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.

Lira found her mother in the Lantern Archives, where flame was forbidden.


Each lantern in the hall held an ember from a moment in history — a voice, a vow, a wound. And the hall itself pulsed faintly with them, like breath in a sleeping beast.


Serenya stood before Lantern 1127: The Siege of Shirael. Her fingers didn't touch it, but her eyes did.


Lira had never seen her mother look so tired.


"You knew they were coming," Lira said.


Lira stepped forward, holding the Ember Regent's letter in her hand. The wax seal had broken without heat — as if the paper wanted to be read.


"They're calling themselves your children. Calling me—" She hesitated. "Calling us something we're not."


"But they have a Vault," Lira said. "A second one."


A silence fell between them — the kind only grief could stretch so thin.


Serenya stepped forward and placed her hand over her daughter's heart.


"You carry the real Vault," she said. "Here. Not beneath mountains. Not inside gold."


Lira's voice broke. "Then why do I hear it waking?"


In the northern room of the Archive, Kaelen listened without entering.


He held a scroll he'd once sworn never to open again — one marked with the seal of the First Flame's final words.


I remember now. I was born so you could choose.


But what if someone else had chosen differently?


That night, Lira sat alone in the family grove.


Her mother's pendant. Her father's old compass. The shard of the First Vault's memory-stone. The sealed letter from the Kindled Crown. And a dried petal from the vine-wrapped statue in Haldenreach.


Come south. To the place where flame first broke sky.


In the far east, in a city of singing glass, Ashrel stood before a crowd of thousands.


Chapter 17 - Beneath the Lantern's Glow