Chapter 5800

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 hammer large 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 glaciers splitting echoed. The hammer, forged from an unknown monster’s spine and said to be unbreakable, splintered as though it were rotten wood. One heartbeat later, 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 slamming against distant rock. Bones snapped; he would not rise again.