A Man Like None Other (Jared Chance) novel Chapter 6518

Gwendolyn lay against his back and looked at the sea of fire behind them.

Her lips moved. "How many people... did he kill...?"

"It doesn't matter anymore."

Jared's voice was quiet, steady.

"What matters is that no one else is going to die."

He leaped into the air and became a violet streak of light, carrying Gwendolyn toward Freevale.

The violet streak cut across the horizon, lighting the night over the northern Wastelands bright as day.

Behind them, the Celestial Alliance great hall slowly gave way in the inferno.

The roof caved in, and golden tiles rained down across the square with heavy, muffled crashes.

In that moment, the Celestial Alliance, which had ruled the Sixteenth Firmament for tens of thousands of years, was wiped out for good.

*****

Freevale

The ruins lay silent in the vast evening gloom, like the giant skeleton of something long dead.

The valley that had once been alive with noise and people had been reduced to broken walls and shattered stone.

The flagstone city walls had mostly collapsed, and the blackened surfaces were scarred everywhere by blades and axes.

The city gate was gone.

Only two crooked pillars remained, still marked by burns from celestial holy radiance—the scars left behind by the great battle a few months earlier.

The air reeked of scorched earth and rot, with a faint thread of blood underneath it all.

Wind moved through the ruins, lifting ash and dust off the ground and spinning them into the air like countless silent sighs.

The stone hall, the timber dwellings, the training ground, the cultivation chambers—everything in the city had been reduced to rubble.

The carefully carved stone pillars lay toppled across the ground, their broken faces thick with moss.

Broken weapons littered the training ground alongside dried blood. It had darkened to a deep brown and seeped into the cracks in the stone, as if it would never fade.

Dry bones lay scattered all through the ruins, some from Freevale warriors, some from celestial cultivators.

There was no telling them apart anymore. They only lay there in silence, left to the wind and rain.

Freevale's eastern quarter had once held the Elder Court. Its stone halls had been the strongest in the vale, and even so, half of it had collapsed.

What remained of the stone wall still bore Freevale's creed:

The creed had once read, "Liberty, or death." Most of it had been burned away. Only "Liberty" remained.

On the south side, the women's cloister had collapsed completely. Wild grass had pushed up through the cracks between broken stones, swaying in the dusk like a memorial for the lives that had been lost.

Jared dropped onto the ruins with Gwendolyn still on his back.

He looked around and stood there in silence for a long, long time.

He remembered the first day he came to Freevale.

Back then, the whole vale had blazed with lamplight. Cultivators had been everywhere, and so had laughter.

Nathaniel had greeted him at the city gate, that big, broad-shouldered man grinning like a kid.

The lanky man had been on the training ground, crossing swords with someone, and every time he lost, he'd shamelessly refuse to admit it.

Rowe had gone around with a bowl of wine in hand, hunting for drinking partners and swearing to anyone who would listen that Freevale's spirit-wine was the best in the world.

The middle-aged woman had bustled around the kitchen, carrying out bowl after bowl of steaming grain porridge. Her mouth had never been gentle, but every bowl she served had been filled to the brim.

Old Man Vale had dozed over a jade slip in the Library Pavilion.

On the training ground, Rowan had drilled the new recruits in blade work, demonstrating the same movements again and again until sweat soaked his whole body.

Their voices, their faces, their smiles were still that clear to him, as if he'd seen them only yesterday.

But they were all gone.

To defend this land. To keep Freevale's banner flying beneath this sky. To protect their companions. To protect him.

One after another, they had fallen.

And none of them had ever risen again.

Jared's hand clenched into a fist.

His nails bit into his palm hard enough to break the skin.

Purple blood ran through his fingers and dripped onto the blackened ground, staining a patch of ash violet.

He didn't seem to feel the pain.

He only stood there, staring at the ruins in silence, staring at what had once been home.

"Jared..."

Still draped over his back, Gwendolyn's voice came out weak.

She had felt the instant his body went rigid. She had felt that surge inside him too, the emotion rising so hard it was almost impossible to contain.

"Are there... any survivors left in Freevale?"

VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABELVerify