Page 58 of She Who Was Severed

I reverse the cycle. Pressure from the feet up, not the breath down. I don’t know if it’s technically a form. I stitched it together from a page fragment and whatever I remembered from being cuffed. It’s raw, uneven, probably dangerous.

Cycle Seven.

There’s no diagram for it. No approved name. Just a shape I feel when I close my eyes and lean into the place where pain builds before it flares. I hold it. Just long enough.

The chain stirs.

It doesn’t lash. Doesn’t hum. Just ripples once along my spine—tight, slow, deliberate. Like something waking up in the dark.

Then the world tilts.

The breath turns sharp. My veins go light. I lose the hold too late and the ground slides sideways beneath me.

My balance’s gone. My footing’s gone. The stars stretch at the edges of my vision and I pitch forward, one hand catching mud before my face hits stone. My stomach turns.

I throw up.

Not because of the cycle. Because of what I felt.

The second link didn’t open.

It moved.

Shifted. Just enough to let me feel it. Like something ancient, sleeping, stirred under my ribs and decided to remember I was here.

I don’t try again.

Not that night. Not with my bones still buzzing and the pressure behind my eyes clawing for space. I pull the cloak tight around my shoulders and sit near what’s left of the fire. The coals spit faint heat. I press my fingers to the cover of the manual but don’t open it.

Instead, I whisper his name. Just once. Quiet. Barely there.

Not mine. Not the Chain’s.

His.

Then I swallow it down. Pack it away. Bury it deeper than breath.

Dawn doesn’t come with light. It just makes the dark shift sideways. I stand before the mist finishes rising, sling the pack over my shoulder, and start walking again. No trail. No markers. Just a direction and the weight of something still coiled against my spine.

I don’t know if Ashmere is a ruin or a lie.

But the chain remembers it.

And I’m not ready to die not knowing why.

- x -

It starts with dirt under my nails. Not magic. Just dirt. Packed in tight as I drag both hands through the slope like it’s holding something I lost. I’m not sure when I started. But I don’t stop.

The ridge wasn’t marked. No structure. No ruins. Just a bend in the path the map barely registered. The kind of omission you don’t question until the chain starts pressing into your spine like it has a memory and wants me to find it.

Roots choke the slope. Too many. Too deep. I tear through them with my hands until the fabric of my sleeves shred and the skin underneath goes raw. One root wraps tight around my wrist. I yank too hard. It cuts. Doesn’t matter.

Then stone.

Flat. Cold. Clean where it shouldn’t be.

My hand slips. Just enough. Palm hits a sharp edge—splits straight through. Blood spills fast. Bright and sharp down my forearm. I barely look before it’s soaking into the rock.