Page 5 of She Who Was Severed (The Ashen Chain Trilogy #1)

A voice slides through the back of my skull: Two will come.

The second link.

Something stirs. Far away.

Not a threat. Not a promise.

A door.

Opening.

I rewrap the chain. Tuck it close. And keep walking.

Let them think I’m fading.

I’m not.

I’m forming.

- x -

After Daxira’s threat and the chain’s flare, I should’ve run. I should’ve hidden. But silence can be worse than violence—especially when it comes from something inside you .

The chain hasn’t moved since morning. It hasn’t pulsed. It hasn’t whispered. It’s waiting . So I go looking.

Not for safety. For understanding.

There’s a gate beneath the temple the bonded don’t speak of in public—but I remember it. My father used to pass it in silence, his jaw always set too tight. I didn’t understand his fear back then. I think the chain does now.

It’s been coiling tighter every time I pass the old stairs.

And today?

It’s too still.

That’s the first warning. When it wants, it writhes—slick heat under skin, the sensation of something unsheathed inside muscle. But now, silence. Not absence. Waiting. Like a predator content to let me step into its teeth.

So I move. Slowly. Deliberately. My boots find the pitted stone of the back corridors, the ones layered in old wax and lost prayers.

Dust swirls with every step. No one ventures this deep anymore.

The main halls of Virelle’s temple rise above like sanctified ribs—gilded, perfumed, heavy with light.

But here? Here the dark breathes. Sanctums gutted by collapse, shrines locked and half-forgotten.

This place belonged to something before the Paths had names. Maybe still does.

I pass under a crumbled arch where a mural once sang in color—only rusted outlines remain now, teeth and talons blurred with time. My fingers brush a seam in the wall, rough stone laid over smoother work. Hidden. On purpose.

The gate reveals itself with the kind of arrogance only the old gods could afford—subtle, veiled, etched in the shape of a sigil most eyes were trained not to see.

I’d seen it once. As a child, holding my father’s hand, watching guards bend their knees to the Stonecalled mark on his palm.

Watching shadows draw back from him like obedient dogs. He never let me near the gate then.

“For the bonded,” he’d said. “For the worthy.”

I press my hand to it now. No words. Just skin to cold stone.

I don’t expect anything to happen.

But the veil stirs. A breath drawn inward.

And the wall parts.

I flinch. Just slightly.

It shouldn’t have opened.

But it did.

The chain hums against my wrist, quiet as breath.

Maybe it knows something I don’t.

Inside, the temperature shifts—chill giving way to an ancient heat that feels more alive than it should.

Dust so thick it has weight. The air tastes like soot and aged parchment, dry enough to burn.

Light knifes through narrow, bladed windows high above, falling in jagged stripes across shelves that lean like tombstones.

The smell is all memory and rot. No incense. No illusion. Just truth.

The chain doesn’t stir. But it knows.

I step lightly. The floor groans. Books tower in crooked stacks—some bound in dragonhide, others in glass threads or stitched kelp.

Magic bound and left to age. I breathe it in, deeper than I mean to.

It doesn’t feel holy. It feels clean . Like water after drought.

Like something I’ve earned with blood and silence.

I search the stacks. Carefully. Like a thief in a god’s kitchen.

Each section whispers allegiance—Flameborn hierarchies, Tidewalker migration texts, Echo-craft hymnals annotated in mirror-script.

Five paths. Five glories. All cataloged like this is how history’s meant to be kept: neat, polished, absolute .

But there’s no place for me. No Severed records. No rites for the ones who lived when they weren’t supposed to. No bindings for what comes after the rules are broken.

Until I find it.

Not a book. A manual. The kind every bonded initiate receives at sixteen—stitched with their Path’s sigil, filled with oaths, techniques, and the sacred rites of summoning. I was never given one.

But this…

It’s small. Bound in something that shimmers like smoke caught in vellum. No gold. No house crest. Just a phrase etched across the cover in jagged Oldscript, half-worn by time:

Path of the Ashen Chain

My fingers brush the edge. The chain stirs, a twitch under my wrist like it recognizes the name.

I open it slowly.

Not reverently.

Carefully.

The first page holds no title, no dedication.

Only one line—written in blunt, slanted ink:

To the ones who were not chosen, but still remain.

The next page hums faintly beneath my fingertips. A diagram spirals outward from a central glyph—a circle shattered by three jagged slashes. Notes ring the edge like chant fragments:

The chain awakens where the rites fail. The bond is not gifted. It is taken. It is made.

