Page 13 of She Who Was Severed (The Ashen Chain Trilogy #1)

I stop pretending I know what day it is.

There’s no sun down here. No moons. Just a slit of unnatural light outside the bars, constant and low, like the world above forgot this place existed and left one breath of magic behind to rot in its absence.

The food doesn’t change. The air doesn’t move.

I sleep when I can. I stop counting after the third time I wake up without remembering if I dreamed.

Kellen hasn’t come back. I don’t make excuses for him. That’s not bitterness. That’s survival. He made his move. This part’s mine.

The cuffs never come off. They pulse once every few hours, like a reminder.

Not painful—just steady. Enough to make sure I don’t forget who’s in control.

But the chain doesn’t fight anymore. That’s what rattles me most. It’s not thrashing.

Not pushing. It’s waiting. Testing. I think that’s worse.

I think it wants to know what I’ll do without it. So I give it something.

I start pacing. Six steps to the far wall. Five if I stretch. The room’s not quite square. There’s a tilt in the stone under my left foot—old subsidence, maybe. I adjust. Try to use the uneven floor to sharpen my balance. No form, no flare, just pressure. Controlled. Deliberate.

The voice comes back sometime between meals. I only notice because I’ve started eating slower, to measure time by the cooling of broth.

“You’re quieter,” he says.

I sit again, elbows on knees, spine tucked forward like I’m sheltering something beneath my ribs. “You said the Chain stirred before I came.”

“It did.” His voice has that grind again—like it’s being pulled out of stone, not air. “It’s never really quiet. Just learns to listen better than most.”

I turn that over. The phrasing scratches at something behind my eyes. “It’s not a beast, is it?”

“No. It’s a memory.”

That makes my shoulders tense. “I don’t understand.”

He chuckles—dry and close now, like he’s near the same wall I’m leaning on. “You don’t summon it. You resonate with it. Like a note you’re still learning how to hum.”

“That’s useless.”

“No. That’s dangerous. Big difference.”

My hand curls around the edge of the cot. The cloth Kellen brought is still draped over my shoulders. I haven’t washed it. Haven’t shaken it out. Still smells like fire-wind and iron. Still reminds me I’m not alone, even when I am.

I reach beneath the mattress. The manual’s wrapped where I stashed it. Edges soft from overhandling, corners creased from rereads. I know what page I need. I don’t open it—not fully. The cuffs would catch it. And I’m not in the mood to be punished for curiosity. Not today.

I ease to the floor. Cross-legged. Ankles flexed wide.

My back finds the wall again. I plant my palms flat, thumbs slightly lifted.

Just like the page instructs. Rootform spiral.

A beginner’s alignment technique. Breathwork to find pressure before power.

It’s not supposed to do anything extraordinary.

It’s just meant to remind the body where it begins and ends. Right now, that’s all I want.

Inhale. Feel the bruise stretch along my ribs. Hold. Count four. Exhale. Let the pressure sink low into the belly. Again.

The cuffs don’t flare.

But something inside me does.

The voice doesn’t wait long. “You doing magic over there?”

“No.”

“Well… it feels like you are.”

I open one eye. My tone’s flat. “Want to learn it?”

A pause. Then, “Didn’t think you were one of the generous ones.”

“I’m not. I just need a test subject.”

He laughs—hoarse, real. “Now that sounds like the Ash-born I expected.”

I walk him through it. Slowly. I don’t soften it. I don’t skip the hard parts. I give him the technique like I learned it: hard-won, consequence-forward. He listens better than any bonded instructor I ever met. Better than I probably deserve.

“You were trained,” I say, after his third breath cycle.

“Stonecalled,” he confirms. “Failed the Reinforcement Trial. Shattered my humerus and cracked the anchor bone. Beast didn’t come back after that.”

I tilt my head toward the wall. “So you were Severed?”

There’s a pause. Then his voice comes. low and rough. “Yeah. Path failed. Magic broke. They dragged me into the rite.”

He pauses again.

“I lived. That was the part they didn’t like.”

Silence stretches.

“But you said the Chain stirred when I came. ”

His laugh scrapes the air. “Maybe it was never the golem I was meant for. Maybe the Chain knew that before I did.”

Another breath, softer now.

“Maybe it’s just been waiting for someone who could carry what I couldn’t.”

That shuts me up. Not out of pity—out of recognition. Losing a path isn’t like losing a limb. A limb you remember how to use. A path? It haunts you by staying quiet. But to be Severed after that—cut off, discarded, told your magic doesn’t get to exist anymore?

That’s not just worse.

