A Man Like None Other (Jared Chance) novel Chapter 5201

He lifted the token, hands shaking. “T-This is the Flaxseed clan leader’s badge,” he stammered. “Legend says only the clan leader could possess it, yet here it is!”

Jared unrolled the beast skin. The archaic script fought his eyes, but his studies in dead languages let him scrape together the gist.

It told of the Abyss of Fallen Demons, once a battlefield where humans and fiends butchered each other, the ground so soaked with death that a master rune-smith later caged the fallen horrors deep below, giving the chasm its name. That artificer, the scroll revealed, had been the ancestors of the Flaxseed clan.

“So your ancestor was a charm master from the elder days!” Jared looked up, wonder edging his voice. “The scroll says he poured out his life sealing the Abyss of Fallen Demons, hiding part of his legacy somewhere inside it so his descendants could one day strengthen the barrier and guard the Nine Serpent Mountain.”

Suddenly, Jared understood why Flaxseed’s charm spells had always felt so deft; the talent ran in his blood.

Eyes burning, Flaxseed stared at the script. “So we were never ordinary,” he whispered. “If the Flaxseed clan achieved such greatness, how did we end up wiped out?”

Jared kept reading; the second half of the scroll carried a darker revelation.

The seal, it claimed, weakened every thousand years, and the Flaxseed clan had been charged with descending into the abyss whenever that happened to weave fresh rune formations. Two thousand eight hundred years ago, the barrier faltered early; the clan spent everything holding the monsters down, only to be attacked by an unseen hand while they lay exhausted.

“Their extinction, it seems, was tied to whoever wanted that seal to break.” Jared set the strip of beast skin aside. “Whoever is behind this probably hopes the demons will shatter the seal, or else they want the legacy your forefather left here.”

Flaxseed clenched his fist so hard that his nails bit through skin. “Whoever they are, I’ll uncover the truth.”

He slipped the token and the beast skin into his robe as though he had just pocketed every hope his bloodline still possessed.

Jared’s gaze drifted toward the cavern’s shadowy heart, where a narrow stone door carried the same whorled sigils that adorned the bronze casket.

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