I flip again. Another page. Another diagram—this one of a wrist, threads of silver-black winding through muscle.

Early signs of chain manifestation:

Subdermal pulsing

Residual burn with no sourc e

Reactive sigil formation

Hallucinations or premonitions

Protective reflex independent of intent

Beneath, in smaller script:

Do not attempt to sever the first link once sealed.

My mouth is dry. My pulse isn’t.

The chain tightens faintly in time with my breath, like it’s reading over my shoulder.

Further in, a section labeled Interim Techniques :

Anchoring the hum – Place both palms to stone. Breathe into the chain. Do not speak.

Pain diffusion – Let it surface. Do not fight the flare. Redirect through movement or contact with grounded metal.

Containment glyphs (basic) – Sketched in ink. Shaky. But there.

No prayers. No blessings. No beast-name rites.

Only warnings. Only survival.

I flip toward the back, almost afraid of what I’ll find.

The final page is a jagged diagram—a path spiraling inward rather than outward. Not ascending. Descending. At the center, a word scratched so hard it tore through the vellum:

Second link.

Beneath it:

You are not alone. But you may wish you were.

I shut the manual.

And for a moment, I can’t tell if the air around me has gone cold… or if it’s just the chain, humming. Waiting.

And that’s when I hear it.

Footsteps.

Too close. Too heavy .

I press back into the shadows, wedge myself behind a pillar worn smooth by centuries of knees. The path manual is tucked to my chest, the chain pressing hard against the wrap on my palm. The glow pulses faint—barely there—but if someone looks close—

A priest enters. Robes trimmed with Veilmarked thread, jaw clenched in irritation. He mutters about census discrepancies—Kestril, probably. Temple politics. But then he pauses. Sniffs the air like something’s off.

He feels it too.

His eyes sweep the room.

Closer.

Closer still.

The chain tenses. My spine locks.

And then—

“Can I help you?” a voice calls from the stairwell above.

Kellen.

He’s not wearing silks. Just leathers worn at the seams, fire-stained and travel-scarred. His hair’s unbound. He looks like someone who’s seen war too early and learned to hide the damage in posture.

The priest startles. Bows, awkwardly.

“Council liaison,” he stammers. “I was just—”

Kellen steps fully into view. His gaze skims the room like he’s reading the cracks in the walls. Like he already knows.

The priest murmurs something and hurries off.

Kellen doesn’t move.

Then, soft: “I know you’re there.”

My jaw tightens.

“You always liked the alcoves,” he says. Not accusing. Not tender. Just… true .

I don’t answer.

He doesn’t press .

“Are you bleeding?” he asks next. Sharper now. “Or is that—?”

The chain flares once, heat licking the inside of my wrist. I press back against the stone, harder. Don’t let it show. Don’t let him see.

He exhales. Turns to leave. But just before he disappears from sight, he glances back and says—

“Be careful, Freya.”

No warning in it. No threat. Just sincerity. Then he’s gone.

The archive exhales with him. I let the air move again. The manual’s cover is still warm beneath my palm. Not like paper warmed by body heat. Like something alive . Like ink that remembers being blood.

The chain relaxes.

But the second link pulses, slow and steady. A knock on a door I hadn’t meant to open.

I don’t put the path manual back.

I should.

But I don’t.

Because if I return it, I’ll never find this place again. And if they find it on me, I’m already dead.

I tuck the manual under my arm—fast, clumsy. The chain tightens like it approves.

My breath comes shallow.

I’m not supposed to have this. Not supposed to want this.

But I do.

Because this isn’t just ink and diagrams. It’s a path that was buried before it could be followed.

And I’m going to walk it.

Even if it kills me.

Let the priests bury their rewritten gods.

Let the temple light their censers for clean souls.

I’ve seen what waits outside the circle .

And it remembers me.

- x -

The stone beneath my boots shifts with every step, worn soft by time and temple rot.

Most avoid this place. Too close to the Severed quarter.

Too quiet to pretend. The path to the upper gardens had once been elegant—arched stone lined with flowering vines, sconces shaped like phoenix claws.

Now it was half-devoured by overgrowth and neglect.

Moss webbed across the flagstones, and the wall sconces hadn’t been lit in years.

The temple didn’t maintain what it no longer showed off, and this corner of Virelle had become something sacred in its own way—overlooked, unclaimed.

I don’t come here to be alone. I come here because no one else will. Because sometimes silence is the only place I can think without someone looking at me like a stain they forgot how to scrub out.