Page 191 of She Who Was Severed

He’s soaked. Pale. His chest moves, barely—one shallow rise, another.

My hand finds his shoulder.

He’s still warm.

I press my palm to his side. Blood slicks my fingers, thinned by the rain, warm where it seeps through the tear in his shirt. His hair sticks to his temple in wet strands. Mud streaks across his throat, settled in the hollow above his collarbone. The gash along his ribs glistens dark and slow. I watch his chest, counting each shallow rise, holding on to every breath like it might be the last clean thing left.

Bu he’s breathing.

So It’s enough.

My lungs finally let go. Not all the way. Just enough to keep moving. I lean in, close to his ear.

“You’re still here,” I whisper. “Good.”

The Chain stays quiet.

It’s not needed.

I sit there a moment longer—soaked to the bone, blood still running from half a dozen places—and I keep my hand right where it is. To touch. To feel.

I don’t look at Vale. Don’t look at the soldiers fighting in the distance. I don’t need a count or a strategy. He’s here. That’s enough for now.

Behind me, my army begin to gather.

I hear the soft weight of their footsteps in the rain. One by one, they come up the ridge. A man with a scar carved through his neck kneels beside a shattered shield. A girl drops to her knees.

No one speaks.

They just wait.

Not for orders.

For confirmation.

The rain falls harder, seeping into every fracture, every shallow pool of blood. It washes over the Chain where it coils around my ribs. A faint hiss rises from it—not pain. Just heat meeting memory.

I stay at Kellen’s side, my fingers pressed into the leather at his shoulder, my jaw set.

The Chain doesn’t move.

Neither do I.

Because this isn’t the end of anything.

It’s the moment I keep breathing through—until the world figures out what comes next.

- x -

Kellen’s breathing is shallow, but it holds. Every few seconds, his chest lifts under my hand—barely. Just enough. I keep my palm there, pressing down lightly to remind myself it’s real.

The ground beneath him is soaked. Not just rainwater—blood, too. Mine, his, maybe someone else’s. It’s all mixed now. The slope behind us is streaked in black runoff. The kind that doesn’t clean anything. Just moves the mess somewhere else.

The Chain is quiet. Still tight around my ribs, but not pushing. It’s resting. Not because the fight’s over—because I haven’t asked anything new of it yet.

A soft crunch behind me. Then another. I don’t look.

They’re coming in from all sides—severed, gang members, thieves, mercenaries and exiles. Some with weapons still in hand, others empty. One drags a chain along the stone behind him, not using it, just carrying it like it remembers something he doesn’t want to forget.