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

High in the Drakemoor Spires, the Severers stirred from silence.

No longer beasts. No longer broken.

They knelt in unison as the sky split open with emberlight.

Their leader, known only as the Vowshard, rose from a throne of bones and frost.

His face was wrapped in scar-cloth, stitched with flame-thread. His voice had not been heard in years.

He looked to the east, toward the altar forgotten by gods.

His lieutenants shifted in the snow.

"Do we strike her down?" one hissed.

The Vowshard stepped forward. His breath coiled in the cold, and the runes on his chest began to glow.

Rien stumbled from the altar chamber, weak but blazing inside.

She could still feel the Heart Ember pulsing behind her, like a second heartbeat in her chest. Her fingertips glowed faintly, flickers of memory running through them like sparks across flint.

She sensed the Severers moving—not near, not yet—but approaching with terrible purpose.

"They're not what we thought," she murmured.

And she had become a beacon of truth.

Kaelen stood at the edge of the Ember Grove. He didn't know Rien's name, not yet. But he felt her like a splinter in his soul.

"There's someone else now," he whispered.

"Someone who remembers the world right."

Davin traced her name into his grimoire and saw it burn a path to an old, sealed page that had refused to open since the beginning of his studies.

Ashrel looked into the fire and saw her face—not as a girl, but as a storm.

"The Loom didn't break," he said. "It's being rewritten."

In the caves of Iskarath, where the Severers kept their last truths, a new title was inscribed onto a blade that had not been drawn in centuries.

The blade would not serve a monarch.

Back beneath the altar, something else awoke.

But a whisper in the cracks of the stones:

"She will not be found in the weave."

"She must be undone… from the root."

And for the first time, it feared.

The Crownless Queen