ASHES OF THE FALLEN

CHAPTER ONE - THE NAME IN THE SCROLL

The wind howled like a living thing against the stones of the cliffside monastery, rattling shutters and seeping through ancient mortar as if even the sea itself was trying to find warmth. Lyra didn’t flinch. She sat cross-legged in the archive chamber’s lowest vault, ink-stained fingers hovering above parchment, her breath fogging in the cold. The room had no windows, no warmth, only stone, scrolls, and the silence of the forgotten. She preferred it that way.

Her candle burned low beside her, casting a fragile pool of light across the crumbling manuscript she’d been restoring for weeks. The ink was old, older than anything the monks trusted her to touch when she was younger. Now, at twenty-six, she was the only one still willing to do this work. Most of the brothers had long since gone blind or bent with age, their memories as faded as the texts they guarded, but Lyra remembered everything. She remembered every ink pattern, every breath of dust that lifted from a cracked scroll, and even every whisper in the stone when the wind grew cruel. Tonight, it was cruel.

She stood and stretched, her spine cracking beneath her layered linen tunic. On the far wall, rows of sealed drawers waited, untouched for decades, maybe centuries. Most weren’t labeled, some were locked, but all were sacred. Something strange had happened earlier that day. A tremor, not as strong as an earthquake, had rolled through the monastery. It was caused by a single gust of wind strong enough to shake the foundation. And when it did, one of the sealed drawers had slid open, just an inch.

Lyra stepped closer now, heart slow but steady, candle lifted in one hand. The drawer was halfway up the stone wall, worn brass etched faintly with a symbol she didn’t recognize. It wasn’t quite a script, but more of a mark. She set the candle in a niche and reached for it. It didn’t resist. Inside lay a tightly rolled scroll wrapped in faded crimson ribbon, brittle with time. A wax seal still clung to the center, barely.

She held it up to the light, brushing off dust with careful fingers. There was no inscription, just the shape of a handprint pressed into wax. A shiver traveled down her spine. She shouldn’t open it, but she would. She always did. With the precision of a scribe and the reverence of a thief, she broke the seal and unrolled the parchment. The language was unfamiliar at first, curved lines, sharp angles, something between music and a command. But as her eyes adjusted, the letters began to shift, allowing themselves to be understood.

She blinked. It was a list. A very long one. Each line bore a name. Some she couldn’t pronounce. Others stirred something at the edge of her memory. Beneath each name was a symbol, like a signature or sigil, perhaps. She skimmed down, heart quickening. There was power in this. Whatever it was, this scroll wasn’t meant to be found. It didn’t belong with the liturgical texts or even the apocryphal vaults. This was older. Older than the monastery. Older than the war between realms, she’d only ever read about in fractured myth.

Then her candle flickered, and her eyes caught it. A name near the end of the list. Her breath froze in her lungs. LYRAEL. Her knees hit the floor before she realized she’d stumbled. The scroll trembled in her hands. It was a mistake, it had to be, just a coincidence, a similar name, a trick of the mind, but beneath the name was a mark she recognized. A half-moon wrapped in thorns. She had dreamed of it her whole life, on stone walls, on her skin, on the backs of her eyelids.

She stared at the name again, feeling heat rise beneath her skin. Not just from fear, but from recognition. A part of her that had always been sleeping was stirring, stretching, awakening. Above her, the wind screamed through the cracks in the stone as if it, too, recognized her now. And far beyond the safety of the monastery, something shifted in the dark. Something was coming.

The scroll trembled in Lyra’s hands, the parchment impossibly warm for something so old. She read the name again, heart stuttering in her chest. LYRAEL. The shape of it didn’t just look familiar. It felt like hers in some deeper, unspoken way, like breath she’d forgotten how to exhale. She wanted to believe it was a coincidence. A trick of a ruined scroll. A scribe’s error. But deep down, she already knew better.

