Page 26 of She Who Was Severed (The Ashen Chain Trilogy #1)
NULL ORDER: STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURES
— CLASSIFIED TIER VII —
Codename: Null Order | Division: Council Suppression Command | Path-Level Access: REDACTED
MANDATE
To locate, subdue, or eliminate individuals exhibiting unstable or unregulated path phenomena. Target classification includes Severed, rogue bondholders, Ashenborn, or unsealed relic-linked entities.
PRIMARY DIRECTIVES
Containment Before Kill: Live targets are prioritized for interrogation unless override code SEVEN is issued.
Erase All Witnesses: Civilian exposure is not tolerated. Clean every perimeter.
Chainborn Protocol: If subject exhibits Ashen Chain resonance, suppress at distance. Avoid resonance crossfire .
Sigil Cover: All operations conducted under false seal clearance. Signature authority forged as needed.
Zero Public Echo: If path-signature visibility exceeds Class Three, mission is terminated via burn clause.
TACNOTES
Chainbearers may display inverse magic logic. Expect reflection, not reaction.
Team comms restricted to glyph-coded line of sight. No vocal commands.
Assume all target testimony is weaponized.
If approached by local factions (Severed, ex-priests, bonded civilians), neutralize memory.
Do not touch active glyphwork unless authorized. Living sigils bite.
SQUAD IDENTIFIERS
Operatives within the Null Order do not use names. Designations are issued per mission. Command flow runs through a field Lead, with tactical relays through Signal and Silence units.
FINAL RULE
The Null Order leaves no story behind. If the subject lives, they forget.
If they remember, they were never meant to.
They come in under mist.
Four shadows breaching the western quarter of Ashmere in single file, eyes up, mouths shut. No insignia. No names. Just signals—hand, breath, blink. The unit moves like a single organism with four lungs, built for silent insertion and fatal exits.
Lead drops into the broken courtyard first. His boots skim ash-coated stone, and his hand lifts in a single arc: Hold. Behind him, Signal and Ghost peel off, sweeping opposite flanks. Rear coverage: Anchor , always three steps behind and never heard twice.
The place smells like mildew and burnt ether. A city held together by stubbornness and mold.
Lead breathes once through the rebreather, eyes flicking across their temporary hold. A fallen colonnade. Two rooftops angled inward like broken wings. Perfect sightlines. Minimal movement.
He taps the lens crystal stitched into his cowl. The projection flares, brief and dim, across the inside of his vision.
Target: Freya Thorne
Classification: Ashen Chain anomaly — Tier-Red
Objective: Contain. Do not kill unless provoked.
Clearance Authority: Torvannen Heir
Lead squints at that last line. Tor’s heir. Sloppy. But they’ve moved under flimsier justifications. The seal was real. He saw it himself.
Didn’t mean it was real real .
He flexes the chain-sleeve on his left forearm—non-magical, utility only. Then gives the signal: Advance low.
Ashmere doesn’t fight them. It watches. The kind of place that survives by playing dead.
They move through the perimeter like blood through old pipes. No alarms. No resistance. Just heat signatures flaring dull in the ruined alleys—vendors, drunks, ex-path castoffs. None worth pausing for. Unless someone screams.
Signal’s voice brushes over comms. “Strikepath glyphs are stable. Null-zone holds.”
Lead confirms. “Any movement on target?”
Ghost hums once, fingers flicking across the rune-slate in silent rhythm. “Trace pattern matched on northwest axis. Cloak: third-hand, damp. It’s her.”
“She alone?”
“Appears so.”
No smiles. Just a silent tick of internal approval.
They were told she was unstable. Newly bonded. Untrained .
She should be disoriented by now.
She should be soft.
They find her just before the open square.
She’s standing in profile, cloak drawn tight, hair damp from mist. No guards. No visible weapon. No backup.
Anchor sights the bead with a controlled breath. “Eyes on the target.”
Lead gives the signal.
Then everything goes wrong.
- x -
Kellen
I don’t hear the first lie. I feel it.
It’s in the way the air changes near the council chamber doors—too quiet, too calculated. A sentence whispered just loud enough to reach the corridor. Deliberate.
“…authorization came from the Torvannen heir.”
My jaw locks. I don’t stop walking, but I don’t walk right either. My body tilts like my balance just shifted by degrees. I veer toward the old stone alcove behind the archivist’s arch, hand brushing the wall for no reason I admit. The heat’s already rising under my skin.
Another voice—calm, bored, deadly.
“Seal verified?”
“Imprinted. Fully valid. Her name’s on the slate.”
Her .
The word doesn’t echo. It detonates behind my eyes.
