Page 184 of She Who Was Severed

Still waiting.

The chain pulls tighter around my arm, not punishing—protecting.

Like it wants to be sure I don’t step back.

Like I’m part of something bigger, more important now.

Somewhere above, I hear dragonfire ripple against the clouds. But it feels impossibly far away.

Kellen should be closer.

He should have seen this.

Felt it.

The ache behind my ribs sharpens. No time for it. No breath to carry it.

Instead, I stand. Blood dripping down my arm. Chain alive against my skin. The stone behind me still humming.

A room that remembers too much, and a girl who touched it.

And now?

The Chain doesn’t just follow me.

It watches.

- x -

Kellen

I see the pulse before I feel it.

It radiates from the center of Ashmere like a breath held too long finally exhaling. The Chain doesn’t lash into the sky or set the earth on fire. It doesn’t have to. It hums low and wide, like the ground is remembering what it used to be.

And the world flinches.

Stormbound falter in the air. A priest drops his staff in the street and starts screaming. Even Kiroth grunts low in her chest, flaring her wings as if she just flew into something she didn’t see coming.

I tighten my grip on the reins. Focus.

I know what this is.

Freya.

I don’t know what she did, but the air has turned thick with it. Judgment—not as law, but as presence. The kind that stops people from pretending they’re safe.

We bank lower. Ashmere stretches below us, smoke and sun slicing the streets into shards. Soldiers scatter. Defenders dig in. Some are just standing, stunned, like they’ve already lost and haven’t figured out why.

And then—

I see her.

Just for a second.

She stumbles out of a crumbling ruin, bloodied, breathing hard, the Chain coiled around her like it belongs there. Her hand trails the stone like she just woke something that was waiting for her specifically.

My body pulls forward with the instinct to drop.