Francis_9439

Ashes of the First Flame

A novel by [Francis 9439]

For centuries, the world of Elaris has burned under the divine light of the First Flame, a sacred fire worshiped by the tyrannical Solar Dominion — a theocratic empire that claims godhood and unity through conquest. The Empress rules with holy fire and iron will, casting down cities that refuse her light, branding all who resist as heretics and rebels.

But across the shattered lands of the Free Marches, a spark of defiance refuses to die.

Kaelen Virelth, the exiled son of a disgraced noble house, is thrust into leadership after his brother is assassinated. Once a scholar and a pacifist, Kaelen becomes the reluctant face of a rebellion. As war spreads like wildfire, Kaelen must decide whether to become a killer to save the world — or lose everything he loves.

On the other side of the war, Serenya Valir, a devoted priestess of the Flame, begins to question the cost of blind faith. Sent to root out traitors within the Dominion, she uncovers dark secrets buried beneath sacred temples — and a prophecy foretelling a choice that will either redeem the world or end it in ash.

Amid the chaos rise other forces: the exiled Scorched Order, mage-knights blamed for a forgotten catastrophe; the elemental Aetherborn Tribes, whose magic the Dominion fears and hates; and the seductive spies of the Sable Garden, who pull strings behind every throne.

As old gods stir and ancient powers awaken, love blooms between enemies, loyalty crumbles into betrayal, and the line between salvation and damnation blurs. To stop the cycle of fire and ruin, someone must destroy the First Flame — or become its final bearer.

But power never dies quietly.

Ashes of  the First Flame

What had once been a wild tangle of grief-flowers and memory-bloomed trees now reached further than it should have. Vines curled over forgotten stones. Roots cracked the foundation of old battlefields. The trees were whispering again—but not in mourning.

He pressed his hand to the oldest tree—the one that bloomed only in the shape of a flame. The ember-scar on his palm warmed, but not with comfort.

The wind responded in rustling leaves shaped like names—but names he didn't recognize. Not from their war. Not from this world.

Deep beneath the grove, in roots that had never known light, a shape began to take form.

It was shadow-fire. Cold and remembering.

Where Serythae had burned away what could never be, this thing collected it.

A cinder-mind built from forgotten dreams and buried truths.

It whispered to itself in the voice of those who had never lived:

"If they could unmake the world for what they loved…

…then I will make it for what they forgot."

Ashrel felt it first, far in the north.

He'd been tracking the Severer remnants—those few who hadn't unraveled, who instead had become husks wandering with threadless eyes.

Ashrel found them standing in a circle around a pool of glasslike ice, heads bowed, hands clasped.

He drew his blade again—for the first time since he'd left.

In Myris, Davin woke from a dream of his mother.

But in the dream, she didn't speak his name.

She spoke someone else's. Over and over. A name that burned like ink on water, always vanishing before it could be held.

"We're being rewritten," he said aloud, and the walls of his study creaked.

He opened his journals, the old Weavers' scripts.

And found lines that he had never written.

"In the age before Emberlight, there was only—"

But the page ended there, scorched.

In the Ember Grove, a single tree bloomed upside down.

Its roots stretched into the sky like black threads.

And from one of its boughs, a voice whispered in a tongue that had no speaker.

Yet all who heard it recognized it.

Because it sounded like what they'd lost.

Beneath Quiet Soil