Page 32 of She Who Was Severed (The Ashen Chain Trilogy #1)

Kier

The world tastes like blood and bone ash.

It’s in my teeth. Behind my eyes. Lodged somewhere between my lungs and the hollow where my voice used to live.

I don’t open them yet—my eyes—because I already know what’s left.

Not ruin. That was always the price. But silence.

If they’re all gone—if no one survived to witness what crawled out of the flames—then this was just noise. Noise dies. I won’t.

The breath I drag is thick and sour, like smoke filtered through rot. It cuts on the way in, oil-slick and ragged, and still I take it. Because pain means I’m not ash yet.

I was supposed to die in that chamber.

That was the plan. Dragonfire doesn’t miss. It consumes, sears, erases. Burn the throne, burn the law, burn me with it. Make a martyr out of madness. Make sure no one lives to challenge the rewrite.

But I am not gone.

I open my eyes .

Light stabs through the collapsed rafters overhead, smoke threading the gaps like it’s too afraid to rise.

The air hangs thick—choked brown with soot, veined green where old glyphs tried to hold.

Blood mist catches the light in bursts, turning the broken floor red, then darker.

Nothing stands. Not truly. The dais is split open like a jawbone.

The Tribunal seal has half-melted into the far wall, warped and screaming.

I am the only thing still upright.

I move to sit, and the left side of my body protests with the wet slap of skin pulling free from stone. Burned. Partial. Some places down to tendon. The back of my thigh rips free first, then my ribs. I grunt. Not pain—confirmation. I’m still inside it.

I brace. Roll to my elbow. There’s no glory in it, just the slow mechanics of survival.

Every nerve lights up in delayed agony as I plant my right foot, press to stand.

One knee gives and locks again. I hold. Not proud.

Just vertical. Ash spills from my shoulders like black sand shaken loose from a corpse.

I don’t pray. I don’t look for meaning. I look for witnesses.

And find them.

They gather in the breach—priests, advisors, the ones who didn’t burn fast enough to be forgiven.

Some are on their knees. Some don’t realize they are.

All of them watching. One carries a torn banner.

Another clutches a scroll like it might still matter.

Most have nothing left but the soot on their faces and the red in their eyes.

I take the stairs down one at a time. Not because I’m weak—though I am—but because haste belongs to men still unsure of their dominion. I know what I am now. Whatever I lost in that fire, it made space for something older.

I reach the shattered platform that used to be law.

And I speak.

“War. ”

The word cracks out of me like stone splitting. My throat isn’t ready for it. It shouldn’t be able to carry sound. It does anyway. Blood rushes behind my teeth. Something bursts low in my neck, wet and final. I taste copper and silence.

But they hear it.

A woman at the front sobs once, sharp. One of the younger ones turns his face, like the shape of the word might scar.

The rest? They hold still. The kind of still that comes after impact, not before it.

I want them to remember this. Not the fire.

Not the dragon. Me. Standing in what remains, still bleeding law.

I don’t speak again. Can’t. Doesn’t matter.

They understand.

Hours pass before I reach the remnants of the war table. Half the mirror is melted, the rest warped from heat—shows a reflection that twitches instead of tracks. I sit across from it anyway, wrapped in a councilman’s robe scavenged from the wreckage. Still smells like seal-wax and panic.

My voice is gone. Possibly for good.

So I write.

Not with ink. That would be a lie. The only ink I have left is blood. I bite the inside of my cheek until it wells, dip the stylus, and press it to parchment.

FREYA THORNE — Chainbearer. Heresy incarnate.

KELLEN TOR — Rogue Flameborn. Dragon-bonded insurgent.

ASHMERE — Harbor of rebellion. Hostile territory.

SOLENN — Complicit. Derelict. Enemy state by blood.

I sign my name at the bottom, then burn my thumb and mark the page with flesh. It hisses where the heat catches. It’s not symbolic. It’s binding.

They’ll receive it by dawn.

Let them know that a man who has no voice left still names their crimes .

There’s a match on the table beside the decree. I light it. Not because I need the flame, but because I need the act.

It flares once, then settles.

I don’t blink.

Let her come.

Let them all come.

The Ashen Chain thinks it knows what judgment is.

It has forgotten what it means to kneel.

- x -

Freya

The first thing I notice is that no one here bows. Not out of defiance. Just disinterest.

The second is that every weapon is visible.

Blades tucked into belts, flint-guns resting on thighs, bone-etched relics hung openly around necks like blessings no one trusts enough to keep hidden.

This isn’t a throne room. It’s a den, dressed in rot and gold and barely restrained history.

