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.

Only shapes of translucent light and shadow, robed in what looked like memory made solid.


The first spoke — not with sound, but with the absence of it:


"You remembered. That was your first mistake."


"You stood at the Stone of Unasking. You asked anyway."


Lira stood tall, though her knees shook.


"We preserved it," whispered the first.


"We saved it from contradiction," added the second.


"We kept it clean," said the third. "Before the flame, there was harmony."


"You call that harmony? A world where no one could question? Where nothing could change?"


The Triune turned to her. But their power did not reach her.


"She is not the bearer," they said as one. "She is not the choice."


Kaelen's voice echoed faintly from behind.


But the Triune turned him into silence — not with violence, not with force, but by simply folding him away.


A ripple in the world, and he was gone.


"You may carry the world into remembrance — into fire, chaos, war, grief."


The chamber filled with a calm so vast it pressed on every breath.


"You may return it to us. Let us fold away the fractures. Let us take back the Flame. Let us bring the silence once more."


The broken Vaults. The cities of ash. Her father's dying breath. The screaming children of Emberlight. The First Flame reborn, reshaped. Ashrel's hand trembling in hers.


And the face of her brother, lost again.


"If I give it back," she said, her voice shaking, "what happens to this world?"


Then Lira said the one thing she had not dared to say aloud since the beginning:


Each becoming strands of light and memory, drawn into the air, into the sky, into the world — like seeds on wind.


Above them, the city's towers split into beams of living memory.


Mountains in the distance began to remember the rivers that once carved them.


And the stars shifted — rearranged into constellations that had not existed in ten thousand years.


And for the first time since the Vaults fell, she felt warm.


Chapter 33 - The Choice That Was Buried