Page 1 of Embers of Ruin

PROLOGUE

Legends passed down between generations say the world was once divided between two powers: The Creators, who shaped life and death, and the Mortal Kings, who ruled what had been entrusted to them through the magic they were given. Together, they maintained the balance of the world. One created. The other governed.

The first of those kings wanted more.

His name survives in histories, but the man himself has been buried beneath centuries of ash and ruin. The songs no longer remember the man he was, and time has stripped away everything but the sin that cursed their continent.

When his queen died, he refused to accept it. Grief hollowed him out. What began as love became desperation, and desperation slowly became obsession. He prayed endlessly to The Creators for mercy. He knelt within their temples from dawn until dusk, begging them to return what had been taken from him. He did this for an entire sun turn, abandoning his kingdom and his people. Every prayer ended the same way. Every answer ended the same way.

No.

The Creators told the king that death was part of the balance. Life could not exist without it. What was lost could not simply be reclaimed because grief demanded it. But the king refused to listen. Desperation consumed him until it became something else entirely.

One moonless night, he broke into the temple and climbed the sacred steps no mortal was ever meant to tread. At the center of the sanctuary burned a fragment of The Creators’ power. The flame had existed since the first dawn; a piece of divine light from which all life had been shaped. The kings had been gifted magic from that source. It had never belonged to them.

Until him.

The moment the king's fingers closed around the flame, something changed. The light darkened, corrupted not by his touch, but by his intent. What had once burned with warmth and life twisted beneath grief, fear, and selfish desire. The king did not understand what he had done. He cared only that the power remained in his grasp.

With it, he brought his wife back from death. For one brief moment, he believed he had succeeded. Then she opened her eyes. But the woman who rose was not the queen he remembered.

Her gaze was empty. Pale light shimmered beneath her skin like liquid stars, beautiful and deeply wrong. Wherever she walked, flowers withered. The earth blackened beneath her feet. Crops rotted in the fields. Rivers stagnated. Life itself recoiled from her unnatural existence.

Thus began mortal ruin.

When The Creators descended, their fury shook the world. Yet they could not destroy what had been made from their own light. The stolen fragment had become something else. Neither truly living nor truly dead. Neither creation nor destruction. To destroy their creation would have meant destroying a part of themselves. So instead, they turned their judgment upon the king. They bound the corrupted spark to his blood.

“You wanted eternal life,” they said.

“Now you will have eternal suffering.”

“You will never see the sun again. Neither will your children, nor their children after them. You and every heir born from your blood will walk in darkness until the light you stole is willingly returned.”

The curse passed from parent to child, growing stronger with every generation. Dark magic flowed through their veins, feeding on fear, anger, and grief until it consumed everything else. What began as a single stolen spark became a corruption woven into an entire bloodline. The kingdom changed with them. The skies darkened. The land sickened. Entire regions became places where nothing living dared remain for long.

Still, the bloodline endured.

The people of Elucyan turned away from the Creators, believing the gods had abandoned them. Their temples crumbled into ruin, and their stories were reduced to legends whispered beside dying hearth fires. Worship faded with each passing generation.

But the curse remained.

Centuries later, another descendant of that bloodline ascended the throne, carrying more of the stolen magic than any king before him. The corruption had grown restless within his veins. The world's balance had begun to tip. And somewhere, far beyond his borders, creation began preparing its answer.

Not another king.

Not another god.

A living vessel of pure light born in mortal form.

CHAPTER 1

If I don’t reach Mara’s cottage before nightfall, a child is going to die.

I tighten my grip on the worn leather satchel slung across my shoulder and quicken my pace through the frozen streets of Elvora, silently willing my legs to move faster. The bitter wind bites at every inch of exposed skin, stealing the warmth from my lungs each time I take a breath, but I hardly notice. Last night, Mara’s raven found me carrying a hastily scrawled message no healer ever wants to receive: The child’s fever has worsened. Come quickly.

Those words haunted me through the night. Reaching Mara's cottage is all that matters now. Everything else can wait—it has to. Mara has spent nearly fifty years tending to the people of this village. If her herbs, poultices, and remedies can’t save the child, there's only one person left who can.

Me.