Ashborn and Exile
1714 Words
At dawn, three sides faced each other:
The Council and their enforcers.
Liora, Ronan, and the Kinmoor loyalists.
Mira and the Ashborn.
Rowan stood between them all.
The first strike came not from the Council.
But from within.
One of the scentless wolves—taken by void—attacked Kaen.
Screams.
Fire.
Shadows.
And Liora’s voice, rising above them all:
“NO MORE CHAINS!”
---
She stepped forward, blade drawn, arms wide.
The fire bent to her will. The void recoiled.
Therion screamed as his enforcers were scattered.
Ronan stood at her side.
Rowan fell to one knee, power pulsing wildly.
Mira shouted, “Now! Ashborn, with her!”
Together, they turned the flames into a wall.
The Council fled.
But Liora’s eyes were not relieved.
They were distant.
The fire had chosen.
But so had she.
Kinmoor still smoked.
Ash clung to rooftops. Cracked scent-runes blinked half-lit. Wolves limped across the battlefield, eyes wide with disbelief. The Council had fled—but so had the illusion of unity.
Mira stood atop the broken balcony of the academy, eyes narrowed.
“We did it,” she said.
Kaen, beside her, grunted. “And now we burn for it.”
---
Liora walked through the center square. What had once been the Courtyard of Flame was now a ragged camp of wolves—those scentless, unwanted, born without bond or place.
Now they had a name.
Ashborn.
Mira stood before them, not with a blade—but with purpose.
“We are not broken. We are not leftovers. We are what happens when the fire is left to choose for itself.”
Applause.
Liora watched from the shadows, heart clenching.
Kaen spotted her. “She’s here.”
Mira turned. Their eyes met.
“Let’s talk,” Mira said.
---
In a side hall lined with cracked stone and old Kinmoor banners, the two girls faced each other.
“You’re leading them,” Liora said.
“They chose me,” Mira replied. “Because I don’t ask them to kneel.”
“I’ve never asked anyone to kneel.”
“No. You burned.”
Silence.
“I’m not trying to take anything from you,” Mira added. “I’m building something new.”
Liora’s voice lowered. “So am I.”
Mira shook her head. “Then why do we feel like enemies?”
---
Rowan hadn’t spoken in days.
He trained alone, fire flickering in jagged bursts. His voice—once sharp, teasing, loyal—was now locked inside a cage of regret.
Liora approached him.
“I don’t hate you,” she said softly.
“I hate me enough for both of us,” he replied.
She sat beside him.
“You made a mistake. You tried to keep me safe.”
“I tried to own you,” he said. “And the fire punished me.”
He looked at her, eyes glowing faint red.
“I still feel it. But it won’t listen anymore.”
She reached for his hand.
“It will. Just not the way you think.”
---
Ronan watched Mira from afar.
She had spark. Fury. Leadership.
Things he thought were meant for him.
“She’s building a pack,” he told Kaen.
Kaen nodded. “So why aren’t you with her?”
“Because she doesn’t trust me.”
“Then earn it.”
That night, Ronan stood before the Ashborn.
“I was born of fire and erased by silence,” he said. “But the void didn’t take me. It missed me. Because it knew I would burn back.”
Mira stepped forward. “So burn with us. But don’t think fire alone makes you worthy.”
Ronan bowed his head.
“I don’t want to lead. I want to fight.”
---
A captured enforcer was being held beneath the academy. Protected by scent-locks and flame-seals.
One night—they vanished.
Only a single mark remained: the glyph of the Void Eye.
“He was released,” Mira growled.
“Someone’s feeding them from the inside,” Kaen said.
The Ashborn were furious. Whispers of betrayal ran rampant.
Liora called an emergency gathering.
“We hold a Trial,” she said. “Not of blood. But of flame.”
---
Wolves gathered in the central square.
Three firepits.
Three choices.
Liora stood before them. “This is not a loyalty test. This is a truth test. Choose your fire.”
Flameborn — Those who believe in bloodlines and the old right.
Ashborn — Those who stand for new paths and packless unity.
The Unlit — Those who are still unsure. Still seeking.
Each wolf stepped forward.
Some wept. Some roared.
Rowan stepped toward the Unlit.
Mira turned to Ashborn.
Kaen hesitated, then followed her.
Ronan? He stood still.
Until Liora looked at him.
And he walked—
Into the Ashborn’s flame.
She watched them go.
Then turned.
And stood in the fire alone.
---
That night, a whisper reached her camp.
“The Elders live.”