That’s erasure with a pulse.

And if he’s telling the truth—and gods, it sounds like truth—he didn’t just lose his path. He lived through the rite, crawled out of it alone, and still ended up bonded to something the world doesn’t even admit exists.

The Chain didn’t choose him.

It claimed him.

Then left him buried.

I sit with that for a breath. Just one. Then I shove it down, fold it into the work. If the Chain left him buried, I don’t get to waste what it’s giving me now.

I press into the second cycle. Anchor the inhale at the collarbone. Drop it to the sternum. Hold. The cuffs don’t respond. But I feel something pull deep along the seam of my spine.

The chain.

Not waking. Not acting.

Just answering.

Like it heard something familiar and turned its head.

I brace my palm against the floor. The stone’s cold, but something pulses back. Heat, maybe. Or vibration. I hold my breath. Say the word low and slow .

Ashmere.

The name doesn’t change anything I can see.

But the hum deepens. My fingertips itch. My sternum tightens. Not pain. Not release. Just… resonance.

“You said the Chain remembers,” I say aloud, half to myself, half to the wall. “What happens if I remember too?”

He doesn’t answer.

But something does.

The hum inside me doesn’t stop when I finish the form. It lingers. Grows.

Not brighter.

Just closer.

Like it’s waiting for me to finish the sentence.

I don’t speak again. I lean my head against the wall. Close my eyes.

And for the first time since they locked me down here, I don’t feel caged.

I feel seen.

- x -

I wake the way I fell asleep—spine flat to cold stone, legs crossed, palms up. Rootform locked. My breath is steady, trained, but my body aches in the joints that don’t touch heat. The chain hasn’t moved.

Not exactly true.

It hasn’t lashed. Hasn’t dragged me across the floor or tried to bite through the cuffs.

But it’s been humming since last night. Faint and rhythmic, like a heartbeat I can’t quite locate.

Like the bell tone you feel in your bones before it ever hits your ears.

If it’s testing me, I haven’t failed. But I haven’t passed either.

Which means the door’s still open. Whatever that means in a place like this.

The cuffs are still active—Veil-threaded rings clamped tight around each wrist, pulsing every two breaths.

Not enough to burn. Just enough to remind me I’m not in control.

The path manual’s been drilling me on aura control—how to shape it, how to feel it when someone else stirs theirs—but with these bloody cuffs on, I can’t tell if I’m doing it right.

No pull. No shift. No pressure in the air before a spell lands.

It’s like trying to fight blind, in a room where sound doesn’t carry.

Suppression doesn’t erase magic. It just makes you forget how to reach for it.

I set my jaw and start the breathwork. Inhale.

Anchor it high—collarbone. Exhale. Drop it slow to the sternum.

Compress. Down into the gut, until the muscles along my sides tighten and I feel the familiar strain in my back.

Each cycle trims the fat off my thoughts.

Not summoning. Not syncing. Just teaching the body how to feel around a wound it can’t name.

Rootform is posture. What I’m building now is core.

Cycle Four wasn’t in the book. Parts of it were—half a diagram here, a broken margin note there—but the actual sequence was missing.

I had to stitch it together from scraps.

Borrow a pressure hold from a pain-dampening form.

Anchor it with a breath pattern meant for chain retrieval. None of it matched cleanly.

So I guessed. Tested. Bled.

My wrists are still raw from the last attempt—thin burns where the cuffs fought back like they knew I was lying to them.

Doesn’t matter.

I start with pain. Then I push further.

By the fifth cycle, I’m breathing deep into my ribs. Holding it tight. The moment I do, something inside me pulls tight and starts to buzz. The cuffs twitch. I feel the spark before I see it—a sting at my fingertips, then a flash of blue. Too sharp. Too fast. The cuffs flare trying to shut me down.

I drop the breath. Fast. Shoulders relax, knees open wider for stability. No twitch in the chain, but the magic’s on edge now—like a predator waiting for a wrong move.

I go again. This time shorter breath. Tighter anchor. Tension locked to the lowest ribs. The cuffs hold. No spark. But something else shifts.

The chain stirs.

No glow. No light. Just pressure and shadow, like watching ink curl in water. It doesn’t move toward me. It doesn’t move at all. It presses—low and slow—until I can feel it circling just beneath my skin.

My instinct says pull. Grab it. Command it. Make it move.

Instead, I stay still.

Rootform Spiral. Fifth breath cycle. Not a spell—just the rhythm the chain seems to notice. Like knocking on the inside of a locked door and hoping something hears.

The chain hears it.