I hold still because if I move right now, the floor might not survive it. I exhale through my nose. The breath doesn’t cool me. It doesn’t even leave clean. I taste heat. Taste iron.
A third voice enters—older, clipped. Cold with control. “She’s unstable. The field team is already en route. By now, they’ll have eyes on her.”
The dragon coils so tightly inside my ribs I feel my heartbeat thud against bone. Pressure blooms beneath my sternum. Not fear. Not even rage. Certainty. That this is real. That they’ve done it. That it’s my name they dressed it in.
I move. I don’t remember choosing to. I’m already down the west stairwell before the decision catches up.
I don’t bother with caution. Every step hits too hard. The air warps faintly as I pass—the kind of shimmer that usually comes before a flare. I don’t flare. Not yet. I hold it.
Barely.
The northern study door resists the first pulse of my sigil. I override it with heat. Wood groans. Metal softens. The latch clicks because it doesn’t want to melt.
The room’s dim. No spelllight. No airflow. I don’t need either.
I cross to the locked drawer. Break the outer ward with a touch and rip it open. The folder is where it should be. So is the seal. The ink. The signature.
But the location isn’t.
Ashmere .
Not the decoy path I sent them down. Not the ghost-traced ruin I marked to keep them off her trail.
Ashmere.
They used my real signature. My seal. My penstroke. They forged nothing. Just changed the destination and let the truth do the damage.
She’ll see it .
She’ll believe it.
She’ll think I sold her out to save my rank. My reputation. My name.
The dragon snarls. This time, I don’t push it down.
Heat pulses outward in tight, irregular bursts—sharp as muscle strain, but deeper.
My skin goes tight across my shoulders, then burns, then tighter still.
My breath scalds on the way out. Not figuratively.
I feel it catch in my throat like steam off boiling iron.
My vision blurs at the edges, not from rage but from internal compression—like there’s no more space inside me to hold this.
I grab the edge of the desk. Not to steady myself. To keep from tearing something else apart.
The wood warms under my grip in seconds. Then hot. Then dangerous. Smoke lifts in a slow curl from beneath my palm, thin and steady. I feel the lacquer bubble. The grain cracks beneath my fingers. I don’t move.
I don’t pull away.
Let it burn.
This wasn’t a clerical error.
This wasn’t interference.
This was constructed.
They fed her to a strike team and wrapped the blade in my name. Dressed betrayal in ink and legal formality and called it justice.
Steam curls off my shoulders.
My hands are too hot to touch the desk anymore. The edge blackens where my fingers rest.
She’ll think I chose this.
She’ll think I aimed it.
She’ll think I let them.
A growl builds in my throat and doesn’t stop. The dragon presses against my ribs, my spine, my lungs. Every breath feeds it .
A ward glyph on the far wall flares and dies. Another sparks—then cracks. Something in the ceiling whines. I don’t look.
The bond is done hiding.
I cross the study in five steps and shove open the balcony doors.
Wind slams into my chest. Cold. Pointless. The heat doesn’t break. It spreads.
I step into the night and the air ripples around me. The balcony railing hisses where my hand touches it. Stone blackens under my bare feet.
“She trusted me,” I say aloud, but my voice doesn’t sound right. Too deep. Burned from the inside.
“They made it look like I handed her over.”
My skin steams. My back glows faint orange where the dragon marks thread under the surface. Breath comes fast now. Not because I’m winded.
Because I’m done holding it in.
“They wanted a traitor?” I say, louder now.
I don’t shout.
I ignite.
Flame bursts across my shoulders, wraps down both arms. The balcony stone fractures under me. I step up. One foot on the rail.
My dragon comes.
I leap.
- x -
Freya
Ashmere smells wrong before it breaks.
The market’s bones still carry the usual stink—burned resin, blooded sweat, too many people pretending they aren’t desperate.
But today it’s pinned under a kind of stillness that doesn’t belong.
No shouting. No back-alley gamblers. Even the hawkers are quiet.
The air feels like it’s waiting to tighten.
I slow down. No reason. No trigger. Just instinct. The mist clings close to the ground, slicking the cobbles and softening sound. My boots land louder than they should.
The stall wall near the spice vendor should have the mark. Red chalk, shaped like a fang—one of Vale’s signals. Instead I see only soot. And a single dark smear that’s dried too clean to be fresh.
The Chain shifts under my ribs. Just once.
Not a pull.
A warning.
I turn, too late.
They drop from the rooftops in formation—four figures, silent and efficient. No colors. No shouts. Runes already sparking across their chests. Suppression-grade. Council-trained.
I stay still.
The Chain stays quiet.