Liora followed the scent. Through collapsed tunnels. Into the roots of Kinmoor.
There she found them.
Old wolves. Older than anyone alive. Half-flesh, half-spirit.
“You burned the Council,” one said. “Good.”
“But the void still breathes,” said another. “And it knows your name.”
They showed her a mirror of flame.
In it—Mira. Her eyes glowing.
“She will rise,” said the Elders. “And if you do not meet her flame with flame, one of you will fall.”
Liora’s voice did not waver.
“Then I will rise with her.”
---
The next morning, Mira sent an envoy.
Ashborn would no longer recognize Flameborn law.
Ronan stood behind her.
Rowan left Kinmoor.
Kaen remained as a bridge between.
Liora issued a single command:
“No more thrones. Only fire. Let each flame burn as it wills. But if the void comes again—”
She looked to the east.
“We all burn together.”
Smoke hovered over Kinmoor.
The smoke wasn’t from fire this time.
It was darker, thicker, heavier than any burn Liora had known. It slid through the trees like breath from a sleeping beast. Kinmoor’s eastern woods, where the exiled Ashborn built their makeshift city, were now covered in it.
Liora stood on the broken walls of Old Kinmoor, her eyes fixed on the horizon.
“They’re calling it the Maw,” Kaen said, climbing up beside her. “That fog—void-born. Alive.”
Liora narrowed her eyes. “How far is it from the Ashborn camp?”
“Too close.”
Her jaw set. “Warn Mira.”
---
Rowan hadn’t slept in two days. Not since the Trial of Firelines. Not since Liora stood alone.
His hands trembled as he struck the stone dummy again and again, sparks falling from his fingertips. The fire didn’t sing anymore—it shrieked, snarled, and cracked like dry bone.
He collapsed, forehead against stone.
“You’re unraveling,” said a voice behind him.
He turned.
A woman stood in the shadow. Young, but not. Beautiful, but hollow.
Void-marked.
“You don’t belong to her,” she said.
He gasped, stepping back. “What—what are you?”
“A piece of what you’re becoming.”
The void left a whisper in his chest: You were never meant to burn. You were meant to break.
---
The Ashborn city had walls now—obsidian stone, not flame. They didn’t build with magic. They built with hands. Sweat. Pack.
Mira stood at the edge of the smoke trail. Ronan beside her, sword strapped, eyes scanning the black mist.
“You feel it?” she whispered.
“Yeah,” he murmured. “It’s watching.”
Behind them, the Ashborn gathered. Not children anymore. Warriors.
A scout ran up, face pale.
“It’s moved. It’s surrounding us.”
Mira looked at Ronan. “Evacuate the dens. Send word to Kaen.”
“And to Liora?”
She hesitated. “...Yes. But don’t tell her I asked.”
---
Liora called a council that night.
Not the Council of old.
Just what remained.
Kaen. A few Flameborn loyalists. Elders. Rowan, though silent. Mira came too, cloaked and watching.
“The void’s not waiting for us to pick sides,” Liora said. “It’s moving while we argue.”
“So what?” someone said. “We unite?”
Rowan spoke—quietly, for the first time in days. “We remember.”
Liora turned to him.
Rowan stood, fire low in his palms.
“They didn’t name us Flameborn just for power. They named us that because we were the ones who remembered the old fire. The one that chose. The one that warned. The one that saved.”
Mira stepped forward.
“I’ll fight. But not under your banner.”
Liora held her gaze. “Then we fight under none.”
A murmur passed through the chamber.
Rowan smiled—just barely.
The firelines, once broken, shimmered again.
---
Dawn brought plans.
Kinmoor’s walls would fall first, Mira said. “They’re too exposed. We draw the shadow west.”
Liora nodded. “And when it follows...?”
“We burn it. Together.”
Kaen scowled. “We don’t even know what it is.”
“We know it fears us,” Ronan said. “It always has.”
An elder drew a map—Kinmoor, Ashborn, the Maw, and a strange new mark: a shifting spiral.
“That,” he said, “is where the first fire was born.”
Liora’s breath hitched. “You’re sure?”
“It’s time you returned there.”
---
That night, Rowan’s dream bled red.
He stood in a field of crows.
A girl—Liora—burned in the distance, arms wide.
“I’m not your mate,” she whispered.
“I never asked you to be.”
“You wanted to own the flame.”
He fell to his knees.
Then the crows screamed—and flew into his mouth.
He woke choking.
And heard the voice again:
If you do not belong to her, then belong to us.We will not burn you.We will make you endless.He wept—for the first time in years.
- Writer
