Page 34 of She Who Was Severed (The Ashen Chain Trilogy #1)

The forge doesn’t greet me. It sizes me up.

The air down here isn’t still—it’s suspended.

Held in the lungs of something older than the stone itself.

Cold rolls off the walls like a warning that forgot how to whisper.

Each step I take draws a hush from the dust-slick floor, the scrape of my boots cutting through a quiet that feels earned. The kind of quiet people bled for.

No one else is here. Of course not. I’m early. But the room feels… occupied anyway. Not haunted. Not alive. Just waiting.

Soot streaks the ceiling in melted arcs, like the stone once caught fire from the inside and tried to tear free.

Pillars rise unevenly from the foundation, scarred and pitted with age.

Every surface holds a layer of history charred too deep to clean.

Sigils cling to the stone like ash tattoos—Chain marks, some bent beyond recognition, some carved with such precision it hurts to look too long.

They hum as I pass. Not loud. Not welcoming.

Just enough to remind me I’m not the first to stand here.

The obsidian circle waits at the center.

Cracked through, down its southern edge, like the judgment it once held tried to escape.

It pulses faintly against my path bond, a whisper brushing the inside of my ribs.

I don’t step into it yet. I just stare at the break—black glass interrupted by ruin—and feel something sharp settle behind my lungs.

I stretch my fingers. Shake out my hands. My joints pop like old hinges. The tension doesn’t leave—it just sinks deeper. The Chain coils low against my spine, heavy but still. Not aggressive. Not reactive. Just listening. Like it already knows what this will cost me.

I trace a line of scorch across the eastern arch with my eyes.

It’s wide enough to have swallowed a body whole.

Probably did. The floor beneath the ring bears impact fractures like something tried to escape, failed, and left a warning.

I step closer. Obsidian grinds beneath my boot like it doesn’t want me there.

I don’t apologize. I step in.

The pressure hits on the second footfall. A subtle tilt, like gravity deciding it prefers someone else. I adjust my stance. Shoulders back. Chin lifted. Standard form.

I exhale. The breath fogs, even though it’s not cold enough for that. The Chain draws tighter around my ribcage. Not like a threat. Like a correction.

And then—a match hisses to life behind me.

The sulfur bite cuts through the damp. That dry snap of flame and strike. The scent hits first: cloves, soot, and something older. The forge flickers. Not from the match, but from what follows.

Owen.

He doesn’t walk in. He’s just… there. Draped in scavenged priest robes three sizes too large, half of them patched with scraps that look like altar runners and market stall canvas.

A burnt collar curls away from his throat like it still remembers why it stopped being worn.

His coat swings loose, layered and absurd, and none of it dulls the pressure in the room when he enters it .

He snuffs the match on his boot heel, then tucks it behind his ear like it’s a keepsake.

We don’t speak.

He watches. I breathe.

“The circle ready?” I ask.

He smiles. Not the full grin. Just the twitch at the edge of someone who knows too much to bother explaining. “It’s never truly ready,” he says. “But you’re here, and ready.”

I cross the boundary.

The circle hums the instant I do, a low vibration threading through my calves and into the Chain. It answers—not with light or heat, but weight. The kind of weight that sinks behind your sternum and sets up shop.

Cracks web out beneath my boots. Not fresh, but aware. The ring’s fracture glows faintly, invisible to anyone unbonded, but I see it—the way the glyphs buckle around the break like they’re trying to realign themselves and failing.

Owen stands just outside. Barefoot now. When did he—

“Close your eyes,” he says.

I do.

The air pulls taut. My pulse stutters once, then levels. The Chain doesn’t move, but I feel it retract inside me. Not out of fear. Out of respect. As if what comes next isn’t for armor.

“You know what Link Three demands?” Owen’s voice is quiet now.

“Judgment,” I say.

“No,” he replies, and the way he says it—flat, absolute—it’s not correction. It’s redefinition. “Judgment is what happens after. This? This is reflection.”

He circles. Soft steps. Measured, soundless.

“This stage doesn’t test what you are,” he continues. “It shows what you’ve been. And what you were willing to excuse. ”

I want to say I’m not afraid of what I’ve done. But the words don’t make it out. Maybe because I’m afraid of what I’ll see.

There’s a tap—metal or bone—on the obsidian at my feet. A flare without fire. Just cold. Then pressure.

The Chain pulls.

And the forge falls away.

The Tribunal takes shape in pieces.

Not memory. Not dream. Just a reconstruction built too clean to be real.

The floor gleams. The walls gleam. My boots gleam.

