Page 56 of She Who Was Severed

I passed the last checkpoint with my head down and my hands open. And the city—my city—let me go.

But this?

This is worse.

The wild doesn’t greet me. It doesn’t push me out either. It just waits, like it knows I’ve got nowhere else to go.

The first ridge past Virelle isn’t meant to be climbed. The slope is too steep, the soil slick and loose under my boots. Thornroots lace through the stone like nerves, grabbing at ankles and tearing straight through cloth. I climb anyway. There’s no path—not anymore. And that’s the point. I’m following routes that don’t show up on council maps. Smuggler lines. Old border scars. The kind of trails people mutter about in temple kitchens, always with a laugh that doesn’t reach their eyes.

The chain stays wrapped along my spine, its weight even and patient. It hasn’t reacted since the breach. But I can feel it thinking. Not in words. Not even in intent. Just pressure, like it’s testing which part of me will break first.

By the second ridge, my boots are waterlogged and my lungs don’t fill clean. Cold’s made a home beneath my ribs. I feel the sting of iron at my wrists where the cuffs rubbed skin down to raw.

I reach for the map anyway, fingers stiff from cold and mud. Dig it out of the pack, drop to one knee, and spread it across a patch of flattened moss.

The edges are worse now. Ink bleeding through the folds, corners soft from damp. One of the shrine marks is gone completely—just a pale blur where a Veilmarked symbol used to be. I can still see enough to orient, barely. Virelle’s boundary sits behind me, east and downslope. The cliffs I just crossed form the old edge of Selvarra’s influence—before the Council stopped patrolling this far west. Beyond that, the Wanehold starts. A stretch of broken land no one charts honestly, because no one bonded wants to admit it still exists.

Somewhere ahead, if the map’s even close to right, is Ashmere.

Caldera’s to the north. Nerinth down along the southern pass, tucked near the coast. Cities that still burn their lanterns at night. Cities that don’t care if someone like me vanishes.

This map wasn’t drawn for someone trying to get there. Just a priest’s sketch layered over myth and bad memory. Half a peak line. A collapsed shrine. What might be a path or just a crease in the paper.

But it’s all I have.

So I follow it.

And I don’t look back.

The farther I go, the heavier everything feels. Not just my legs—the air, the quiet. Light drains fast in the trees, and whatever’s left turns flat. There’s no firelight here. Just wet stone underfoot and the sound of my boots dragging through moss I didn’t see coming.

I stopped tracking time around the third ruin. It was a shrine once—Veilmarked, maybe. Hard to tell. Most of the statue had collapsed inward, but I could still smell the last rites on the air. Ash, mostly. Something sweet under it. The wind here doesn’t care about direction. It carries what it wants.

The silence isn’t dead. It’s watching. Every twig crack, every labored breath—I feel them echo down the ridge behind me like a warning I’m too tired to listen to.

And still, his voice finds me.

You don’t know what I’m capable of, Freya.

I don’t hear it out loud. Just memory, curled sharp against the back of my mind. But it lands. Just like it always does.

I feel it then—ghost pressure just below my left ear. The place he kissed last. Not my lips. Not my cheek. Just that one spot, like it means something he won’t say out loud.

My fingers brush the spot before I can stop them. Skin chilled. Still tender. I remember the way he smelled when he leaned in that close. Fire. Wind. A hint of cinder, like he’d just stepped through smoke and didn’t bother shaking it off.

I set my jaw. Shift forward. Let the burn in my legs take over the thought. I’ve got more climb ahead. More silence. More wild between me and what comes next.

But I carry that place with me.

Every step. Every breath.

And I keep going.

When night finally drops, I find cover beneath what used to be a gate arch. The stone’s fractured at the base, held together more by tree roots than design. A gust could bring it down. I still take it. There’s nowhere better within reach.

I don’t bother with much wood. Just enough to light. Enough to keep the dark from swallowing the map whole. The branches snap easy—too easy—and damp needles hiss when they burn. The smoke curls thick and fast, sharp at the back of my throat.

I spread the map by the fire. One edge curls before I realize it’s too close. The paper blackens and eats itself in a line that takes half a symbol with it.