Page 52 of She Who Was Severed (The Ashen Chain Trilogy #1)

The first drop lands just below my eye.

It sinks in slow, like the sky finally remembered how to feel. Another hits my shoulder. Then my wrist. The next one mixes with the blood already running down my arm, and I can’t tell which came first—the wound or the rain.

It’s light at first. Scattered. Barely there. The kind that slips through armor gaps and broken shields before anyone notices.

Then it thickens.

Stone darkens around my boots. Fire gutters out beside a fallen spear. I watch the last flicker die in the wet, steam curling low over the corpse it tried to keep warm. Smoke drops with it, pulled down by the weight of water. Blood runs where it smeared across the stone.

The Chain shifts against my spine. Slow. Attentive. Each link drawn tight like it’s listening to more than sound.

I breathe in through my teeth. Let it burn in my chest. Let the rain claim the field.

Then I step forward .

The battlefield doesn’t speak. Not anymore. Not since the link completed. Link Four didn’t end the battle, it just reminded the world what it cost to walk through it. And now, the quiet doesn’t feel like peace. It feels like the breath you hold when you’re waiting to see who breaks first.

My boots drag through ash and mud. A man coughs where he lies against a broken wall. He doesn’t raise his blade. Doesn’t beg either. Just watches me pass with wide eyes and blood on his lips.

Another shape lunges.

I don’t hesitate. I drive forward. My shoulder hits his gut, and we crash into the mud. The Chain hums but doesn’t interfere. My elbow meets his jaw, and I feel the shift as something cracks. I’m on my feet before he hits the ground fully. Pain flares in my ribs—sharp, bright—but I don’t slow down.

I can’t.

Behind me, someone follows. I don’t turn. The air adjusts around their presence, a subtle folding of space that speaks without sound. Boots shift across cracked stone. Breath draws steady. They’ve chosen to stay close, not because I called them—but because they’ve decided where they stand.

Another footstep. Then another.

The Chain brushes against my side—a silent pulse of awareness—and I know: they’re Severed.

They saw the Chain ignite. Watched the battlefield freeze. And they’re still here. Not because I told them to be. Because they’re choosing to be.

I keep moving.

Rain cuts down harder. It slips under my collar, drips into my wounds. My blood runs thinner now—pink, almost clean. I don’t stop to wrap it. I let it mark the ground behind me.

A soldier blocks my path. His grip shakes.

He drops his sword.

Another one doesn’t .

He charges. I meet him head-on. The blade slices across my thigh—shallow, but it bites. I take the pain. Spin. Drive my knee into his gut. He folds. I shove him aside and keep walking.

The Chain coils tighter, that’s all. It lets me fight. Lets me prove I still can.

Behind me, the sound shifts. Footsteps echo across uneven stone, measured and steady.

The Severed move as one—unarmored, exposed, marked by old scars and newer decisions.

They don’t speak. They don’t raise weapons.

But their rhythm matches mine. They’ve made their choice, and it carries weight with every step.

The battlefield tilts forward.

I climb the slope.

Each step pulls something deeper out of me. Muscle shakes. Bones grind. The cut at my shoulder’s opened again. I feel it leaking under the rain. The Chain doesn’t brace me. Doesn’t offer relief.

It lets me carry it.

Ash sticks to the blood at my heel. My teeth clench to hold in the sound crawling up my throat.

He’s ahead.

Kellen.

I feel that empty space inside me, that crack where his presence should’ve been steady. The place in my chest where fire usually sits is hollow. I don’t know if he’s alive. But I know I’ll find him. Or whatever’s left.

The ridge gets steeper. I grip a ruined support beam, drag myself up. Pain burns along my ribs. The Chain tightens with the motion, pressure blooming low in my back, but it doesn’t stop me.

A woman at my side presses a strip of cloth into my hand. She doesn’t speak. I wrap it around my arm and push on .

Rain hits harder now—heavier, sharper. There’s nothing to break it up here. The rooftops are gone. The air’s cleaner and crueler at the same time. Everything stings.

I crest the ridge and the battlefield splits beneath my feet.

Smoke drags low, curling through bodies and broken formations.

Glyphs pulse faintly in the stone, scorched into place with the kind of heat that lingers in the bones.

Ash kicks up with every step. My boots slide through blood and grit.

Ahead, fighters charge through fractured lines, their blades flashing, their movements raw with purpose.

Overhead, Kiroth wheels into view. Her wings spread wide.

Fire builds in her chest, a slow swell behind the ribs.

