Page 4 of She Who Was Severed (The Ashen Chain Trilogy #1)

I wake alone. Not in the tower, not in a bed, but somewhere half-eaten by root and ruin. The air tastes like salt and old fire. My skin doesn’t belong to me anymore.

The chain has settled just beneath the surface—threaded through my collarbone like it grew there. Not pain. Not power. Something in between. My pulse jumps every time I move, not because I’m afraid, but because I expect it to respond.

It doesn’t burn. It watches.

I sit up slow. My head throbs like a second heartbeat trying to tune itself. The world isn’t spinning—but something under it is. I remember the vial. The way the blood shattered in my throat. The voice that whispered Link One: Claimed.

I half-hoped it was a hallucination.

But the chain is still here. A silver-black filament etched around my wrist like jewelry for the condemned. When I flex my hand, it shifts slightly, not tightening—just reminding .

I rise to my feet. My knees almost buckle. Not from injury. From contradiction. My body’s caught between two languages: one human, one inherited. I walk anyway.

No one should be near the Ash Tower. But I hear footsteps up the hill, near the high path that overlooks the grove. A pair of Tidewalkers. One of them sees me. She freezes.

“Is that—?”

I don’t wait to hear the rest.

I cut into the trees, keeping to the side roads that only the Severed are allowed to rot in.

The temple spires glint in the distance, all gold filigree and illusion light.

If I focus, I can still remember what it felt like to belong there.

To believe I might walk out of that grove with a beast at my side and fire braided into my name.

Instead, I walk with something no one will name.

A priest crossing the eastern corridor sees me and falters mid-step. He doesn’t say anything. Just clasps his hands too fast and mutters a protective phrase I haven’t heard since funerals. His beast—a winged panther-shadow thing—growls low. Then vanishes into smoke.

Even the bonded are scared.

Good.

But part of me wants to scream that I don’t know what this is either. That I didn’t ask for it. That it didn’t ask for me.

I take shelter near the edge of the training green, behind the old wall that separates initiates from the open fields. From here, I can see them.

The Paths in practice.

A Stormbound boy rises ten feet in the air and calls lightning with a twist of his hand.

A Veilmarked girl walks into the same space and disappears, reappearing on the roof.

Tidewalkers chant and spiral water between them like a dance.

A Flameborn girl—Ariss, I think—sparks her entire blade alight with no effort at all .

I should be watching in awe.

I watch in hunger.

This should’ve been mine. Not the flame, not the tide. But something. Anything.

And then I feel him.

Kellen’s heat precedes him. It always did. That slight shift in the air that says something alive is near. I hear his voice before I see him—low, steady, the kind he uses when he wants to sound like he’s not hurting.

He’s talking to a councilman. Standing straight. Regal. Pretending.

But his eyes flick toward me.

I duck back.

The chain tightens.

Not hard. Not cruel. Just responsive.

I hate that.

Did it react to him? Or did I?

His voice follows me.

“They lit the Kestril fires today.”

I don’t answer. He’s not talking to me. He can’t be.

But the chain pulses once.

The Kestril fires mark the end of Bonding Week. In every city—from Virelle to Raleth-Kai—temples light sacred flame along the old rites, honoring the newly bonded across all of Aetherra. I should’ve lit mine this morning.

Instead, I’m hiding from light.

I keep walking. Deeper. Away from the torchlight, the noise, the ghosts in silk robes pretending not to see me.

Virelle’s Temple Quarter gleams like it wants to be Solenn. All curve and gold and pretense, like the capital’s smaller, holier cousin. But the deeper you go, the more the walls show their seams. Down here, beneath the sanctum, everything rots politely.

I slip into one of the shadowed alcoves beside the prayer vault. Curl my fingers inward.

He follows.

Of course he does.

I hear the shift in his breath before he speaks again—closer now. Not enough to touch, but enough to burn if he tried.

“Today would’ve been your veil blessing.”

Veil blessings are given to the newly bonded during the closing rites. A second name is spoken into the Veil—one only your beast knows. You’re veiled in phoenix-thread silk, doused in ashwater, declared seen. Known.

I got a severing shroud instead.

That’s when I turn. Just enough to let him see the look on my face.

The one that says: don’t make this worse by pretending it could’ve gone any other way.

He doesn’t flinch. Not exactly.

But he doesn’t come closer, either.

Good.

Let him carry the ceremony in his throat while I suffer in silence.

The chain is bleeding.

Not blood. Not light. Something older. It spills in a spiral shape across my skin and vanishes before it lands.

I wipe it away. But my palm still glows faintly. Like a bond mark trying to remember its name.

