A Man Like None Other (Jared Chance) novel Chapter 5612

Yet difficult was not the same as impossible. Jared steeled himself. He would restore his friend even if it meant tracking down Arthur. He was rumored to be able to resurrect the dead as easily as others brewed tea. If he could pull souls from ash, surely he could weave flesh around a living fragment.

Inside the hollow mountain, the Vermilion Demon Lord drifted from wall to wall, brushing stony ridges as if they were the faces of old comrades. Suddenly, he stopped. In the far corner, two faint, overlapping hearts—scorched into the rock ages ago—still shimmered. He went completely still, the cave's silence wrapping around him like winter snow.

"I never imagined... her hearts would still be here," he breathed, the words so soft they barely stirred the dust.

Watching that frozen reverence, Jared realized there was more to the demon lord than swagger and battle scars. And the mysterious "her" was unmistakably a woman.

"Who was she?" Jared asked, his voice gentle, unwilling to trample on reverence.

"Back then, they branded me a monster of the demonic path—light and darkness could not co-exist, they said—so they set their faces against our love. Their elders laid intricate snares, determined to erase me from existence. Selene would not stand idle. She shattered her sect's sacred rules and fought beside me, yet their numbers swallowed us whole and drove us to the brink. With a single heartbeat left, Selene cast a forbidden art, ripping open a path of escape for me at the cost of her own life."

"I watched her dissolve before my eyes—moonlight scattered by a violent wind—and I could do nothing. In that instant, my heart tore apart. Pain and fury dug so deep they twisted everything I was. Since that day, I have lived on rage alone. I vowed to drench the heavens in blood for her sake."