Then she breathes. A column of flame tears through Kier’s rear guard, clean and final.

Shields melt. Soldiers scream. The edge of the army buckles as the dragon cuts through them like the battlefield belongs to her.

I press forward.

Vale waits beside a crumbling arch. Her blade drips. Her jacket’s torn. Her gaze finds me fast.

Then she steps aside.

Kellen’s lying in the dirt.

I run.

My knees slam the ground. Water splashes up past my wrists as I drop beside him. Vale stays close but silent. She knows better than to speak.

He’s soaked. Pale. His chest moves, barely—one shallow rise, another.

My hand finds his shoulder.

He’s still warm.

I press my palm to his side. Blood slicks my fingers, thinned by the rain, warm where it seeps through the tear in his shirt.

His hair sticks to his temple in wet strands.

Mud streaks across his throat, settled in the hollow above his collarbone.

The gash along his ribs glistens dark and slow.

I watch his chest, counting each shallow rise, holding on to every breath like it might be the last clean thing left.

Bu he’s breathing.

So It’s enough.

My lungs finally let go. Not all the way. Just enough to keep moving. I lean in, close to his ear.

“You’re still here,” I whisper. “Good.”

The Chain stays quiet.

It’s not needed.

I sit there a moment longer—soaked to the bone, blood still running from half a dozen places—and I keep my hand right where it is. To touch. To feel.

I don’t look at Vale. Don’t look at the soldiers fighting in the distance. I don’t need a count or a strategy. He’s here. That’s enough for now.

Behind me, my army begin to gather.

I hear the soft weight of their footsteps in the rain. One by one, they come up the ridge. A man with a scar carved through his neck kneels beside a shattered shield. A girl drops to her knees.

No one speaks.

They just wait.

Not for orders.

For confirmation.

The rain falls harder, seeping into every fracture, every shallow pool of blood. It washes over the Chain where it coils around my ribs. A faint hiss rises from it—not pain. Just heat meeting memory.

I stay at Kellen’s side, my fingers pressed into the leather at his shoulder, my jaw set.

The Chain doesn’t move.

Neither do I.

Because this isn’t the end of anything .

It’s the moment I keep breathing through—until the world figures out what comes next.

- x -

Kellen’s breathing is shallow, but it holds. Every few seconds, his chest lifts under my hand—barely. Just enough. I keep my palm there, pressing down lightly to remind myself it’s real.

The ground beneath him is soaked. Not just rainwater—blood, too. Mine, his, maybe someone else’s. It’s all mixed now. The slope behind us is streaked in black runoff. The kind that doesn’t clean anything. Just moves the mess somewhere else.

The Chain is quiet. Still tight around my ribs, but not pushing. It’s resting. Not because the fight’s over—because I haven’t asked anything new of it yet.

A soft crunch behind me. Then another. I don’t look.

They’re coming in from all sides—severed, gang members, thieves, mercenaries and exiles. Some with weapons still in hand, others empty. One drags a chain along the stone behind him, not using it, just carrying it like it remembers something he doesn’t want to forget.

They form a loose ring. No one speaks. No one kneels. They just… wait.

I don’t rise. My knees are stiff. My arm’s still bleeding. The cut’s long, shallow, pulsing in rhythm with my heartbeat. I could bind it, but I’d have to let go of him. I’m not doing that yet.

A voice echoes out over the ridge—sharp, close. It breaks the rhythm. People are still fighting. A final clutch of diehards, probably. Trained not to stop until someone orders them to. Or until they can’t move their hands anymore.

It won’t last. The Chain already did what it was meant to do. What’s left is cleanup. Pain. Breath.

Then I hear the scream.

High, thin. Sharp enough to feel in my teeth.

I turn fast. My hand slips from Kellen’s shoulder, my fingers wet and cold.

Eastern side. The flank we thought was closed. It’s not.

A knot of soldiers has broken through. Six. Maybe eight. Moving fast, formation tight. They’re burned. One’s missing half his pauldron. Another’s limping, but their focus is locked forward. They’re charging.

And the girl—the one hiding behind the broken shrine—is already up and running.

Too late.

She’s maybe eleven. Bare arms. Cut cheek. No armor, no weapon. Just a kid trying to stay low and stay small, and now she’s caught in open ground. Her foot catches on rubble and she goes down. Her palms slap stone and her elbows don’t lock in time. She rolls, half-crawls, turns to get up again.

No one’s close enough to reach her.

So I go.

I don’t yell. Don’t wait. Just run.

