From Ashes,i Rise Novels & Stories

Just as I thought I had lost any hope, Zion's voice fills my ears. “Elysia! Fuck are you still in there?” His panicked voice gave me a sliver of hope. “Zion, get us out of here! Help me!” I yell, my voice breaking as the smoke fills up my nostrils and mouth. I cough loudly. “Hold on! I'll do something!” Zion shouts. I use the edge of my blouse, fist it and cover Ian's face. His cries only get louder. “Elysia, move away from the door!” Zion instructs, and I scoot away, despite the scary flames of fire surrounding us. Unbearable heat sweeps up on my back but I tolerate it.

Rather I accept my fate, knowing that my time is up. Ready to succumb to my fate, I lower my head to the ground, no longer trying to keep it up. I can hear the steady rhythm of my heartbeat, as it begins to slow. I can hear the pounding of my chest echoing on the tile. Which is when it dawns on me. There's no way it could be my heart. It's far too powerful for it to be my heart.

“You are heir to more than Sterling blood. You are heir to the forgotten throne. Heir of the goddess cast aside.” Her throat tightened. “No… I’m just—” “You are the flame reborn,” the spirit interrupted, voice fierce. “And the world will bow. Ash to ash. Fire to fire. You will rise, or you will burn.” The fire surged higher, enveloping her in light. She felt heat course through her veins, fierce but not destroying. It was power. Claiming her. Becoming her. Tears blurred her vision. “I can’t—” “You already are,” the spirit whispered. “Queen of the Ashes. Heir of the Forgotten Goddess.”

Fire settled into my bones, steady as a crown needing no metal. “Raise your heads,” I said. They did. And in the silence that followed, their howls rose again—free, unbroken, ours. Ash drifted. The hall burned clean. The Luna’s Lie was ash. The Ash Queen had risen. And no one would ever put her back in fire’s cage.

Above her, the sky opens, stormlight shifting, clouds folding back as if to watch. She doesn’t shout. She speaks. And the world leans in. “We are not the forgotten,” she says. “We are not the obedient. We are not what they left behind.” The runes pulse. The blade glows brighter. “We are what comes next. We are what rises from ruin. We are the children of flame and sorrow. And we are Ashborn.” The courtyard explodes in sound. In voice. In fury turned sacred. The Blade of Caladris lights like a second sun.

Stepping away from the mirror, my reflection fades into the golden light as I whisper one final truth the kind that feels like freedom: “And this time, I didn’t rise from the ashes. I walked out of them, whole, free, and on fire with life.”

Abuja stretched before her,merciless, magnificent, and unchanged. But something inside her wasn’t buried anymore. It had surfaced, raw, pulsing, alive. Ashes don’t stay buried. They rise. They whisper. And sometimes… they start to breathe again.

Ashara’s black eyes met hers. “Of ruin. Of fire. Of the world that once was.” And far below, in the shadows of the valley, the Prophetess raised her hands and whispered: **“Let the ashes rise.”**

Ash smiled slowly, reverent and pressed her palm into the torch’s flame. The skin sizzled. She didn’t flinch. “She made me in her image,” Ash whispered, voice trembling with reverence and rage. “And then she tried to bury what she’d created.” Her gaze lifted to the blackened cross still hanging above the altar. “But daughters always rise from their mother’s bones.” The crowd roared. Chanting her name. Ash. Ash. Ash. And from the smoke-filled rafters, the first snow of burning ash fell soft as blessing, cruel as prophecy.

Her grief cracked the stone bit by bit. Her rage loosened the chains that bound me for thousands of years. And the deaths she triggered fed me like a feast. Damien’s madness— Taylor’s despair— The earth was there to swallow it whole. And I fed from it Now the seal has been broken. Now the moon will bleed as it should have. Now my voice stretches into the world once more. I RISE. I smell her fear. I savor it. My vessel waits above. My wrath waits below.