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

Davin sat at his desk, surrounded by fragments of the old Loom-script.

Each page he'd written had changed. Not obviously—just enough to whisper doubt.

A name—his name—replaced in one line by something he didn't recognize.

The southern settlements were changing too.

Villages that had never existed now stood at the edges of remembered maps.

The people inside them spoke of histories Davin had never taught, of heroes no one had recorded.

One woman claimed to have been raised in the Citadel of the Second Flame.

"You could visit the ruins yourself," she said. "They're sacred."

And then she looked at him with pity.

"You're forgetting again, aren't you? Like all the others."

Davin fled to the edge of the Ember Grove.

But even standing there, the air felt alive.

The wind rustled names into the leaves again. But this time, they didn't speak of the fallen.

"Kaelen fell before the Third Gate."

"Ashrel never returned from the north."

"You... never walked the threads."

Because part of him wanted it to be true.

To not carry the burden of history. To just be… no one.

He stood in a citadel of mirrors. Every surface reflected a different version of him—some broken, some burning, some crowned.

In each, a voice echoed the same question:

Touched the one with no reflection at all.

"The one that doesn't need to be."

And the dream cracked open like glass.

And a message, etched in golden thread across his floorboards.

One that hadn't been there the night before:

"You are already part of the new loom."

In the north, Ashrel stood atop a mountain pass, watching the auroras twist in unnatural spirals.

They were beginning to speak again.

They asked if he "remembered the breach."

They said they were "ready for the weaving."

And far beneath the Ember Grove, in a root-chamber lined with sleeping vines…

False Dawns