Page 23 of She Who Was Severed

One priest flinches. Another doesn’t. Their eyes are on me now.

“Kellen,” I say quietly.

He turns his head just enough to hear me. His face isn’t angry. Not now. It’s tired. Set. The kind of tired that means he thought he could stop this. That maybe stepping between me and the city could still count for something.

It won’t.

The lead priest shifts his sash higher on his shoulder. “If she is truly Severed, she will demonstrate as much. A sparring trial will be arranged.”

I’ve seen trials like this before. Not executions, not officially. But no one questions a Severed who doesn’t get back up.

They want a spectacle. An answer they can measure in blood or silence.

Kellen doesn’t argue. Doesn’t threaten. He looks at me one last time, then steps aside.

And I walk past him without a word.

He didn’t fight harder. Maybe he couldn’t. Maybe he knew I needed to win this without him.

Let them circle. Let them test. Let them call it confirmation. I’ve already survived worse than proof.

The priests don’t escort me. That would suggest I need help finding the place. Instead, one of them walks ten steps behind, just far enough to make it clear I’m being watched, not guided. The others disappear like smoke into side alleys and temple halls. This isn’t about enforcement. It’s about visibility.

Word spreads fast in Virelle. By the time I cross into the lower tier near Tidewatch Spire, the streets have already started to tilt around me. Voices hush. Lanterns flicker where there’s no wind. I pass a fruit stall and the vendor turns her back, slow and deliberate, pretending not to see me.

The city’s spine curves here, following the old cliffline where the spire marks the boundary between Veilmarked ground and the training fields. I know the way—every Severed does. We’re not supposed to enter, but we all learn where not to step.

The field isn’t empty.

Figures wait near the far wall—priests, observers, a scribe already seated with his inkboard balanced on one knee. Daxira’s already pacing near the ring, her ashmaw drake crouched behind her like it never left the battlefield. The ground smells of scorched salt and sweat-thick iron. No illusions here. No silk. Just stone, blood, and fire.

Kellen isn’t beside me when I arrive. But I feel him watching. Somewhere behind the crowd. Somewhere quiet.

I stop at the edge of the practice circle. My boots slide once in loose sand. The wind shifts—smoke and something else. Like the moment before a bone breaks.

A priest raises his voice without ceremony. “Standard conditions. No fatalities. No permanent injury.”

Which means they’re aiming for the kind of pain that lingers.

I glance at the ring. The watching priests. The sidelong glances. The silence pretending not to be anticipation.

It’s a trial in all but name.

A witchhunt with a finer robe. The kind where the only way to prove you aren’t cursed is to drown clean. If I lose, I’m a threat. If I win, I’m a monster. Either way, they get to say they were right.

Daxira catches my eye and grins like she’s already bored. “You made it. Good. I hate wasting heat.”

I say nothing.

The chain doesn’t move. Not yet. But it’s awake.

Daxira’s ashmaw drake crouches behind her, massive and too quiet. Its molten eyes track every breath I take, like it’s tallying how many I have left. Daxira doesn’t bother to stretch. She just cracks her neck and smiles, like the outcome isn’t even a question.

“You know,” she calls, “I’ve had worse opponents. But they were at least bonded.”

I don’t answer. She wants me to bite. To slip.

She rolls her shoulders, flame flickering in the shallow space between her open palms. The ashmaw’s spine lights, ember by ember, a silent call-and-response of fire and obedience. The bond between them is visible now—a tether of sigils glowing along her forearm, a mirrored pulse in the beast’s throat.