Page 68 of She Who Was Severed

Ashmere feels wrong today. Not in a screaming, blood-on-the-walls way. Just… off. Like the air’s holding its breath and waiting for something ugly to move.

The streets don’t run straight. They double back on themselves like they’re lost too. One turn spits you into a dead end. The next drops you where you started—only now you’re probably missing something. A coin. A weapon. Your nerve.

I don’t know what time it is. Doesn’t feel like morning, but the light’s trying. Fog crawls down the stone and puddles where stairs used to be. We slept in a burned-out room above a shuttered vendor stall. I barely closed my eyes. The floor was wet. The Chain never went quiet.

Vale moves ahead without saying much. She’s got that walk again—the one where every step sounds casual but her hand stays near the hidden knife strapped behind her coat.

“Going to get us water,” she mutters. “Don’t do anything stupid, okay?”

I nod. She’s already gone.

I settle near a half-buried foundation stone and loosen the wrap around my wrist. It sticks. My skin’s raw underneath, warm even in the chill. The Chain’s not humming—it’s… aware. Like it’s listening to something in the ground that I can’t hear.

Ashmere breathes differently than Virelle. People here don’t hide their scars. They wear them like proof of survival. No badges. No ranks. Just consequences.

A man walks past with a broken sigil dangling from his belt. Another leans against a beam with path burn across his throat, healed ugly and uneven. No one looks twice at me.

Until one does.

He’s not close. Just… present. Like the air rearranges itself around him. He’s tall, lean, skin stretched taut over bone. Marks all over him—sigils half-burned, overlapping, ruined. One arm hangs crooked. His eyes don’t match. One is milk-white. The other sharp, scanning.

He doesn’t blink when he stops in front of me.

“You’re carrying it,” he says.

I blink. “Sorry—what?”

“Ashenborn.” He says it like a curse. Like it tastes bad in his mouth.

My throat tightens. “I’m not looking for a fight.”

He draws in a long breath through his nose. Not to steady himself. Like he’s dragging up something old.

“Don’t need to be looking,” he mutters. “That thing you’ve got? It finds its own fights.”

I lift my hands, slow. Palms out. “You don’t want this. I don’t want this. Just… walk away.”

His eyes don’t move. “You lit it.”

“What?”

“The glyph. In the square. That wasn’t a sigil. It was a call.”

My stomach turns. “I didn’t know what it was.”

He laughs, sharp and joyless. “Doesn’t matter. The Chain did.”

He steps forward. I stand. My hands are still open. I really don’t want this.

He snarls something half-mad, half-prayer. “You brought it back. We buried it. And you’re walking around like it won’t eat you.”

He lunges.

I don’t yell. Don’t summon. I barely move.

The Chain does it for me.

Power slams out from my ribs before I think to stop it. It coils like a whip, a bolt, a pulse. No light. Just pressure. The man’s chest glows, then burns—faint, sharp, surgical.