Page 66 of She Who Was Severed

Ashmere waits like it remembers how to bleed.

There’s no gate, no threshold. Just the end of the Wanehold trail and a sudden drop into a valley of shattered stone, blackened towers, and pathways too narrow for carts. The wind doesn’t carry birdsong. It scrapes against the ruined arches like it’s trying to forget the sound of a city.

Vale doesn’t say a word as we cross the edge. Her boots shift silent in the gravel, shoulders squared, chin tilted like she’s walked into places like this before and made it out worse. Her coat’s open again, loose at the arms, blades barely visible—just enough for the message to land.

I follow because I’m too tired not to. My pack drags against the sore spot on my shoulder. The Chain’s been quiet since the fog thinned, but now it starts again—faint pressure behind my ribs. Not humming. Not warning. Just a low, pointed attention. Like it knows something I don’t.

The market appears slowly—more structure than stall. Old stone bones form a half-ring of shelters, walls reinforced with scrap iron, tarpcloth, and rusted sigil posts. No signage. Just presence. Fires burn low in brasiers repurposed from temple censers. The smoke’s oily, with a metallic bite that sticks to the tongue. Someone passes me with a tray of cracked bone fragments tied in cords. They don’t look at my face.

No one here speaks unless they have to.

Vale veers left toward a stall with blade hilts hanging from rusted nails. I scan the crowd. The people aren’t bonded. Not anymore. Some wear the scarring openly—sever marks burnt clean across their shoulders or sigil ink faded and bleeding into veins. Others move like they still expect to fight. One has his entire face covered in veilcloth stitched with binding thread. I don’t ask.

They don’t look at me outright. But some glance long enough to tell me they notice something off. It’s not my posture. It’s not my pack. It’s the thing inside me, humming at a frequency this place remembers.

I keep moving.

A raised platform sits near the center—charred black, ringed in fractured sigils, and deeply cracked through the floor like something exploded from beneath it. It’s not in use now, but the stone remembers weight. Judgments, maybe. Executions. It doesn’t matter. My skin crawls just walking past it.

That’s when I see it.

A half-covered slab, off to the side beneath a lopsided vendor canopy, dusted in soot and market ash. No sign. No price. No attempt to sell it. But the lines catch my eye—carved deep, faded with time but not gone.

A manticore.

Not sketched, not styled—carved. Jaw open. Wings arched in mid-beat. Tail curved and barbed, mid-strike. Whoever etched it knew what they were drawing. The stone around it has been scraped down, like someone tried to erase the image and couldn’t finish. It’s old. Too old to be random.

The Chain tightens.

I crouch beside it, keeping half an eye on the vendor. He’s talking to a barter pair and hasn’t seen me yet. Good. My fingers hover near the carving. I can see a glyph etched beneath one claw—subtle, smaller than a coin.

It matches a fragment from the torn page in my manual.

I don’t think. I touch it.

The sigil answers.

A pulse of red light rolls outward from the manticore’s chest. Not flame. Not aura. Something internal, like heat from deep rock, dull and steady. It runs along the carved tail, flashes across the wings, and kicks outward in a ring of pressure that lifts the dust from the ground and sends it drifting around my boots.

The Chain ignites in my chest.

Not violently. Not pain. Recognition—deep, cellular, threaded through scar and marrow. My wrist burns. My back arches from the sudden hum vibrating down my spine. I stagger to one knee. Catch myself on the edge of the slab.

Then I hear the crowd.

Someone swears. A blade drops. A crate overturns—its contents scatter and roll across the stone. A woman stares openly, steps back twice, then turns and runs. Another mutters “ghostblood” like it’s a curse. Two more Severed vanish into the alley without a sound. The entire space changes shape without anyone shouting. Just motion. Fear. Retreat.

No one touches me.

No one needs to.

I push back up. My breath’s uneven. The Chain is quiet again now, but the mark on my wrist still glows faintly. I don’t know what I triggered, but everyone here knows it wasn’t normal.

Vale reappears at my shoulder.

She doesn’t ask what I did.

“You touched something,” she says.