Those eyes were calm-unnaturally calm-like quiet water that could drown a city. The chieftain understood, with dawning dread, that Jared was looking at him the way a man looks at an ant. He roared, trying to shatter the fear with sound alone.


    Muscles knotted beneath his hide as he swung his hammerrge enough to break mountains. The air buckled around the descending weapon. He meant to smash this eerie human into nothing but pulp.


    Jared did not bother to draw the sword at his hip. He did not even take a stance.


    He merely lifted his left hand-pale, slender, almost delicate-and spread his fingers toward the howling hammer. Then he closed them.


    Crack!


    A sound like ciers splitting echoed. The hammer, forged from an unknown monster''s spine and said to be unbreakable, splintered as though it were rotten wood. One heartbeatter, it exploded into a cloud of ivory shards that glittered in the sun.


    The shrapnel never reached Jared. Instead, unseen force raced back along the handle. The Melded Beastkin leader''s arms cracked, bent, and he shot backward as if flung by an invisible giant, screaming blood into the wind before mming against distant rock. Bones snapped; he would not rise again.


    All of it happened between one sh of lightning and the next.


    From Jared''s arrival, to the elder of the Demon Sect falling, to the Melded Beastkin leader''s destruction-no more than three seconds.


    Silence swallowed the battlefield.


    Every surviving Infinite Soul Demon Sect disciple and Melded Beastkin warrior froze as though time itself had bound them. Their two mightiest leaders—one dead, one crippled-had fallen before they truly understood the fight had begun.


    Across the shattered ground, swordsmen of the Mystic Sky Sword Sect stood open- mouthed. Their hands trembled. Rumor had told them Jared was formidable; rumor hadcked the imagination to describe this.


    ra''s crimson de now pointed at the earth. She stared at Jared''s back, that in robe she once mocked suddenly towering in her eyes—an unfathomable cliff.


    Memories rushed in: her father''s warnings, Jared''s mild smile, her own dismissive words. A hot tide of shame threatened to drown her.


    So Father was telling the truth. I''m so ignorant. Who in the world is this man?


    Jared paid the swirling emotions no heed. His gaze swept the remaining enemy ranks—measuring, deciding.


    "Surrender, or die."


    Four simple words, yet theynded like hammers on every quaking heart, leaving no space for doubt-only a choice between kneeling and oblivion.


    Steel rasped against stone, then fell silent. One by one, thest surviving enemy fighters-barely a


    dozen stared at the elder''s body. sprawled in the dirt and at thei beast-fusion leader writhing and howling a short distance away. Whatever courage still smoldered in them guttered out.


    ng!


    ng!


    Swords, axes, and spears slipped from numb fingers and rang against the ground. Pale-faced, they dropped to their knees, shoulders shaking like leaves in a storm.


    Only then did Jared turn. His calm


    gaze settled on ra, who was still reeling from what she had just witnessed. The moment their eyes met, a tremor ran through her slender frame. Heat rushed into her


    cheeks, and she looked away


    away.


    vallowing the swirl of relief,


    gratitude, and mortification


    tightening in her chest.


    "Ms. Cloudridge," he said, voice as even as if he had not just shattered a strike force


    in a heartbeat, "clear the field. Have the disciples clear the corpses, question the prisoners, and map every patrol pattern they know—especially where Paxton and the others might have fled to."


    "Y-Yes... Mr. Chance." Head bowed, voice no louder than a mosquito''s buzz, Selena forced herself to breathe. She rallied the still-dazed disciples, barking crisp orders that steadied her own nerves as much as theirs.


    When she dared another nce at the young man in the robe-hands folded behind him, staring toward the distant haze of the Myriad Beast Mountains-her eyes had changed. Thest spark of disdain was gone, reced by reverence and a curious, unbidden urge to understand the mystery standing before her. Who in heaven''s name is Jared Chance?