No Stonecalled I’ve ever seen bled chain. No Veilmarked left behind marks that hum. No Tidewalker’s bond ever whispered in iron. No Stormbound traced symbols in light. And Flameborn don’t flinch like they saw something older looking back.

A whisper drifts through my skull: Two will come.

The second link is stirring.

And I’m not ready .

But it is.

- x -

The world feels too alive when you're meant to be forgotten.

Light presses in from Virelle’s high towers, burning gold along the wall’s cracked edge. The city breathes beyond it—bright, brazen, holy. I stay where the shadow pools. Half in the alley. Half in myself.

The chain lies flat against my skin today. No shimmer. No hunger. Just the weight of it, humming like a second spine. I’ve wrapped it in linen, kept my sleeves low. But it knows I’m pretending. It always does.

A bonded pair passes by on the other side of the wall.

I know them by the way the air reacts—tightens.

The boy levitates with Stormbound ease, trailing sparks as he lands.

The girl beside him bears the braided tattoos of a Tidewalker, her leviathan rippling beneath her like shadow turned sea.

They don’t see me. Not really. Just a shape in the wrong place. A rumor made real.

I walk.

The inner Temple Quarter curves with pretense—arches lined in glasslight, incense smoke rising from prayer gates, priests in illusion-thread robes bowing to beasts that barely tolerate them. A pair of Flameborn guards pass, cloaked in ash-red silk, their swords half-drawn from heat alone.

Magic lives here. Not just in the people—in the stones. In the air .

A Veilmarked novice vanishes midstep ahead of me, slipping sideways into some pocket of between. He reappears laughing, throwing a grin at his teacher. The kind of grin that says he belongs.

I tighten my scarf. Drop my gaze. Keep walking.

“Look who death forgot,” a voice says.

I stop.

Daxira .

Of course.

She’s lounging against a statue of Aros the Boundless, one boot pressed to the pedestal like she owns it. Her bonded beast—an ashmaw drake, thick-scaled and smoke-veiled—hunches on the archway above her. Its molten eyes track every breath like they’re measuring it for fuel.

“Heard you walked out of the Severing. Is that what we’re calling it now? Walking?”

I say nothing. That always makes them press harder.

“You should be careful.” She pushes off the statue. Walks slow. Measured. “People might think you’re still hoping."

“Better than kneeling for fire that isn’t yours,” I murmur.

Her eyes narrow. She smiles.

“Say that again.”

“You heard me.”

For a moment, nothing. Then her beast flares—emberlight blooming off its wings, air bending with heat. A sigil arcs from its throat to her palm, drawn in fire. The ground cracks.

I don’t move. But the chain does. It pulses under my sleeve. Tightens like a muscle flexing. Heat radiates up my arm—not burning. Warning. Daxira notices. Her gaze flicks to my wrist.

“Pretty bracelet,” she says, laughing. “Shame it’s the only thing left that wants to touch you.”

She turns. Starts to walk away—then glances back. “I’ll tell Kellen you said hello.”

Her grin makes me want to rip her throat out.

Her beast follows. Fire trailing. Let her laugh. I’ve seen what fire looks like when it loses control.

I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding. The chain relaxes. I don’t.

I move on.

Past the wall, past the outer sanctum, through a garden of stonecalled offerings where the air feels heavier.

Like it’s holding its breath. Someone once told me the Stonecalled can speak to mountains—call the earth to armor them or crack open beneath their feet.

I wonder if they ever ask to be left alone.

The wind shifts.

I smell him before I see him.

Smoke. Salt. Iron.

Kellen walks across the upper terrace with another Flameborn—a girl I don’t recognize, wrapped in Ravellan crimson. They move like diplomats. Like fire doesn’t touch them unless asked.

He looks up.

Sees me.

Our eyes lock for the briefest moment.

He doesn’t smile. Doesn’t frown.

But something in his posture stutters.

I look away first. Not because I want to. Because if I don’t, I’ll burn.

He used to walk me home from rites like that. Back when I still believed the world had a place for both of us. Back when I thought fire could warm instead of wound.

The chain hums .

I duck into a side alley—stone damp, half-forgotten, older than the rest of the city. A shrine to no one. Just a sigil half-scrubbed from the floor and a broken offering bowl.

My hand shakes as I unwrap the chain.

It’s glowing faintly now. Symbols rising and fading along its length. Not from any of the five paths. No Flameborn flicker. No Stormbound hum. No Tidewalker crest. No Veilmarked blur. No Stonecalled weight. But it moved like it knew how to protect me. Or how to end something, if asked.

Just a chain.

My chain.