Page 182 of She Who Was Severed

The wind almost carries it forward.

The Chain moves.

Not toward me. Just upward—flicking once like a serpent testing the air.

I think, for one impossible second, it felt me coming.

Or maybe she did.

Maybe she knows I’m near, even if I’m not close enough.

Not yet.

The dragon banks, wings angling downward now—fast, too fast. The pressure spikes in my chest and my bones scream as we tilt.

I grit my teeth.

Another thirty seconds. Maybe less.

But the front line is moving too.

And I already know—

I’m not going to reach her in time.

- x -

Freya

The alley narrows behind me like a throat closing. Blood soaks my left sleeve, but I can’t tell if it’s mine or someone else’s. Doesn’t matter. I don’t stop. Can’t. The Chain isn’t leading anymore—it’s just bracing. Holding itself taut inside my ribs like it knows I’ll ask too much from it before this is over.

A bolt cracks against the wall beside me, flinging shards of stone across my shoulder. I stumble, slam my hip into a rusted archway, teeth clenching hard enough to rattle. Pain flares. Dust coats my throat.

But then—heat.

Not fire.

Him.

A streak of flame cleaves the sky overhead, gold threaded with the kind of power only one dragon in Aetherra carries—Kiroth. The wind shifts as the dragon passes, pressure folding down like a hand between my shoulder blades.

I lift my eyes.

Kellen is here.

The breath I’ve been holding punches out of me, ragged and full and too much all at once. The Chain jolts awake—links dragging taut toward the sky like it recognizes him on instinct.

He’s not close enough to reach me.

But he came.

I keep running.

The alley narrows, then drops without warning. My boots catch on a seam in the stone and skid—gravel sliding out from under me—as the path gives way into an open ruin. I lurch forward, one hand thrown out, the other gripping the Chain just to stay upright.

Dust kicks up around me, dry and fine, hanging in the air like ash that never settled. The temperature shifts. The light gets strange—sharp lines slicing through the roof where it’s been torn open to sky. The whole sanctum is cracked open like a chest cavity, ribs of stone bared and broken.

I stagger into the center. The floor is uneven—half-cleared, like someone prepared it but didn’t finish. My arm brushes something. It skitters across the floor.