The ground’s slick, boots dragging in the slurry. My legs scream the second I push off. The gash across my thigh tears wider. The skin at my shoulder splits again.

I keep moving.

Blade’s in my hand before I remember drawing it. The Chain snaps once across my back—not flaring, just bracing.

The nearest soldier closes the distance fast. Sword raised .

I reach them as the first soldier lifts his sword to strike. He sees me just as I hit full stride—adjusts, brings the blade down fast.

Too late.

The edge carves into my forearm, deep and sharp, and for a second my whole right side goes cold. Doesn’t matter. I get inside his stance, twist, and drive my blade up through his ribs. He jerks once and drops.

Another swings wide behind him. I pivot—blade raised, elbow locked, barely deflect the hit. It glances off. My shoulder takes the shock. I stumble, catch myself, drive forward again.

Third comes in slower. Hesitates when I don’t fall. Our blades meet once. Twice. He backs off. I don’t follow.

The fourth breaks formation and runs.

The others stop cold.

They saw enough.

I turn toward the girl. She hasn’t moved. Still curled in the mud, face streaked with rain and grit, arms braced in front of her like shields no one gave her permission to use.

“You’re alright,” I say.

My voice scrapes out low and shredded.

I drop into a crouch beside her. The blade lowers, but I don’t sheath it. She watches the blood still dripping from my arm—my sleeve torn wide open now, red running over mud.

She doesn’t cry. She doesn’t ask why.

I reach out. Not fast.

My hand brushes her cheek—light, steady, careful.

“You’re safe now.”

Skin to skin.

She doesn’t look away.

That’s it.

I turn .

The others haven’t moved.

I start back up the ridge. My arm won’t stop leaking. Each heartbeat pushes more heat down into the sleeve, and the rain doesn’t help. It stings now. Every drop finds raw skin.

The girl stays behind me. I don’t look back.

The soldiers that remain don’t charge. They hold formation, then shift back, uncertain. They saw what happened. They understand enough.

When I reach the ridge again, Kellen’s where I left him. Vale’s crouched nearby, watching. She hasn’t moved to help. Doesn’t need to. She saw it, too.

I lower myself beside him. My knees hit the ground hard. Too fast. I grit my teeth through the pain and press my palm back to his shoulder. Still breathing. Barely.

The rain soaks us both. His hair sticks to his cheek. There’s mud along his jawline now, streaked with blood. He doesn’t stir, but his breathing hasn’t stopped.

That’s the only thing that matters.

People shift around me. I feel them draw tighter—slow, quiet. It’s not a crowd. It’s a presence. They’re watching like they’ve been holding their breath since I stood up.

Some of them are still bleeding. One has a dislocated arm, wrapped in torn cloth. Another’s missing three fingers. No one sits down. No one asks anything.

They just wait.

A voice breaks the silence. Male, rough-edged. Might’ve been a priest once, or a thief. Maybe both.

“What now?”

It’s not a challenge. It’s not reverent either. Just tired.

The Chain doesn’t flare. Doesn’t lift. It stays low, settled around my ribs like it’s waiting to hear what I say before it decides what to do next .

I answer without thinking.

“We hold.”

The words come out flat. My throat burns from smoke. My chest aches with every breath.

“We rebuild.”

I don’t look at any of them directly. I’m not giving a speech. I’m naming what’s next.

“We don’t ask permission.”

Nothing moves for a long time.

No one nods. No one replies.

But I feel it—under the silence. That shift in the air when people recognize something real. Not myth. Not magic.

Just choice.

The Chain hums softly.

It’s not approval. Just agreement.

Then a sound rolls in from above. Not thunder.

Wings.

Big ones.

The sky splits along the western edge of the ridge. Rain parts. Wind stirs mud. Six dragons—long bodies, scar-marked, gold-veined, smoke trailing from open jaws.

They circle once, then slow, wings spread wide, letting the rain coat them without protest.

Kellen doesn’t stir.

I don’t move my hand from his shoulder.

One of the dragons settles on a ledge above us. The others fan out behind it. The rain rolls off their scales like it’s being let go. Steam rises from their backs.

Vale stands. Quiet. Waiting.

No one says a word .

I keep my knees in the mud.

My blade rests on the ground beside me. My right arm still drips blood in a steady rhythm. The pain’s constant now. Not screaming anymore—just present. Like everything else.

My hand stays where it is.

Because he’s still breathing.

And I’m not done.

The Chain presses lightly across my spine.

Not power.

Presence.