The Ruins By Scott Smith Novels & Stories

Violet POV “ Stupid irish brut” I hissed walking to the closet to pick up my clothes for the night. “ I’m going to pay you back for humiliating me and making your stupid guards touch my skin, you arrogant, stupid, toxic dumb head” I screamed at the empty room, throwing a hanger across the room. I caught my reflection in the mirror and stopped dead, I have never looked this horrific, my hair was a mess and clothes were ruined stained with whatever disgusting filth on that warehouse floor.

After he did what he had to do, he stood up from the bed and gave me a smirk before leaving my room. I sat up and hugged my knees to my chest crying, when will all this torture end? To him, i'm like a toy to him which he treated anyhow he wanted, life is cruel for me. I'm no longer the girl i used to be, although i was still beautiful but i never saw myself as that. I have scars on my skin in hidden places, my heart was hurting. I stood up with tears still plastered on my face. I went back to the bathroom and splashed water on my face hoping that would clear everything.

She’s everywhere in this ruin — in the dust, in the faint scent of burned metal and rain, in the pieces of my heart I can’t seem to gather. When I finally force myself to move, I find the exit half-collapsed but passable. Outside, dawn is breaking — the first light of a world that doesn’t know what happened beneath its surface. The city spreads before me, quiet and distant. The skyline glows faintly gold, as if mocking the devastation below. She sacrificed herself to end this. To end me. I can’t decide if that makes her brave or foolish. Maybe both. --- Hours pass as I wander through the wreckage, searching for something — anything — that tells me she survived. My legs move automatically, my

AMARA The ruins still burned when dawn came. Gray smoke drifted toward the sea, carrying with it the ghosts of my childhood. Everything smelled of scorched earth and salt — the scent of the past being torn open. I stood among the remains of the De Santis estate, surrounded by guards who didn’t dare speak. My hands were filthy, blood beneath my fingernails, my heart beating too loud. The last explosion had unearthed something beneath the rubble — something the flames couldn’t consume.

“In the old ruins, beneath the council ground. Said you’d know his name.” The name came back to Xander in a rush of cold memory before Rowan even spoke it. The Man in the Ruins The ruins were a labyrinth of stone and shadow, tunnels older than the council itself. As a boy, Xander had played here, imagining himself a hero. Later, as Alpha, he had issued orders here that would turn into lines in the songs of victory… and the silences of loss. It was one of those silences that met him now. At the deepest chamber, a man waited. Broad-shouldered. Older. A jagged scar split his cheek; one eye was cloudy, the other sharp as a wolf’s.

He smiled. Thunder cracked with red lightning in the dark clouds, lighting the whole ground red. Moratia looked at Ruin’s body in the crater as it dispersed into dark fumes. The fumes rose higher and higher into the sky until it merged with the skull shaped clouds. “Goodbye… Marikh…” Squalls rushed across the ground, probably carrying with them Moratia’s parting words to Ruin. Mizkeal followed her gaze to the thundering clouds as they slowly dispersed away, revealing a clear, gray sky.

The echoes are still there, waiting, and they’ll be louder than ever when we return. 🖤 Echoes of Ruin resumes January 1st.

Nyx surged forward with enough force to make my vision flash white. The world fractured. I stood in darkness with cold biting through my skin like I'd swallowed it. Iron bars rose around me—thick and crude, slick with corrosion, close enough to touch in every direction. Beyond them: ruins. Stone structures collapsed inward, crumbling archways half-swallowed by forest that had grown through what civilization abandoned. A broken tower silhouetted against a sky the wrong color—too red, too angry. Wind screamed through shattered walls. I smelled smoke. Blood. Wet earth. And beneath everything, faint and terrified and absolutely real—

The ruins were close now, closer than they had ever been. The land began to shift as they walked. The rolling hills flattened into a vast expanse of stone, broken by jagged pillars that jutted toward the sky like the bones of a long-dead beast. The Celestial Ruins loomed in the distance, half-hidden in the fog, an ancient structure bathed in an eerie, silver glow. Rael adjusted his grip on his sword. "So this is it? The place the First King’s writings led us to?" Myrra nodded, her violet eyes scanning the fractured landscape. "It has to be. This place feels… different."

All I had wanted was to have darkness consume me. I wanted to find peace in the menacing silence. To find comfort on the cold floor But I knew it just hadn't been possible. My life was now a huge disaster and I had no one help me fix it ,defintely not Jax . I hadn't even told the poor guy. Romano couldn't even help me get back up from my feet . My father was the type to watch you fail in silence . Thinking of Lucinda Corti,I shed a tear but wiped it before it ran through.