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

She lived in a village that shouldn't exist.

The village of Lareth appeared a season ago. Not built—appeared. The elders said it had always been there, nestled at the edge of the southern forests.

But Rien remembered before. Before the village, before the stones were placed, before the faces of her own family grew unfamiliar.

"You were born here," they told her.

She was remembering something else.

At night, she drew maps from memory. They never matched what others called true. Her forest stretched farther. The rivers forked differently. There had been ruins, once. Now there were none.

And her teacher took her aside with a quiet, worried voice:

"Rien… those places are dangerous thoughts."

One day, a traveler came through Lareth. A woman with no name, clothed in ash-gray robes, her eyes too old for her skin.

She looked at Rien and stopped walking.

"You remember," the woman whispered.

The woman pressed a small, jagged mirror into her hand.

"When they come, they'll offer you a thread. Don't take it. Spin your own."

The mirror reflected not Rien's face… but Kaelen's. His eyes wide with pain, his hand scarred with emberlight.

Just like she knew Davin's voice from her dreams. Just like she had heard Ashrel shout through a windstorm that hadn't happened yet.

She was tethered to something old.

Something that the world was trying to forget.

That night, a second mirror appeared.

Its branches now bore eyes. Watching. Turning. Counting.

Elsewhere, Kaelen staggered from a dream of forests and strange children.

Davin felt a name scratch itself into the margins of his journal: Rien.

And Ashrel saw a burst of light in the south—one not of flame or thread.

The Girl Who Remembers