Ashmere’s leaders—if you can call them that—sit in a warped ring of mismatched chairs, half relic-lounge, half war tribunal.

A cracked throne leans sideways in the back, ignored. No one sits in it anymore.

I take one step forward. The Chain tightens across my back—not warning, not flexing. Just… noting. Like it’s seen this before.

The floor here is uneven, patched with old tiles and newer stone.

The light’s worse—flickering candles, dim oil-lamps, a glow-crystal that pulses sickly near the center table.

The air smells like wet parchment, old silk, and dried blood.

No one cleans thoroughly in Ashmere. It would be disrespectful to the struggle.

Vale lounges beside me, dagger sheathed but ready. Kellen doesn’t hover—he never hovers—but his presence behind my left shoulder is deliberate. Measured. He hasn’t spoken once since the doors opened. Neither have I.

An older woman—bones sharp under tattooed skin, seven rings woven into her left hand like a story told backwards—taps a bone token against her seat’s armrest. It echoes. Not loud. Just enough to matter.

“She’s a problem,” the woman says without looking at me.

A man two seats over grunts. Grizzled. Scar across his nose. He’s missing part of a hand. “Not a problem,” he says. “A price. Kier’s marked her. Solenn’s next.”

“She brings fire.”

“She brings that thing.”

The “thing” is the Chain.

It hums like it hears its name. Not aggressive. Not awake. Just… aware. Like it’s waiting for someone to lie.

Vale crosses one ankle over her knee and tilts her head just enough to seem amused. Her grin’s all teeth. “Try it,” she says. She doesn’t raise her voice. Doesn’t need to. “Hand her over. I’ll peel your skin off slow and make a scarf.”

The room goes still. Not one laugh. Not even a chuckle. Vale winks. “Too far? Okay. Just the eyeballs.”

I lift my chin slightly. Not defiant. Not open. Just present. “I didn’t come to lead you,” I say. “But I’m not going back. If you think I’m a piece to be traded, test the theory.”

The Chain pulses. Not like a threat. More like gravity shifting. One of the men shifts in his seat. Sweat beads across his lip and he dabs it away with a sleeve he thought would hide the shake in his fingers.

The woman taps her token again. The rings clack like teeth. “And if we don’t touch you? If we move the ones you came with instead?”

Vale stretches, slow and obnoxiously theatrical. Her spine cracks once. Her fingers splay wide, tattoos along her knuckles catching the lamplight like old wounds re-opening. “Then I touch you. With a knife. Or three. I’m flexible. Depends what mood I’m in.”

“You’re unhinged.”

She shrugs. “That’s the rumor.”

The Chain flickers. I feel it turn—not toward me. Toward Vale. Not like it’s readying anything. More like… recognition. I step forward again. Let the movement claim silence.

“I didn’t ask for this,” I say. “But I’m not begging for a place here. You want to hand me over? Do it now. Because I swear to every dead god—Ashmere won’t survive the return trip.”

The door behind me creaks. Just once. Just enough.

A man in the back flinches. “Shit,” he mutters. “Of course.”

Owen enters like he owns the hour and the dirt it was born in.

He’s wearing something that might’ve once passed for priest’s robes, layered and torn, patched with thread so bright it looks defiant.

A torn collar pokes above his neck like a joke that refuses to die.

His hair’s damp. A match sticks out behind one ear.

He twirls a square of parchment in one hand—creases it, flips it, creases again.

“Apologies,” Owen says. “I was waylaid by a philosophical disagreement with a drunken merchant. He won, but I made my point.”

No one responds.

He glances at Vale. “Did you throw the knife or did reality finally give up on you? ”

“Bite me,” she replies.

He grins wider. “Tempting. But I’m grieving. One of my morals died.”

He turns to me. Winks.

I stare back.

The woman taps again. “You vouched for her.”

“I vouch for a lot of things,” Owen says cheerfully. “Cheese. Courage. The long-term viability of doomed love. Could you narrow it down?”

“She brings war,” one says.

“She brings a path we buried.”

“She brings judgment.”

A pause. Then someone braver, louder: “And what do you bring, Serevan?”

Owen stops smiling.

Not entirely. Just enough.

“I bring perspective.”

He raises one hand.

The Chain doesn’t lash. Doesn’t glow. But something drops. Pressure. Balance. Light shifts. The man who asked the question falters. Knees hit the ground. Not a collapse. Not yet. Just enough for shame.

Kellen watches. Doesn’t blink. Vale tilts her head like she’s giving it a five out of ten.

Owen drops his hand. Smooths his robe. Folds the parchment again.

“There,” he says. “That wasn’t so bad. Most people who kneel for the Chain don’t get back up.”

No one speaks.