From Ashes,i Rise Novels & Stories

"The... the dispatch... already reached the southern lords. The seal is broken. The pack is already bleeding from the inside out." Maya stepped forward, her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird, but her face remained a mask of cold, unyielding iron. She knelt beside the struggling elder, her dark eyes reflecting the dying sparks of the short-circuited terminal. She didn't flinch from the violence; she had lived among the ashes long enough to welcome it. "The only thing bleeding today, Torin, is your conspiracy," Maya said, her voice cutting through the hum of the failing electronics with a chilling clarity. "Operation Ashfall wasn't authorized by an Alpha. It was engineered b

"Don't you think you deserve the same rights?" I narrowed my eyes at him. He wasn't as bouncy and carefree as he had originally seemed. I thought him a little out of his senses when he'd first began talking to me. He rubbed his forehead, closing his eyes. "The come down is always the worst," he mumbled. It was my turn to raise an eyebrow at him this time. He nodded at my shackles. "They use runes on you. They mute my abilities with chemicals. Gets me high in the process. Now, it's wearing off and everything is setting back in. They'll sneak up here any second and shoot me up again, even though my abilities aren't a danger to anyone but myself in this state."

When she finally broke through the dirt, heaving for breath, the cool mountain air seared her lungs as she coughed out dirt. Kira sat there for several long minutes, half in and half out of a grave, no one else in sight, the forest surrounding her impossible to see in the dark. “Fuck,” Kira coughed, tiredly shoving at the dirt covering her legs, trying to free them. She brushed dirty fingers against the tear in her neck, wincing at the sting. It was probably a mess of infection right now, but oh well. It would heal. Probably. Kira crawled out of her grave and lay down beside it, staring up at what she could see of the sky through the inky tree branches blotting out most of it.

"Maybe I am. But this is what crazy sounds like." I started playing. Simple chord progression. Nothing fancy. The song was called "Ashes," and I'd written it the night after declining Atlantic, when the weight of my choice finally hit me. *They said I was a phoenix* *Rising from the flames* *But maybe I'm just ashes* *Learning my own name* *They wanted me to fly again* *Soar above the pain* *But I'm still on the ground here* *Dancing in the rain* My voice was raw. Unpolished. Nothing like the perfect studio recordings Darren had produced. This was messy and human and real.

Ash’s POV The roar of the clubhouse hit me before I even turned off my engine. Laughter, shouts and the sound of bottles clinking rent the air and for a moment, I wonder how they could easily fall back into their normal lives less than twelve hours after an attack. It was chaos the way I remembered it, but somehow louder and more… non challant. Inside, the air was thick with smoke and sweat. A few brothers cheered when they saw me, others nodded, their eyes sharp, reading me like they weren’t sure what version of Ash had come back.

She knelt in the ashes, every nerve alight, and let the flames settle into a quiet burn beneath her skin. The forest was eerily still. Smoke drifted upward in lazy spirals, carrying the faint echoes of the destruction she had wrought. Serena rose slowly, legs shaking, and felt the power within her pulse like a heartbeat of the world itself. The whisper returned—soft, low, ancient—threading through her thoughts like silk and steel. They will see. They will know.

"I could see it in your eyes that you were desperate to find the real killer." "Thank you, Detective Taylor." One month later, Aidan was executed. He died in prison. I submitted my resignation to Ravenshire State Medical Center. Then I returned to Ashford Hollow, held a funeral for Aidan, and buried his ashes. After I went back to Ravenshire, I threw everything in my house that belonged to my mother into the trash. Once everything was cleared out, I sold the house. Then I left the country and began a new life. The following spring, I received an email from Detective Taylor. Attached was a letter my mother had written in prison. Her handwriting was neater than I expected.

Even his notebook lay closed now, as though the act of translating thought into language had begun to feel unnecessary. Aisha noticed this absence of writing more than anything else. Because writing had once been the only place where he remained fully anchored. After a long silence, she tried again. “Do you remember the marigolds?” she asked gently. There was no immediate reaction. Then, slowly, Arman’s expression shifted-not into recognition, but into something more uncertain. “I think I have seen something like that before,” he said. Aisha felt a subtle internal collapse of expectation. “Seen where?” she asked.

Five pulses answered the question before any mouth could. Ashar looked at his hands as flame curled around his palms without burning him. “I am Ashar of Veydrin,” he said, but the name carried more weight than before. The air behind him shimmered with images of a civilization made of fire, stone, blood oath, and sanctuary towers built into mountains. Then those towers fell in silence, and the last flame entered him like a crown returning to its owner. “God of preservation,” he said, as if confessing to a crime.

A deep, resonant chime, like that of a massive bell, echoed from the Aegis of Faith. Then, the golden barrier shattered into shimmering fragments. Sheena coughed up another mouthful of blood, yet the light in her eyes did not dim. Instead, it burned even brighter. The invincible sword energy finally dissipated into the air like faint smoke, and with it, all of Sheena's defenses collapsed completely. Yet, from the ashes, a phoenix rose!