch. Caleb staggered, nose pouring crimson. Jonah followed with an open-palm strike to the ear. The world tilted. Caleb's balance shattered, and Jonah sent him sprawling with a sweep that cracked Caleb's elbow against the floor.
Caleb screamed through his teeth.
Jonah just stood over him.
"You don't move like a killer," Jonah said. "You move like a man pretending to be one."
Caleb tried again. A scream built in his throat, but he bit it back.
Third round. Sloppier. Slower.
Jonah closed the distance without effort and hooked his leg behind Caleb's knee. A sharp shove, and Caleb went down hard. His shoulder smacked the ground with a bone-deep thud.
Then the tip of Jonah's boot pressed against his throat.
"Dead again."
Caleb coughed and rolled onto his side. Blood from his nose mixed with spit and sweat. He could feel something tearing inside him—an old self, dying slow and ugly.
"I'm not quitting," Caleb whispered.
"I know," Jonah said.
Jonah tossed him a cold rag.
Caleb wiped his face. His teeth were pink. His fingers trembled.
"Pain isn't proof," Jonah said. "Suffering doesn't make you stronger. Learning does. And if you don't listen—if you let your rage drive every movement—then you're just another corpse waiting to happen."
Caleb nodded, wiping blood from the corner of his mouth.
"I don't want to feel better," he said quietly. "I want to feel nothing. I want to be empty when I pull the trigger. When I drive the blade. When they beg."
A long silence followed.
Jonah finally stepped back, stretching the bad leg slowly.
"Then tomorrow, we start with knives."
He looked Caleb over, then turned toward a nearby metal cabinet and opened it — revealing a rack of blades, steel glinting under the broken light.
"Now clean your blood off my mat."
Over the next half a year Caleb was being molded and churned, forged anew, being hammered into a weapon, just like he wanted. But at what cost? Did he truly have so little humanity left in his heart?
Time became pain. It blurred into sweat-drenched mornings and frostbitten nights, bleeding knuckles and broken nails, cracked ribs and silence.
Jonah didn't speak unless it mattered. And when he did, it hurt.
The training was war — not between two men, but between the man Caleb was and the thing he had to become.
They started each day before dawn. The basement steamed with their breath in the cold, lights humming like nervous insects.
Blades came first.
Jonah taught him how to move with steel like it was an extension of bone. Short knives. Long blades. Improvised tools. The first lesson was always the same:
"If it gets stuck, it wasn't fast or deep enough." Jonah imparted his wisdom while demonstrating knife jabs on a pig carcass.
They stabbed at more carcasses hanging from steel hooks. Caleb learned how hard it was to slide a blade through ribs. How wet the handle got when you opened arteries. How killing wasn't elegant—it was ugly, clumsy, loud.
He bled. Often. Jonah broke his fingers once when Caleb hesitated. Another time, he split his cheek with the butt of a training blade.
"No room for pause. You pause, you die."
By the third week, Caleb stopped making sounds when he got hit.
But the visions still came every night.
The girl — maybe nine years old. Standing in traffic. A moment before the truck.
A mother clutching her stomach, blood soaking through her fingers on a subway platform.
An old man screaming as a gas fire engulfed his kitchen.
He saw them before they died.
And always, in the moments before the end
He heard the flapping.
He turned to the sky.
And the Raven was there.
Sometimes perched atop a streetlamp.
Sometimes circling in the fog like a goddamn omen.
Always watching.
Its white-streaked chest — shaped like Isaac's birthmark — glowing against black feathers like a ghost's whisper.
By the third month, Jonah moved the training outside.
They sprinted through alleys until Caleb threw up blood. Crawled across icy rooftops, knives taped to their wrists. Jonah built him a breathing technique to slow his heart under stress, then choked him unconscious in a snowbank to test it.
"You stop fearing death when it starts sounding familiar."
They fought in rain. In snow. On frozen concrete until their knees bruised black and purple.
Once, a broken bottle tore through Caleb's forearm during a mock ambush. He didn't flinch. Jonah laughed.
"You're starting to look like a goddamn weapon."
Caleb saw the Raven more often now.
Sometimes on the edge of buildings.
Sometimes fluttering from tree to tree, silent, like it was guiding him.
One evening, while they trained in the woods outside of the city, Caleb sat alone by the creek. The moonlight shimmered on the black water like oil, and the Raven landed beside him without a sound.
It looked at him—closely, knowingly.
Its eyes were dark and hollow but not empty.
And in that moment, Caleb whispered:
"I'll make them scream for what they did to you, Isaac."
The bird tilted its head.
Then it vanished into the trees.
By the sixth month, Caleb's body was rebuilt.
Lean, sinewed muscle where softness once was. Reflexes hardwired. Pain tolerance unnatural. He moved without wasted effort. Breathed in rhythm. Fought like a predator.
Jonah tested him one last time.
A full-speed knife bout with dulled blades.
No words.
No mercy.
Caleb opened Jonah's forearm with a reverse slash, disarmed him with a pivot and knee to the groin, and had a blade to his throat in under twelve seconds.
Jonah laughed—bloody and breathless.
"Christ," he muttered, sitting back against the wall. "You actually became something."
They sat in silence afterward.
The basement light flickered overhead. Jonah lit a cigarette with shaking fingers, blood trailing down his arm from the shallow cut. He winced but didn't bother wrapping it.
"You know," he said, "too bad you want to kill every gangbanger that breathes. We could've used you in the Corps."
Caleb cracked half a smile.
"I'm not good at taking orders."
"No," Jonah grunted. "You're not."
He looked over at Caleb, the lines on his face deeper than they'd been six months ago.
"You ever wonder why I said yes to training you?"
"I figured you saw something worth saving."
Jonah shook his head. "I saw someone I could use."
He exhaled slowly, smoke curling through the cold.
"They took my wife," he said. "
End of chapter 5.