Page 16 of She Who Was Severed (The Ashen Chain Trilogy #1)

I got out under cover of night.

Even with the alert raised. Even with priests whispering to their wards and hounds sniffing the gutters for scent. Even with the whole damn city holding its breath, waiting for a girl with too much blood on her hands and a Chain that shouldn’t exist.

Virelle didn’t stop me.

The Chain didn’t guide me. It didn’t flare. It just coiled tight around my ribs and let me make the choice.

I didn’t run. Didn’t bolt through alleys or leap over patrol lines like the stories say.

I walked.

Ash in my hair. Smoke in my throat. Blood stiff down one sleeve.

No one looked too closely. No one ever does when you walk like you belong to the damage.

I passed the last checkpoint with my head down and my hands open. And the city—my city—let me go.

But this ?

This is worse.

The wild doesn’t greet me. It doesn’t push me out either. It just waits, like it knows I’ve got nowhere else to go.

The first ridge past Virelle isn’t meant to be climbed.

The slope is too steep, the soil slick and loose under my boots.

Thornroots lace through the stone like nerves, grabbing at ankles and tearing straight through cloth.

I climb anyway. There’s no path—not anymore.

And that’s the point. I’m following routes that don’t show up on council maps.

Smuggler lines. Old border scars. The kind of trails people mutter about in temple kitchens, always with a laugh that doesn’t reach their eyes.

The chain stays wrapped along my spine, its weight even and patient. It hasn’t reacted since the breach. But I can feel it thinking. Not in words. Not even in intent. Just pressure, like it’s testing which part of me will break first.

By the second ridge, my boots are waterlogged and my lungs don’t fill clean. Cold’s made a home beneath my ribs. I feel the sting of iron at my wrists where the cuffs rubbed skin down to raw.

I reach for the map anyway, fingers stiff from cold and mud. Dig it out of the pack, drop to one knee, and spread it across a patch of flattened moss.

The edges are worse now. Ink bleeding through the folds, corners soft from damp.

One of the shrine marks is gone completely—just a pale blur where a Veilmarked symbol used to be.

I can still see enough to orient, barely.

Virelle’s boundary sits behind me, east and downslope.

The cliffs I just crossed form the old edge of Selvarra’s influence—before the Council stopped patrolling this far west. Beyond that, the Wanehold starts.

A stretch of broken land no one charts honestly, because no one bonded wants to admit it still exists.

Somewhere ahead, if the map’s even close to right, is Ashmere .

Caldera’s to the north. Nerinth down along the southern pass, tucked near the coast. Cities that still burn their lanterns at night. Cities that don’t care if someone like me vanishes.

This map wasn’t drawn for someone trying to get there. Just a priest’s sketch layered over myth and bad memory. Half a peak line. A collapsed shrine. What might be a path or just a crease in the paper.

But it’s all I have.

So I follow it.

And I don’t look back.

The farther I go, the heavier everything feels. Not just my legs—the air, the quiet. Light drains fast in the trees, and whatever’s left turns flat. There’s no firelight here. Just wet stone underfoot and the sound of my boots dragging through moss I didn’t see coming.

I stopped tracking time around the third ruin.

It was a shrine once—Veilmarked, maybe. Hard to tell.

Most of the statue had collapsed inward, but I could still smell the last rites on the air.

Ash, mostly. Something sweet under it. The wind here doesn’t care about direction. It carries what it wants.

The silence isn’t dead. It’s watching. Every twig crack, every labored breath—I feel them echo down the ridge behind me like a warning I’m too tired to listen to.

And still, his voice finds me.

You don’t know what I’m capable of, Freya.

I don’t hear it out loud. Just memory, curled sharp against the back of my mind. But it lands. Just like it always does.

I feel it then—ghost pressure just below my left ear. The place he kissed last. Not my lips. Not my cheek. Just that one spot, like it means something he won’t say out loud.

My fingers brush the spot before I can stop them. Skin chilled. Still tender. I remember the way he smelled when he leaned in that close. Fire. Wind. A hint of cinder, like he’d just stepped through smoke and didn’t bother shaking it off.

I set my jaw. Shift forward. Let the burn in my legs take over the thought. I’ve got more climb ahead. More silence. More wild between me and what comes next.

But I carry that place with me.

Every step. Every breath.

And I keep going.

When night finally drops, I find cover beneath what used to be a gate arch. The stone’s fractured at the base, held together more by tree roots than design. A gust could bring it down. I still take it. There’s nowhere better within reach.

