A Man Like None Other (Jared Chance) novel Chapter 5996

Jared withdrew his hand. A bead of gray light clung to his palm, winked out, and was gone.

He stayed still. His spiritual sense fanned across the room like a silent radar sweep, tasting for loose threads, alarms, or anything that remembered Miles' existence.

Two breaths. That was all the span between arrival, strike, and erasure.

Fast, precise, merciless—carried out beneath the threshold of sound.

He moved to the window, tilted his head, and let the night breathe against his ear.

The Executioners’ Quarters remained hushed. Far off, voices drifted from the Duty Room, and beyond them the measured crunch of patrol boots passed by and faded.

Nothing from the cottage leaked outward; the silence lay intact.

Still, he did not step away.

His gaze dropped to the cushion where Miles had been meditating. Beside it, a dull stone slab covered a thumb-sized recess, faint sigils pulsing beneath the dust.

A flick of will unraveled the sigils. He lifted the slab and found several jade slips, a pouch of prime crystals, and a black token carved with the single, snarling word Execution; the reverse carried Miles’ name.

Jared gathered the slips and slipped his awareness inside them.

One held execution logs. He skimmed until one line snagged him like barbed wire.

Date: Umbral Calendar year nine thousand seven hundred sixty-three, Frost Month seventeen.

Location: Soulfall Slope.

Condemned: Sidney (male), Cadence (female).

Charge: Desertion from Upper Heaven, violation of forbidden knowledge.

Overseer: Grand Chamberlain Quentin.

Executioners: Garth, Miles. Note: Soul-Refining Crystal A11-73 employed. Souls secured and delivered to Mr. Fay.

The clinical columns sliced deeper than any blade, each word a splinter driven under the ribs.

Sidney, Cadence—their names reduced to items on a butcher’s ledger.

His fingers blanched around the slip, yet he forced his breath to smooth out, one slow draw after another.

The other slips yielded only Punishment Hall bylaws and tattered body-training fragments—useless debris.

His attention returned to the Execution Token.

The material hummed, faintly threaded into the wards that webbed this quarter of Jade Immortal Manor; a key, perhaps, or a pass deeper inside.

After a moment’s thought he pocketed the token and the incriminating log, restored every other object, then set the stone back as though it had never been touched.

He flicked the last speck of ash from his sleeve, then drifted back through the numbed warning sigils. The courtyard wall gave no protest; stone, moonlight, and shadow all stayed silent beneath his feet.

A familiar throb in the outer barrier guided him to the thin seam where power traded places. He slipped through it as easily as breath leaves a lung, and the Executioners’ Quarters fell away behind him.

From the moment he had entered to the instant he emerged, every layer of Jade Immortal Manor’s vaunted defense had behaved like painted scenery—lovely to admire, useless to touch.

*****

He reappeared at the Bamboo Grove Lodge scarcely half an hour after he’d left, dew still clinging to the slender leaves as though time itself had been reluctant to move.

Through the lattice door he spotted Lyza, Luther, and Panther, with Monkey pacing tight anxious circles that never quite crossed the threshold of the low table.

The air inside felt crowded, the quiet so thick it seemed to press against his teeth; they must have been rehearsing every possible outcome of his errand.

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