A Man Like None Other (Jared Chance) novel Chapter 6000

Warm sunlight spilled across the step outside the lodge. Bamboo leaves swayed, shaking thin slats of shadow over the flagstones.

Lyza squinted into the brightness. Jared and Luther stood beside her a heartbeat ago. Now their outlines shimmered, slipped between light and shadow, and were simply gone.

Her fingers curled against her palm. Breath held, she shaped a prayer she dared not speak: Come back alive, both of you.

She spun to Panther and Monkey. Sunlight slid off her face, leaving only hard intent.

"Pack everything," she said, voice low but sharp. "We move to Number Two safehouse exactly as the elder ordered. Fast, no trace."

Roof tiles flickered past beneath Luther’s boots as he followed Jared across Jade Immortal City. They were nothing more than wind-rushed shadows slipping over tangled alleys and eaves.

Jared never took a straight path. He cut left into a deserted lane, dropped behind a collapsed courtyard wall, then vanished through a drain mouth that stank of moss and rust.

Luther mirrored him, letting every wisp of his own ghostly breath thin until even he could barely feel it.

Shadow craft was blood and bone for Luther, a birthright of the Ghost Clan. Yet tonight he chased Jared’s heel prints and still couldn’t catch the man’s scent.

Awe pricked beneath his ribs—a sharp, wordless thrill that someone not born to darkness could fold himself this thin.

Time stretched, the cadence of their footfalls matching Luther’s pulse. After what felt like a single slow exhale, Jared halted beneath the west wall of Jade Immortal Manor.

No guard had barked, no dog had stirred. They could almost hear dust settling.

The section wasn’t the formal gate. A single lantern burned far off, and the patrol route left lazy gaps.

Still, pale runes trickled along the spirit-jade blocks, and small eye-slits marked sniper niches every dozen paces.

Jared waved Luther down the wall line to a tangle of ancient vines. The cords were thick as arms, knotted into the stone like stubborn veins.

Pausing, Jared pressed two fingers to the vine-coated brick. Luther felt nothing, but Jared’s eyes unfocused, listening with a sense far deeper than hearing.

"There’s an old runoff pipe inside," Jared murmured, barely shaping air.

"Rusty, forgotten, and too small for maintenance spells to bother with." Jared’s mouth curved. "Perfect."

Jared’s thought brushed Luther’s mind like cold breath. "Here’s our door."

A bead of gray haze pooled on Jared’s fingertip. He tapped a brick beneath the vines.

The haze seeped inward. Tiny clicks rang, soft as beetle jaws behind the stone. Hidden tumblers rolled open.

A hand-sized panel slid back without a whisper.

Cool, musty air gusted from the gap, carrying the taste of old water and stone. The passage was barely shoulder wide.

Jared slipped sideways and was gone. Luther inhaled once, flattened his shoulders, and flowed in after him.

Once they stood within, Jared pressed an inner catch. The brick eased shut, erasing every seam.

The tunnel dropped at a shallow angle. Slime-dark moss slicked each stone, making their steps whisper. Mildew and wet earth thickened every breath.

They descended what Luther judged to be several dozen yards before the shaft split.

Jared paused, comparing Lyza’s markings with his own sweeping sense. He pointed toward the left fork, half choked with rubble and night.

They burrowed forward, bodies folding and twisting like climbing animals, squeezing between cracked drain tiles and natural faults.

Where rusted grates blocked them, Jared brushed them with a flicker of chaotic force; metal sighed and fell away like dust.

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