Page 42 of She Who Was Severed

I sit because standing feels performative. Because pacing would make it real. Because I know the cuffs will flare again if I so much as gesture wrong.

The cot creaks. It sounds like bones shifting. I stretch out one leg, slow and careful. The metal of the cuffs warms with contact against my skin. Not painfully. Just enough to remind me they’re there.

The chain doesn’t stir.

Not even to protest.

I stare at the opposite wall. Scratched with lines that might be tally marks or madness. Symbols I don’t know. One faint rune repeats just above the cot’s headrest—carved deeper than the others. A name maybe. Or a prayer.

The silence isn’t clean. It sticks to the inside of my ears. I can hear my breath, my pulse, the drip of condensation from somewhere overhead. My body aches—not from yesterday, but from everything that came before.

This isn’t punishment.

It’s pause.

Time stops here. That’s the point.

Eventually I eat. The gray isn’t as bad as it looks. But there’s no salt. No flavor. I chew it like penance and swallow it like dust.

I try to stretch, but without the chain’s pull, without the faint burn of form pressure tightening my tendons, my body feels unstrung. Like I’ve been scooped hollow. Like I only ever made sense when something else was curled inside me.

I lose count of how long I’ve been under.

The lights outside the cell don’t shift. The air doesn’t move. I sleep, but only in fits—jaw clenched, muscles twitching, skin hot where the chain used to rest.

And then—

A sound.

Soft. Not close. Not mechanical.

A scrape. Beyond the far wall. Followed by a voice:

“You’re quieter than the last one.”

The words hit strange. Not cruel. Not curious. Just matter-of-fact. Like the speaker’s commenting on the weather. Or their favorite form of decay.

I don’t respond at first.

The voice hums. Gravel-thick. Amused. “Let me guess. First day?”

Still I say nothing. Silence has weight here. And I don’t trust this voice to handle mine gently.

The voice shifts. Just slightly. “You Severed?”

I lean forward, elbows to knees, cuffed hands loose between them. “What’s it to you?”

A rasping chuckle, low and small. “Means I was right. You’re the Ash-born.”

My stomach flips.

The name doesn’t carry volume—but it carries weight. Like blood dropped in still water. Like the sound the chain makes when it’s hungry.

“Say that again,” I whisper.

There’s a pause. Then: “Didn’t mean to scare you. Just… been a while since the Chain stirred.”

I push up, cross the cell. The walls press close. I press one ear against the furthest edge, the stone there colder than the rest.