A Man Like None Other (Jared Chance) novel Chapter 6516

Jared stopped before the door.

His violet eyes passed over the tangled sealing sigils with the same calm he might have given a few scraps of waste paper.

He didn't study the wards.

Didn't work out a way to break them.

Didn't use any technique at all.

He made only one move.

He reached out and closed his hand around the lock.

The lock had been forged from ten-thousand-year cold iron. At its center was a core sigil no bigger than a thumb—the control hub for all seven seals.

It was viciously cold, throwing off a dim blue sheen in the dark.

Chaos-flame poured from his palm.

The violet fire spread from his hand onto the lock and burned through the seven wards one layer after another.

There was no earthshaking blast. No violent surge of spiritual power.

Only the faint hiss of fire eating through them like paper touched by flame.

The first ward crumpled before the chaos-flame like a thin sheet thrown into a fire—curling, blackening, then breaking apart in an instant.

The second layer. Then the third.

Flame crawled along the lines of the warding sigils, burning in the same direction their light flowed, unraveling the seal structure built from those laws of the realm from the inside out.

The instant the fourth ward blew apart, a blinding white flash ripped through the passage.

It was the seal's backlash, striking the moment it was forced open.

But before that surge could spread, the chaos-flame swallowed it whole.

The fifth layer. The sixth.

The fire only burned hotter, violet light flooding the entire passage until every inch of it stood exposed.

The saintlight sigils on the walls began to melt, running downward like candle wax.

Then came the seventh layer, the final ward.

That one had been left behind by a mighty adept of the elder celestials, and it carried the laws of the realm at the Golden Immortal level.

It held for three breaths inside the chaos-flame.

Then it cracked apart like an eggshell.

Seven wards.

Fourteen breaths.

Erased.

Jared gave his wrist the slightest flick, and the lock forged from ten-thousand-year cold iron shattered straight into iron dust.

The main gate crashed down and slammed into the ground with a deep, heavy boom.

Beyond it lay a cell, cramped and damp, cold enough to seep into bone, with no trace of daylight.

There was only one lamp inside.

Its oil was nearly gone, and on the wick a flame smaller than a pea trembled weakly.

That feeble light barely reached the corner of the cell.

A pile of moldy straw had been heaped there.

A figure sat on top of it.

She wore a white dress, but it was so torn and ruined there was no telling what it had once looked like.

Her bare arms were so thin they were almost nothing but skin stretched over bone.

Scars covered her skin—whip marks, burns, and branded wounds left behind by some arcane implement.

Her hands were locked in black spirit-lock chains.

The chains ran out from the wall and pinned her hard against the freezing stone.

Sealing sigils covered every link, giving off a dim blue glow.

Each time that glow pulsed, another thread of her spiritual power was drained away to keep the seal running.

Her face was white as paper, and her cracked lips were split enough to bead with blood.

Her black hair, once thick as a waterfall, hung in a wild tangle over half her face.

She was curled into herself in the corner, as if making herself smaller might help her fight off the cold.

At the sound of the gate collapsing, she slowly lifted her head.

The messy curtain of black hair slid aside, revealing a face gone thin but not broken.

Her lips trembled.

Her eyes brimmed with tears, but she held them there by force.

Those eyes should have been bright, alive.

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