From Ruin, She Rose Novels & Stories

Chapter 6 The Reality She Couldn't Accept After the gathering in the ancestral hall ended, Aurora returned to her chambers with an uneasy feeling sitting heavily inside her chest. “He couldn’t have lied… right?” Her voice was barely audible. She sat near the window for hours, staring blankly at the moonlit sky while repeating those same words to herself over and over again, almost as though saying them enough times would make them true. “He couldn’t have lied… right?” Everything about Damien lately felt different.

She straightened as they wheeled me away. I kept my eyes on her until the doors closed. Even as darkness pulled at the edges of my vision, one truth burned brighter than the agony: I had lost her completely. And yet, kneeling in her blood and her power… some ruined, desperate part of me was already addicted to this new version of her. The Queen Surgeon of Ruin. My ruin. And I would pay any price to stay in her hands.

For a second, I could not understand what I was seeing. My mind refused to accept it. It tried to fix it. To turn it into something normal. Something harmless. She fell. She fainted. She is just resting. But none of it fit. None of it made sense. Rose was on the floor. Not sitting. Not leaning. On the floor. Still. Too still. And there was blood. So much blood. It spread across the rug beneath her. Dark. Too dark. Too much. My breath caught. Then everything rushed at once.

“I’m not here for this. This is the dress I want you to wear, and I don’t care if you have to squeeze yourself inside. Just wear it.” And then he turned and left, slamming the door behind him. I stood there for a moment, staring at the empty doorway, his words still echoing in my head. My throat burned. Tears came before I could stop them, spilling down my cheeks. I wiped them quickly with the back of my hand, furiously, as if speed could erase the fact they had fallen at all. Pull yourself together, Rose. I put on the dress anyway. Like Lucas said, I squeezed myself into it, the gown stretching in protest. My skin ached where the fabric dug in. The heels bit into my feet before I even took

And even now, as I stand in the quiet aftermath once again — another husband gone, another chapter ended — I remind myself of one thing: I’ve lost everything before. And I still found a way to rise. And so, before the storm — before heartbreak, loss, and the long road that would shape the rest of my life — there was light. There was laughter echoing down dirt roads, Sunday dinners that stretched late into the night, and the kind of childhood that wrapped around you like a warm blanket. Before the pain, there was peace. Before the scars, there was innocence. This is where my story truly begins.

And from far beyond the mountains, beyond the forests and valleys, in the deepest part of the Hollowed Lands, something stirred. A whisper. A breath. A name. **Ashara.** The Queen of Ruin had awakened. And the world would never be the same again.

she replied. Placing my hand in his chest I pushed him away before walking away from him and putting respectable distance between us. Because I didn't want any bad rumour to be spread in his pack. He looked at me and then opened the door. Without a word he walked out of the room. She bowed her head to him as he walked past her. “ You must be lily,” she said, lifting her head as she gave me a genuine smile. “ I am.” “ I am Athea,” she said, coming inside.

Silver flames burned along the walls without heat, casting eerie light across hundreds of kneeling figures below. Hollows. Thousands of them. Their heads bowed in absolute silence. And at the center of it all. me. No. Her. The first Queen of Ruin sat upon a throne of obsidian, draped in dark armor lined with glowing cracks. A silver crown rested upon her head like it belonged there. Like it had never belonged anywhere else. Her face slowly lifted. And I was staring at myself. Same eyes. Same face. Only colder. Older. Broken in ways I couldn’t understand.

Ruin Great fucking going, Ruin, you gave her a kiss. A bloody forehead kiss! As if my life wasn’t already a tangled mess, now I’ve gone and added another knot to it—a knot named Chloe Jane. I close my eyes, but the image of her, looking up at me with those unseeing eyes, trusting and innocent, haunts me. The last thing she needs is more confusion, more uncertainty. And what do I do? I lay a kiss on her like some bloody love-struck fool.

Even the roots curled back. Even the wind hushed. But something else was rising. Something darker. And I knew its name. Because once—long ago—it had spoken through me. Not in words. Never in words. It used memory. Regret. Echoes of truths too heavy to voice. It always came crawling after fire. A whisper rode the wind— not a breath, not a voice: Ruin. She is awake. She is on fire. She does not kneel. --- Someone was following her.