Page 117 of She Who Was Severed

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.