Page 1 of She Who Was Severed (The Ashen Chain Trilogy #1)

Somewhere, something is burning.

Only, there’s no flame. No heat. Just the scrape of metal over bone—alive, endless, grinding. Chains stretch in every direction, wrapped tight around a battlefield that doesn’t remember what it once was. Just silence now. Silence and ash. And in the middle of it—me.

Not the version of me that could run. Not the girl they trained or the body I used to know. Just a shape, cracking open from the inside.

The sky’s wrong. It’s this bruised stone color with veins of red-gold light twitching through it like nerves, like something dying slow.

The ground hums under my feet, low and steady.

My hands are torn open. I don’t remember how.

I just know I’m bleeding. But the pain doesn’t land.

There’s only pressure. Something older than gods, locking around my chest like it means to stay.

I see it before it moves.

A manticore—huge, watching me, its face half-bone, half-smoke. Eyes like they’ve been gouged open and lit from the inside. It doesn’t speak. But its mouth shifts .

Chainborn.

I hear it in my head. No, not hear. Feel. Like it was carved into my skull with a dull knife. That word knows me. Like it was waiting.

I don’t mean to move, but I do. My hand reaches for the chains.

They reach back.

They wrap around my arms before I make contact. Cold first. Then blister-hot. They don’t ask. They pierce. They pull. They bind. I scream.

Not because I’m scared.

Because I know this.

Somehow, I know this.

And just before the vision tears itself apart, I see them—five beasts, silent on a crumbling wall. Dragon. Griffin. Leviathan. Golem. Phoenix. None of them roar. None fight. They kneel.

The chains cinch tighter.

The world folds open like something giving up.

And I wake to the sound of my name being called.

The Bonding ceremony has begun…