Page 14 of She Who Was Severed (The Ashen Chain Trilogy #1)

One thread slides from under the cuff. Not around. Through. As if the ring doesn’t matter. As if the lock isn’t being broken but dismissed. Suppression enchantments bind to magic.

The chain isn’t magic. It’s memory. And memory doesn’t obey laws. It just lingers until someone finally listens.

The thread coils across my palm, then dips to the flagstone. There’s a shift beneath it. A tremor—not in sound or light—but in the feel of the floor. Like the stone is remembering something too.

“Whatever you’re doing,” a voice rasps from the next cell, “don’t stop.”

I don’t look. I don’t answer. I press my hips down, ground my weight where it counts, square my shoulders against nothing. Then I pull.

Not on the chain.

On the world .

The thread thickens—silver, weightless, but solid in my hand. Another loop rises and slams into the floor. The stone doesn’t just crack—it gives. Like it decided not to fight back.

The wards light up—corner runes sparking fast and mean. One flares, then shoots straight at my chest.

The chain gets there first.

A strand snaps out, knocks the spell sideways into the wall. Another lashes forward and shatters the glowing mark that cast it. Light scatters. Stone cracks.

I move without thinking. Pivot on one knee. Slam the chain again—down and hard.

The cuffs rupture.

Something snaps. The air hits back—hard. The cuffs go first, and the magic slams through me like I lit a fuse too close to my skin. My shoulders take the brunt. I can’t breathe. I drop and roll, trying to keep from blacking out.

The field’s gone. I can feel the air again. And the chain? It’s still humming.

Only now, it’s louder.

I reach under the cot and pull the manual from its hiding place. Ash-bound leather, brittle at the spine. My cloak’s already slung where I can grab it. I throw it over one shoulder. The cell door’s still closed.

It doesn’t matter.

The chain doesn’t pick locks. It remembers how they broke.

One flick. One turn. One pulse.

The bolt clicks. The door swings open.

The corridor outside is a crooked wound of old spells and worse repairs. Alarms stutter in red and silver. One tries to flare, then fizzles. They don’t know if I count as here anymore .

I move. Quick, low, measured. The chain tightens along my arm like it knows we don’t have time.

Behind me, the voice speaks again—clearer now. “Ash-born. Don’t forget who trained you.”

I don’t stop. Then:

“Give them something worth remembering.”

The chain coils higher. Up the shoulder, against the neck. Cold as ever. And warm, somehow, where it touches skin.

I run.

- x -

The door unlatches with a dull click, not urgent—just done. I don’t stop to listen for more. I shove it open, shoulders already braced, and step out like I expect something to hit me. My boots scrape against uneven stone. The sound’s too loud in the corridor.

The air out here is worse than the cell.

Close and stale, thick with heat and old magic.

Burnt-dust smell, damp under it. Like something once alive was sealed in these walls and forgotten.

Everything feels crooked. The floor dips halfway through the first turn, like it’s trying to shift under my weight.

Stone groans somewhere deeper in the structure, just soft enough to question whether I heard it.

The chain keeps close to my left arm, wrapped like a second skin. Not dragging, not flaring—just there. Its weight settles into me differently now. Steady. Watching. It hasn’t relaxed since the cell door gave way, and neither have I .

The manual’s under my cloak, pressed tight against my chest. My arms stay curled around it like I expect someone to rip it away.

It doesn’t weigh much, but every step makes it feel heavier.

I watch the walls. Every ten paces, a glyph hums awake—some faint, some cracked.

One pulses red and whines too long. That’s the one that matters.

I duck, too slow.

The spell fires from the ceiling—a braid of light woven with Veil-script. It lashes down and clips my shoulder before I finish moving. Heat floods across the joint. I stumble into the wall, jaw clenched, breath caught.

The pain isn’t sharp, but it’s deep. The kind that lingers, already bruising.

I don’t scream.

That’s when the chain moves.

It snaps out hard from my wrist and intercepts the spell before the second arc finishes forming.

No hesitation. It wraps the light in a clean double loop and jerks.

The glyph fractures with a hiss, and the magic falls apart midair, ash-thin and colorless.

I feel the sting under my sleeve. Blood, not much.

Enough to sting. Enough to prove the ward wasn’t for show.

The walls flash red in sequence. No sound. Just pressure. A low pulse behind the eyes and deep in the ears. Left. Right. Left again. Something overhead cracks, and dust spills down in bursts. My legs are already moving.