Fingers numb, she gently rerolled the parchment and slipped it into a wrap of cloth she kept for damaged texts. Her mind was already spiraling, half logic, half instinct, but her hands moved with the practiced precision of someone who’d been handling sacred words since childhood. She blew out the candle, cradled the scroll to her chest, and climbed the worn stone steps back toward her quarters, the flickering torchlight of the hallways brushing faint gold across her cheekbones. The monastery had grown still in the hour since vespers, no footfalls, no murmured prayers. Only the distant crash of sea against rock, and the wind threading through the arches like something searching.

Her room was small, with bare stone walls, a single narrow bed, a wooden chest, and a low table always cluttered with parchment and tools. She pushed the door shut with her shoulder and slid the bolt quietly into place. Then she sat, scroll unwrapped, fingers pressed against her temples. She stared at the name again. LYRAEL. It was her name, but stretched, ancient, something older than speech. She said it aloud once, softly, as if speaking it too loudly might summon something. The air didn’t shift, but something inside her did.

She exhaled slowly, set the scroll aside, and leaned back against the stone wall, legs still folded beneath her. The monks had always told her her past didn’t matter. That who she was could be rewritten through devotion. That she was found, not lost. But if this scroll was real… If this name meant what it seemed to… Then she wasn’t just found. She was hidden.

A knock on the inside of her skull pulsed once, then faded. She pressed her fingers harder against her temple, trying to will the storm inside to quiet. The monastery felt smaller suddenly and to still, like the walls were listening. She stood and crossed to the narrow window carved into the wall. Outside, night had swallowed the sea in shades of ink and silver. Clouds moved fast, as if stirred from beneath. There was no moon tonight. But there was… light. A strange shimmer, buried behind the cloud line, flickering like lightning, but there was no sound, no thunder.

Lyra narrowed her eyes. Then she saw it. A figure, dark against the cliffside path far below, barely distinguishable from shadow, cloaked, tall, unmoving. She blinked, looked again, still there. Her heart thudded in her chest, not from fear, but from a deep knowing. She yanked on her cloak, stuffed the scroll into her satchel, and slid quietly from the room. She didn’t light a candle, didn’t need to. Her feet knew the paths of this place better than they knew rest. Down the hallway, past the chapel, through the outer gate, and down the stone-cut steps to the lower courtyard.

The wind met her like a warning, tugging at her hood. The figure was still there, just beyond the last arch that overlooked the sea. Back turned to her, still as the cliff itself. She approached, slow but certain. Ten paces. Five. Two. The figure turned, a glimpse of a face beneath the hood, shadowed, masculine, eyes like a thunderstorm. Recognition flashed in them, and then he was gone, no step, no movement, just absence. Like he’d never been there at all.

Lyra’s breath caught. She stepped forward, reaching the spot he’d occupied. There, etched into the stone, glowing faintly like something cooling after being burned, was a symbol. The half-moon wrapped in thorns, fresh. She stared, stunned into stillness, until a whisper threaded through the air around her, not in her ears, but in her mind.

“You were not lost. You were hidden.”

The words weren’t hers, but they knew her very soul. The voice vanished as quickly as it came, leaving behind a silence that felt too still, too hollow. Lyra didn’t move. She stood frozen at the cliff’s edge, one hand still hovering above the strange symbol carved into the stone. It pulsed faintly, then dimmed, as if it had only ever existed in the space between moments. Between memory and magic. Between who she was and whoever she had once been. Her pulse refused to settle.

“You were not lost. You were hidden.”

The words rang again in her head, not like sound but like truth settling deep in her core. She glanced around the empty path, then down the slope toward the crashing waves below. There was no sign of the man, if he’d even been a man at all. It should have unsettled her, but it didn’t. She felt stirred, changed, but not afraid.

Lyra turned back toward the monastery, her breath shallow. The storm overhead crackled, light glinting behind the clouds like a fuse lit beneath the sky. She walked quickly but deliberately, her boots crunching over loose gravel, the satchel with the scroll pressed tight to her side. Whatever this was, it wasn’t over. It had only just begun.

