Page 17 of She Who Was Severed

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.

The fountain at the center hasn’t held water in years. Just moss and broken offerings—tarnished coins, petrified fruit, a single cracked prayer disk. I sit on the edge anyway, one leg curled under me, the other braced for flight. The manual stays tucked tight in my cloak, but the weight of it feels heavier now. Realer. Like it’s pressing back.

The chain rests along my wrist. Still wrapped. Still humming. It hasn’t moved since I read the last page. But I feel it waiting. Not asleep. Not awake. Like a thought about to become decision.

I unwrap the manual with careful fingers. The cover is rough, the title carved in like someone meant it to scar—not shine. Ashen Chain. No gilding. No sigils. Just the weight of something that shouldn’t exist. It doesn’t look like the manuals they used to hand out on name-day, back when I still believed I’d get one. This feels older. Raw. A truth buried because someone survived it.

The first diagrams are simple. Breathing rituals meant to slow the pulse when the chain stirs too fast. Hand forms to ground excess energy. Focus drills designed to tether you when the bond starts pulling too hard. They’re techniques, sure—but not answers. No explanation for what the chain is. Just the quiet insistence that if you don’t learn how to hold it steady, it will hollow you from the inside out.

A whisper threads through my chest. Not a word. A shape. A tug under the ribs.

Link Two.

The sensation burns—not pain, but presence. I grip the stone edge of the fountain until my knuckles ache, breathing through clenched teeth. The calming pattern from the manual flickers in my head. Count four. Inhale. Anchor at the collarbone. Let the chain follow.

It doesn’t.

I’m halfway through the second breath when the air shifts.

Bootsteps.

I twist, too fast. A figure stands framed in the garden arch. Black robes, gold trim. A bone-white pendant at his throat, shaped like a crescent fang. He doesn’t wear a path mark. Doesn’t need one.

Kier Stromyr.

I’ve only seen him from a distance before—one of the Stromyr bloodline, which makes him dangerous by default. The kind of dangerous that doesn’t have to raise a voice to flay you clean.

“Severed aren’t permitted here,” he says, almost cheerfully. “Though I suppose that only matters to those still clinging to rules.”

I stand. The manual disappears under my cloak.

“Didn’t realize broken fountains were regulated.”

He smiles, thin and sharp. “Everything is regulated, if it’s worth watching.”

His gaze dips to my sleeve. Lingers.

“They say you walked out of the Severing like it blinked. Like something inside you decided it didn’t like being buried.”

The chain pulses once. I don’t flinch. But the heat behind my ribs says he’s not guessing.

“And what do you say?”