I don’t bother with much wood. Just enough to light. Enough to keep the dark from swallowing the map whole. The branches snap easy—too easy—and damp needles hiss when they burn. The smoke curls thick and fast, sharp at the back of my throat.

I spread the map by the fire. One edge curls before I realize it’s too close. The paper blackens and eats itself in a line that takes half a symbol with it.

I slap it down with the flat of my palm. The ember dies, but the damage is done.

“Shit.” The word scrapes out with more breath than voice.

I fold the map too hard. The corner tears further. The chain stirs low against my back. A slow drag down the ribs. Not aggressive. Just present. I feel the weight of its attention, I know what it means. It didn’t need that part.

I sit back. Cross-legged on cold dirt, elbows braced on knees. The cloak’s soaked through at the hem. My knees are scraped from where I slipped earlier—once on moss, once on a stone that moved wrong when I stepped. I press my palms to the ground and hold. Breathe once.

Then again .

Anchor high. Drop to belly. Compress. Cycle Six.

It’s not listed in the manual. Not anywhere official. It’s a stitched-together fragment I built myself—part defensive meditation, part veil-thread pull, part raw instinct. I probably shouldn’t use it. Not in this state. But I don’t stop.

The chain tightens across my back like a hand bracing against a push. The pressure spikes before I reach the second layer. Heat flares behind my eyes. My nose starts to bleed. My balance folds sideways and I sway.

The fire shimmers in and out of view. My breath cracks halfway down.

I let go of the form. Let it fall apart like it never mattered. My knee hits dirt. I grip the earth hard enough to split a nail.

The chain pulls back. Not in retreat. In judgment.

You’re not ready.

I fold the map again, slower now. Slide it under the manual. Let the edges crumple where they want. I don’t try to fix what burned.

The chain shifts lower along my ribs, a lazy turn that says more than words would. It doesn’t comfort. Doesn’t threaten.

It just stays.

I lie back under the arch, watch the cracks in the stone above me. Watch the stars drift behind unfamiliar branches. They don’t look like the ones I grew up under. I wonder if that’s because I’ve moved too far, or because I’ve changed too much for them to recognize.

I don’t sleep.

Not really.

I go still. And in that stillness, something else settles with me. Not pain. Not magic.

Expectation.

Like this place didn’t need to welcome me—because it already knew I’d come.

- x -

The chain wakes me before the cold can finish the job. Not with pain. With pressure—tight and steady across my ribs, like it’s bracing for something I haven’t seen yet. My eyes snap open to a sky still caught between night and whatever comes after. No sunrise. Just bruised color stretched thin.

Everything hurts.

Thighs stiff from climbing, calves twitching when I try to stretch them out.

My left wrist’s gone half-numb, the old bruise from the cuffs pressed deep into the bone.

The cloak’s twisted beneath me, damp along the spine.

It was drier when I curled into it. Not now.

The rain must’ve come while I slept—if I slept at all.

I pack in silence. No fire. Just a handful of dried ration scraps I’d lifted from a window ledge in Virelle, and a mouth that still tastes like iron.

The map’s still in one piece, barely. The burn across the bottom corner makes direct tracking impossible, but northeast is still northeast. I set out again.

Uphill. Wind in my face. Broken moon over my right shoulder. The chain stays still, coiled low.

I train when I stop. Not for control. For survival. Breathwork keeps me from unraveling. It’s the only thing I trust more than instinct.

I drop beside a stream that cuts through a gully slick with root and ash. My hands are caked in dried mud and the half-healed blood stain on my elbow splits when I kneel. Doesn’t matter. I settle into Rootform, spine straight, palms on earth, and begin cycling breath.

Cycle Four is muscle memory now. Up through the collar, hold at the ribs, compress low. If I do it right, the burn stays contained. If I slip—well, I’ve learned not to slip. Not if I want to keep my own mind.

Tonight I go further.

I reverse the cycle. Pressure from the feet up, not the breath down. I don’t know if it’s technically a form. I stitched it together from a page fragment and whatever I remembered from being cuffed. It’s raw, uneven, probably dangerous.

Cycle Seven.

There’s no diagram for it. No approved name. Just a shape I feel when I close my eyes and lean into the place where pain builds before it flares. I hold it. Just long enough.

The chain stirs.

It doesn’t lash. Doesn’t hum. Just ripples once along my spine—tight, slow, deliberate. Like something waking up in the dark.

Then the world tilts.