Page 101 of She Who Was Severed

The kind that hurts more than rejection ever could.

I slide back to the wall, knees pulled up like a shield. I feel fourteen. I feel flayed.

“I thought I was stronger than this.”

“You are,” she says. Immediate. Certain. “You’re just tired.”

We sit like that for a while. Nothing else said.

But the silence doesn’t crush.

It holds.

I let my body slump. Not into hers. Just into stillness. My shoulder drops. My breath evens. The weight doesn’t lift—but it stops pressing.

The Chain stirs.

Not in warning.

Not in power.

Just… recognition.

Like it heard the part of me that couldn’t speak.

We’re not okay.

But we’re not alone, either.

- x -

The sun’s higher now, but the light feels like an insult. Thin and sharp where it hits the stone. Too clean for Ashmere.

I sit on the broken steps of what used to be a watch post. Now it’s ribs and splinters and a ceiling that leans like it’s waiting for an excuse to fall. I haven’t moved in a while. Not really. My arms are looped over my knees like they might keep me from spilling out. The Chain hasn’t spoken. Just that low, hollow presence curling between my lungs, humming against bone like it’s checking to see what’s left.

Vale’s off to my right, sharpening a blade she’s already cleaned twice. She hasn’t said much since I came apart last night. She doesn’t look at me. Just listens, like she always does, without pretending she knows how to fix it.

I thought that would be the end of it.

But then Owen arrives—like he’s been here the whole time and got bored waiting for us to notice. His robes are mismatched again—one side velvet, the other aggressively floral. A half-burned priest collar rides askew beneath a layered scarf that might be hiding a wine stain. There’s a dried apple in one hand and a matchstick tucked behind his ear like it belongs there.

He surveys the ruin like he’s critiquing a gallery piece. Nods once. “Not bad,” he says. “I’d have left the beam cracked another six degrees for dramatic effect, but… points for authenticity.”

Vale doesn’t look up. “If you’re building to a punchline, skip it. I’m not in the mood.”

“Oh, I’m never building,” he replies, sinking into a crouch. “Just revealing.”

He bites the apple. It crunches too loud in the quiet. I don’t move. Not because I don’t want to. Because I can’t decide if hearing him means I’m better or worse.

He walks a slow arc around the shattered post. The way his eyes scan the space—it’s not casual. It’s practiced. Like he’s reading runes only he can see.

“Virelle’s in mourning this morning,” he says. “Three buildings gone. Tribunal dome folded like a decree that finally got tired of lying. The Chancellor’s archives? Lit from the inside. Poetic, really. Ministry’s still technically standing. You know. In the way a corpse technically has bones.”

I blink once. “What?”

He tosses the apple core into the dust. Doesn’t break stride. “They’re calling it a resonance cascade. Magical anomaly. Sounds like someone trying not to admit they pissed off a dragon.”

The wind shifts. There’s smoke in it.