A Man Like None Other (Jared Chance) novel Chapter 5928

The valley erupted—an ocean of gray spirits boiling skyward, their wails coiling together until the air itself seemed to sob.

Thousands burst from ruins, bone piles, even the ragged seams of space. Some retained twisted human shapes, others rolled like fetid mist, all bearing emerald flames where eyes once lived.

They did not fly so much as swim, bodies rippling through the air and leaving rings of colorless ripples in their wake.

"Set up the array!" Winslow barked as he swung his cane outward.

Silver threads erupted from the tip and expanded into a vast shining web that snapped shut around the party like a celestial net.

Azure runes flowed along every strand, exuding the tranquil force of the Clearheart Soul-Guarding Array—the bane of all malevolent entities.

The first spirits struck. Sizzling echoed as their pallid forms melted away, evaporating like frost under midday sun.

Yet the horde was endless. Impact after impact rocked the web. It quivered, dimmed. Winslow's face blanched beneath the strain.

"Master!" Leopold and Selina sprang forward, swords and ringing bells flaring to reinforce the faltering shield.

Behind Leopold, the coarse-wrapped longsword gave a startling ring as it flew from its sheath. Light burst like a scarlet rainbow, multiplying into thirty-six gleaming sword shadows that locked themselves around the light-weave in a perfect sword array.

Each sword shadow cut with merciless precision. Wherever it passed, wraiths were sliced clean in two, viridian sword energy coiling along the wounds to bar the severed souls from knitting themselves whole again.

Selina folded her legs, settled into stillness, and unhooked the silver bell at her hip.

With a gentle flick, she sent its chime across the darkness. Clear, crystalline rings blossomed into visible ripples, and every wraith they touched slowed, ghost-fire in their eyes guttering as though thought itself had been shaken.

But the respite would last only a heartbeat.

From every quarter, new wraiths surged, and among them loomed several whose auras dwarfed the rest—true Wraith Kings, tyrants of the dead tide.

One giant wraith, more than ten yards tall and stitched from countless bones, threw back its skull and roared, dark-red flame blazing inside hollow sockets.

Each ponderous step cracked the earth into spider-web fissures, releasing waves of putrid death-mist that rolled like storm surf.

Opposite it drifted a pale woman in tattered court robes, beautiful yet bloodless, cradling a broken jade hairpin while she hummed an age-old, heartsick lullaby.

The melody threaded straight into the mind, swaying one's very soul, drowning courage in sorrow.

Vermilion Demon Lord snorted. "Hmph. Pitiful soul remnants... How dare you swagger in my sight!"

Scarlet light flooded his pupils, and a demonic aura erupted around him like a breaking dam.

He strode beyond Leopold's light-web, curled his right hand, and drew from empty air a longsword wrought entirely of dark-crimson flame.

"Demonic Flame—Soul Sever!" he roared.

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