Tarnished Embers Novels & Stories

When Ember finally arrived, she hurriedly parked her car in-between some trees, to keep it away from sight, looking around to make sure, no one was secretly watching, she ran towards the direction of the mansion Her knees felt weak below her, as she saw, the state of her family house. The condition of it was beyond anything she could have imagined. The once-beautiful estate, with its pretty gardens and elegant architecture, was now reduced to an abandoned site, filled with ashes. Ember’s heart ached and her body whimpered, as she took in the scene, the reality of her loss hitting her like a physical blow. ~~~Ember~~~ "Ember" a voice called out, breaking me from my daze. I turned around to se

Thea asked, lifting her arms as the measuring tape flew toward her and wrapped around various parts of her body. "At least one is trained," Rosa muttered, and I gritted my teeth together to keep from baring them at her. "Ember will need silver," Kade called to Rosa, who pursed her lips as she glared at me. "Mhm. I figured she would be tainted." If I heard that word one more time, I would lose my mind. "I am not some food that has been contaminated, and I would appreciate it if you all would stop calling me tainted!" I snapped, and Thea gave me a disgusted look, not seeming to like the word either.

The Void Hunters had arrived in force, their presence turning the sky into a writhing mass of anti-light that hurt to look upon directly. The assault began, striking first at the Realm of Embers, a world where phoenix-folk had dwelt for millennia, their cities carved from crystallized flame and their culture built around eternal renewal. I watched from Hollowshade's mirror-pool, the scrying surface rippling with images of unspeakable devastation as flames that had burned for ten thousand years were swallowed whole in moments, leaving only a bleak, echoing silence that stretched across continents.

Hollowflame curled around her wrist, then sank into her palm as a thread of living light. “For Kade,” she whispered. “For the broken who built us.” Then she turned to me. “Name the child.” The wolves waited. The world held its breath. I looked down at the fierce, small thing in my armsits eyes full of fire and voidlight, its fingers grasping smoke. I thought of Kade. Of what he taught us: that even without a wolf, you can still howl louder than gods. “Ember,” I said. “Because she carries what remains and what begins.”

He artificially inflated the enthalpy (ΔH), ignoring the catastrophic rise in systemic entropy (ΔS). "We call them Brass-Embers," Malakor announced weeks later, holding up a stone encased in a thin filigree of cheap metal. It glowed with a harsh, flickering, yellow-green light. "They produce the exact same thermal output as the Nightfang's currency. But they require no bond, no blood, and no loyalty." "But sir," the engineer hesitated. "The entropy... without the biological 'Heat Sink' of the Ash-Walkers to stabilize the reaction, the Brass-Embers leak raw, unfiltered thermal radiation. It's a toxic byproduct."

But she carried an ember now—hers, and theirs. And embers, if fed, could become fire.

Most of her turned to ash, but one tiny ember remained. It hovered above the ashes, glowing red, pulsing like a heartbeat. The very last spark of her eternal flame. I lunged through the fire and caught it with my bare hands. It burned me—seared my palms until the flesh blistered and blackened. But I didn't let go. I pressed it against my chest, right over my heart, and whispered: "I'll keep you safe. I'll bring you back." That ember—small as a grape, warm as a dying coal—became everything.

I cracked open the box and poured the brilliant powders—ruby red, sapphire blue, emerald green—over the wreckage of my canvases. "Now, it all goes back to dust." "Don't!" Damien yelled. "We can get that restored!" "Restored?" I pulled a lighter from my pocket. "You still don't get it. Some things, once they're broken, stay broken." The flame licked the oil-soaked mess. It went up in an instant. The whole pile was burning. Orange light filled the garage, a wave of heat washing over us. The wooden frames twisted into black skeletons. The stretched canvas curled and vanished into ash.