Page 63 of She Who Was Severed

Then it’s gone.

I try to sit up.

That’s when the scream hits.

It doesn’t sound human. But it’s not just in my head either—Vale hears it too. She’s already moving, blades drawn, dropping low like her body remembers this before her mind has to. I don’t get up. I can’t. My legs won’t hold. The fog shifts ahead, just enough to reveal the shape.

Wings spread wide—too wide. Feathers broken at the edges, scorched like they’ve flown through lightning too many times and never fully healed. Electricity skates across its back in sharp, stuttering bursts, like the storm inside it is barely contained.

A bird. But more than that. And wrong. No tether. No sigil. No bond. Just raw, fractured magic and a predator’s focus.

Thunderhawk.

Not trained. Not summoned. Wild. Unbonded. Impossible.

And it’s staring straight at me like it remembers something I haven’t lived yet.

It flinches.

Not in fear. Not exactly.

In recognition.

Vale doesn’t hesitate. She charges, blades crossing as she sweeps for the wing joint. The beast vanishes before she makes contact—flickers back into the Veil with a sound like glass cracking underwater.

She doesn’t stop moving until the air settles.

I sit up, gasping, wrists still glowing faint silver. The Chain isn’t dormant. It’s pulsing against the bones like it wanted the thing to come closer.

Vale stomps over and drops a waterskin next to my foot. “You’re welcome,” she says. “Also, what the hell was that?”

“Stormbound Thunderhawk,” I say.

“No kidding. Wild. Half-in the Veil. Which means unstable. Which also means… I should not have had to stab at it because someone couldn’t resist messing with their scary chain magic in the middle of a cursed, fog-choked death forest full of emotional trauma and lightning birds.”

I pick up the waterskin. Don’t drink. Just hold it. “It wasn’t reacting to me,” I say slowly.

She narrows her eyes. “Don’t say it.”

“I honestly don’t think it was—”

“Freya… say what you’re about to say and I’ll stab you and leave you here.”

I let out a dry laugh. “Okay, okay—fine. It was definitely responding to the Chain. The thing looked right at me. ”

She mutters something that definitely isn’t a prayer. Could be a curse. Could be my name, mangled into something sharp and spiteful. Hard to tell with Vale.

She doesn’t ask. Just grabs my wrist and starts wrapping it with linen from some hidden pocket—too tight, definitely on purpose. Her version of nurturing always feels like punishment.

“You don’t poke storm-touched sky monsters with magic that smells like a war crime, Freya.”

I wince as she yanks the knot. “You’re really bad at the whole bedside thing.”

“You’re really bad at the whole not summoning death creatures in the middle of cursed territory thing,” she shoots back, tugging the wrap just hard enough to make my fingers twitch.

“I didn’t summon it.”

“No? You just lit up like an arc flare, vibrated like a possessed tuning fork, and figured the forest would politely mind its business?”