I’m younger—too young, too polished, standing beside Daxira like I belong there.

She looks the same. Sharp edges, even sharper silence.

But there’s no warmth between us. We’re statues arranged in symmetry.

A girl kneels in front of the dais.

I know her. Not because I remember her. Because the Chain makes me.

Eris.

Her wrists are tied. There’s blood at the corner of her mouth. She looks straight at me—really looks—and for a second, I think she might speak. But she doesn’t. And neither do I.

The priest asks if anyone objects.

Nobody answers.

The quiet drags on too long. I notice it now. They weren’t just following routine—they were waiting. Hoping someone would say something.

I didn’t move.

That was the lie I let myself believe—that doing nothing wasn’t a choice.

The Chain shifts against my back. It doesn’t hurt, but it presses hard. Like it’s telling me: Keep watching. Don’t look away. Don’t pretend you didn’t know.

They drag her back. The scream lands harder this time. Not because I’d forgotten it. Because I never let myself really hear it.

And I don’t move .

The memory fractures—not like a scene change, but like water freezing over.

I’m in the antechamber. Cold stone. That silver basin full of rust and washed blood.

The place they cleaned the blades after.

Eris is there, crumpled, not gone but… unraveled.

Her limbs are whole. Her mind is ash. They didn’t kill her. They ended her.

And I’m watching.

Older. Calmer. Dressed for judgment.

I don’t step forward.

I don’t ask why.

I just agree.

It’s not spoken. It doesn’t need to be. The Chain draws it out of me like breath. I see my face, neutral and passive. I see the priest’s hand close around her ankle and drag her across the floor like discarded cloth. And I let it happen.

Because I thought she was wrong for not surviving.

Because I thought if the Chain didn’t choose you, maybe you were already broken.

The weight sinks deeper.

Not judgment yet.

But the knowing.

This is what I did.

The reflection doesn’t let go.

Not even when I try to breathe through it. The forge slips into view—but not the real one. A mirror placed on top of the old floor. I’m kneeling again, my own face staring back, washed in sweat, eyes too wide.

Then I hear it.

My voice.

Only it isn’t mine.

“You were always good at silence. Until it served no one. ”

The Chain pulses. One throb, deep enough to steal the air from my lungs. Not magic. Memory. It threads through the moment and binds it to me. I feel it settle deep in my spine.

Not a verdict.

A sentence.

The vision shifts.

Fast.

A new chamber.

Clean. Sharp. Smelling of wealth and rot.

This isn’t a memory. It’s a warning.

I see her walk in first—me, but not. Hair braided in gold-wire cords. Robes too pristine. Council crest emblazoned across her chest like a brand she asked for. Her eyes? Nothing.

Not dead. Focused.

She speaks to nobles like they’re furniture. Recommends protocol changes like she’s sharpening a knife. Uses words like “expendable,” “anomalous,” “structurally unfit.”

They nod.

Because she sounds right.

The Chain digs in behind my sternum, not to wound, but to hold me still. To make sure I watch. Because this isn’t just what I avoided. It’s what I could’ve become.

Another shift.

The Tribunal again—but warped.

A man kneels now. Older. Severed. Shaking.

The other me raises her hand. “Proceed.”

The priest obeys.

Magic lashes.

No ceremony.

No mercy .

Just function.

The Chain doesn’t burn me.

It lowers itself behind my ribs like it’s setting something down.

This isn’t rage.

This is grief.

Not for them.

For me.

Because I see it now. I could have made it. I could have climbed. I could have outlasted them all—if I just stopped caring.

If I chose silence every time it mattered.

The final image comes quick and clean. It’s the mirror again.

Me, reflected.

Perfect.

She smiles.

Not cruelly.

Knowingly.

“You didn’t fail them,” she says. “You just watched them fall.”

My knees hit the stone again. Not from pain. Not from collapse.

From clarity.

The Chain closes around my ribs, not with pressure, but with presence.

And I say it.

To her. To me. To what I might’ve been.

“I was wrong.”

Everything shatters.

The mirror. The false Tribunal. The weight.

The forge settles around me in pieces. Not broken—just…

cleared. As if the Chain swept the debris aside, not to comfort, but to see what remained.

My breath drags rough and uneven. Sweat beads under my collar.

The taste of iron sits low on my tongue, and my knees ache where the stone met them without grace .

I’m still on the floor. Still bent. But I’m not bowed.

The Chain doesn’t tug. Doesn’t tighten. It simply waits. Present, heavy, silent—not withdrawn, not angry. Just… ready.