Page 167 of She Who Was Severed

Then I draw the match from my sleeve.

I don’t light it. Of course not. That would be premature. And vulgar.

Instead, I press it into the center groove. Tip outward. Alignment perfect. Angle precise.

A match is not a weapon. It’s a reminder.

This one says: I’m ready.

Not for war.

For choice.

Which, let’s be honest, means her.

Freya will find this place. Might stumble across it chasing Kier or chasing herself. Doesn’t matter. The moment her fingers brush this stone, the pressure will crack wide. Not with fire. With memory. With consequence.

They’ll call it prophecy.

They always do. Easier than admitting I left the door unlocked and dared history to walk through it.

I glance up. Ceiling fractured to sky. Light slants through broken stone like someone forgot to turn off the gods.

“If this works,” I say to the ruin, to the Chain, to no one and everyone, “they’ll blame fate.”

I shrug. Brush my sleeves like I’m leaving a disappointing supper.

“If it doesn’t… well. I’ve always looked good in ruins.”

The wind moves. Not fast. Just intentional.

I stand. Stretch. Roll my wrists like a man who definitely didn’t just lace a sacred ruin with path-reactive chain logic designed to override magical barriers and maybe, possibly, rewrite judgment protocol with a single breath from the right girl.

The match stays.

Unlit. Waiting.

Because when she chooses?

It won’t look like rebellion. It won’t sound like a spell.

It’ll burn like inevitability.

“Judgment never died. It just stopped asking permission.”

I flip a coin into the dust. It lands sigil-up.

Of course it does.

Then I vanish into Ashmere like a polite heretic.

- x -

Freya

The training yard isn’t really a yard at all.

It’s a half-buried courtyard wedged between the back wall of a burned chapel and what used to be a butcher’s row. One side’s open to the sun, but the rest is boxed in by ruin—walls scorched black, the stone beneath them cracked from old explosive glyphs no one ever cleaned up. There’s still a boot lodged in the rafters from some long-forgotten fight.