A Man Like None Other (Jared Chance) novel Chapter 5502

"Flaxseed, we're leaving," Jared said, already turning his back on the stunned crowd.

Flaxseed froze for half a heartbeat, then the truth hit him—Jared had decided to stop fighting.

A sigh slipped past his cracked lips. He shot one last, helpless look at the cultivators still hurling curses, then shuffled backward beside Jared, melting into the shadowed edge of the Soul Convergence Altar.

There the two men stood, motionless witnesses to the unfolding ritual, bitterness, dread, and sorrow swirling together in their chests like an untamed storm.

High on the platform, Edison allowed a triumphant grin to spread across his face.

"You all saw it, did you not? The traitor's bravado has dried up!" he shouted, voice ringing like a cracked bell. "Steady your minds—ignore him. In only a few breaths, your breakthroughs will arrive!"

With theatrical flourish, he lifted the jade scepter once more, murmuring a string of ancient syllables that tasted of honeyed poison.

Soft light poured from the scepter, oddly gentle yet laced with a hypnotic pull. Beneath the dais, the black runes stitched into the stone flickered, came alive, and began knitting their earlier fissures shut.

The cultivators who had been hurled aside by Jared's strike wavered. Doubt clouded their expressions for a heartbeat, then they closed their eyes again, sinking willingly back into Enaricus's counterfeit sermon.

Pale-blue soul threads seeped from between their brows, drifting toward the carved trough like tiny, obedient rivers.

Those glimmering strands merged in the groove, weaving a silent confession of their owners' ignorance and tragedy.

Flaxseed's teeth ground together. "Fools—utter fools," he muttered, knuckles whitening around his fists.

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