Page 47 of She Who Was Severed

Inhale. Feel the bruise stretch along my ribs. Hold. Count four. Exhale. Let the pressure sink low into the belly. Again.

The cuffs don’t flare.

But something inside me does.

The voice doesn’t wait long. “You doing magic over there?”

“No.”

“Well… it feels like you are.”

I open one eye. My tone’s flat. “Want to learn it?”

A pause. Then, “Didn’t think you were one of the generous ones.”

“I’m not. I just need a test subject.”

He laughs—hoarse, real. “Now that sounds like the Ash-born I expected.”

I walk him through it. Slowly. I don’t soften it. I don’t skip the hard parts. I give him the technique like I learned it: hard-won, consequence-forward. He listens better than any bonded instructor I ever met. Better than I probably deserve.

“You were trained,” I say, after his third breath cycle.

“Stonecalled,” he confirms. “Failed the Reinforcement Trial. Shattered my humerus and cracked the anchor bone. Beast didn’t come back after that.”

I tilt my head toward the wall. “So you were Severed?”

There’s a pause. Then his voice comes. low and rough. “Yeah. Path failed. Magic broke. They dragged me into the rite.”

He pauses again.

“I lived. That was the part they didn’t like.”

Silence stretches.

“But you said the Chain stirred when I came.”

His laugh scrapes the air. “Maybe it was never the golem I was meant for. Maybe the Chain knew that before I did.”

Another breath, softer now.

“Maybe it’s just been waiting for someone who could carry what I couldn’t.”

That shuts me up. Not out of pity—out of recognition. Losing a path isn’t like losing a limb. A limb you remember how to use. A path? It haunts you by staying quiet. But to be Severed after that—cut off, discarded, told your magic doesn’t get to exist anymore?

That’s not just worse.

That’s erasure with a pulse.

And if he’s telling the truth—and gods, it sounds like truth—he didn’t just lose his path. He lived through the rite, crawled out of it alone, and still ended up bonded to something the world doesn’t even admit exists.

The Chain didn’t choose him.

It claimed him.

Then left him buried.

I sit with that for a breath. Just one. Then I shove it down, fold it into the work. If the Chain left him buried, I don’t get to waste what it’s giving me now.