I clear a collapsed arch and nearly lose my footing on a loose stone. Catch the wall, bounce back, force myself upright. My shoulder burns every time I shift my weight, but I can’t stop. Another glyph bursts near the corner—too close to see which type. I drop my head and keep moving.

The ground shifts under me. I don’t slip—something deep groans—like the bones of the place want out. I don’t stop to see what’s breaking. I vault the last edge and hit the stairwell hard, one shoulder driving into the wall just to stay upright .

The stairs aren’t built for running. The second one caves under my foot.

The third cracks straight through the middle.

I don’t think. I throw the chain up toward the upper landing, feel it latch—somewhere.

Doesn’t matter where. It holds. My body jerks back with the weight of it.

My ribs scream. My wrist stretches half out of socket. I climb anyway.

The top landing doesn’t offer a win. Just a hallway. Narrower. Tighter. Light glows steady overhead—no flicker this time. Not failing. Watching. I don’t like what that means.

A glyph pulses from the far end of the corridor. The chain reacts. Doesn’t wait. Doesn’t angle. It snaps out and crushes the forming spell mid-cast. Sparks scatter. Something inside the wall gives a short, sharp scream—Veilmarked architecture mourning a missed catch.

I reach the last door. It’s open an inch. Just enough.

I shove through. The hinges don’t resist. Cold air slams into me. Wet, wind-cut, alive.

My knees almost go. I drop low, one hand braced against the ground. Not stone. Not a cell.

Soil.

The cloak sticks to my back, blood stiff down the spine. I breathe in too fast and cough half of it back out. The air’s real. Too much of it.

The chain shifts across my shoulder. Not lashing. Not loose. One coil slides over the manual like it’s checking I still have it.

Behind me, something breaks.

I don’t know if it’s the floor I was on or the wall that held it. Doesn’t matter. The sound is heavy. Final. Then nothing.

I don’t look back.

They’ll patch the stone. Rewrite the glyphs. Say it was an accident.

But I got out.

And the chain?

The chain protected me.

- x -

The sky feels wrong. Too open, too cold, too real.

After the cell, the sweating walls, the grind of the corridor and stairwell behind me, the stretch of night air feels like it might take me with it.

I stop moving just past the threshold, my legs threatening to buckle, but not quite. I don’t fall. Not yet.

The chain’s wrapped tight down my back and across one shoulder, weight and heat pinned over the wound where the spell clipped me.

The cloak’s wet on that side, tugging against torn skin.

The blood’s fresh again, though I’m too worn to care how much I’ve lost. I adjust my grip on the manual and start walking.

Just enough to keep the cold from settling too deep in my chest.

Virelle isn’t a city that stays up late.

No taverns. No laughter. The windows are dark, doors sealed tight.

Even the lanterns have gone dim, flickering weakly where the wards haven’t been reset.

One lamp leans broken against the gutter, glass fractured, powder leaking from its core.

My boots scrape over loose stone. I keep moving.

The chain twitches once, low and sharp against the spine. My chest tightens like I missed a breath and tried to catch it too late. Not pain. Not magic. But it wants me to know it’s still here.

The alleys here are narrow. They weren’t meant for too many feet.

This is where people walk when they’ve got something to hide, or something to lose.

A place carved out of shame and use. I duck between a half-buried shrine and what used to be a memory garden.

The mirrors are gone. What’s left is the shape of silence—threadbare cloths hanging from old wire, the kind of quiet you don’t ask permission to enter.

It’s not safety. But it’s enough space to breathe.

And then I hear him.

A single word, low and deliberate: “Stop.”

Not shouted. Not sharp. A command built for obedience, not threat. I turn slow, not because I’m calm, but because the chain coils hard along my ribs and forces me to run.

He’s Veilmarked. No mistaking it. Black robes stitched in spirit-thread, the veil drawn across his face, marked in pale ink. His hands are bare, palms open. One foot forward. Measured. Careful.

“I don’t want to bind you,” he says, voice still low, almost polite. “But I will if I have to.”

I don’t answer. My eyes track his feet. His center of gravity. The distance between us.

“You were seen leaving the tribunal cells,” he says. “I don’t think you mean harm.”

“I’m not sure what I want.”

His brow tilts like he didn’t expect that. “You’re bleeding,” he says. “Exhausted. Frightened.”

“I’m upright,” I say. “That’s enough.”

His fingers twitch once. He doesn’t draw a weapon. Doesn’t cast. He nods. “That’s debatable.”

The chain shifts. Just once. But I feel the air change. Something inside me reacts, like a door being nudged from the other side.