When she slipped back into the monastery’s main hall, it was darker than before. The torches along the walls had gone out, odd, but not impossible. The wind had strange habits in this place. Still, it made the shadows stretch longer, and the silence more suffocating. She moved fast, keeping to the wall, winding through stone corridors that curved like veins toward the center of the structure. Toward the scriptorium, where she kept her ink and knives, her translation books, and, more importantly, her locked journal. She needed to write it all down before it blurred. Before someone else tried to take the memory from her.

The moment she opened the door to the scriptorium, she knew something was wrong. The air smelled… burned. Not the smoke and fire, smell, but pure ozone and lightning. She stepped inside. The room looked unchanged, her tools on the desk, scrolls stacked neatly, the ancient tome she’d been restoring just as she’d left it, but the mirror above her desk had cracked down the center. And carved deep into the wood, just below it, was the same symbol. The thorn-wrapped moon. Lyra swallowed hard. Someone had been here, not hours ago, mere minutes ago. And then, just at the edge of hearing, she caught something. A whisper of robes, a breath where there shouldn’t be one. She spun, heart racing, eyes sharp. No one, but the hairs on her arms, stood on end.

She grabbed her journal and dropped the scroll beside it, hands moving fast. She scribbled down what she could. She added the name, the figure, the symbol, and the voice. She didn’t even stop to breathe until the last line was inked. You were not lost. You were hidden. Her hand trembled. A low rumble rolled beneath the floor, distant, deep, something old. Lyra looked up, eyes darting to the ceiling, to the stone arch, to the trembling lantern swinging above the door.

Then everything went still, silent. But the silence didn’t feel empty anymore. She stood, every instinct screaming that something had opened tonight, and not just a drawer in the archive. The gate was creaking. Not the one built of stone and metal. The one built of secrets and sealed names. Lyra turned slowly toward the door, the last of the storm’s light flashing against the cracked mirror behind her. And in its fractured surface, for the briefest of seconds, she didn’t see her own reflection. She saw wings. Torn. Burning. Falling through stars. Then the vision was gone.

But the burn in her chest remained.

CHAPTER TWO - THE EDGE OF SILENCE

The burn in her chest pulsed again, low, steady, like the echo of a name she hadn’t spoken aloud in lifetimes. Lyra clutched the edge of the desk, knuckles white, eyes fixed on the cracked mirror. The wings were gone now. Only her reflection remained, pale and hollow-eyed in the dim light, her breath ghosting across the fractured glass. But the memory of what she’d seen clung to her skin.

Torn. Burning. Falling through stars.

Her heart hammered against her ribs. She forced herself to inhale, slow and controlled, the way the monks had taught her as a girl: control the breath, control the body, control the mind. But no breath could smother the truth now. She wasn’t changing. She was remembering.

The scriptorium pressed close around her, the cold of the stone walls sinking into her bones. She backed away from the desk, the journal still lying open with her frantic scrawl:

You were not lost. You were hidden.

The lantern above the door swayed gently on its chain, creaking faintly. She frowned, glancing toward the ceiling. There was no draft or open window. The silence wasn’t complete anymore. It felt stretched, weighted, like the hush before a storm or the long, tight pause before a voice speaks. She crossed to the door, fingertips grazing the heavy wood. The cool iron bolt slid back with a faint scrape.

The hall beyond was darker than it should have been. The torchlight flickered too low, casting long, uneasy shadows along the stone. The air still tasted faintly of ozone, like a storm had passed through, yet left no sign. Cautiously, she stepped into the corridor. For a moment, she simply stood, the cold seeping up through the soles of her boots, her breath fogging faintly in the chill. She knew she should turn back, lock the door, wait for morning, pretend none of this had happened.

But her feet carried her forward, past the worn arches, past the sleeping chambers, past the chapel where the brothers would soon gather for dawn prayers. Something was pulling at her, not a sound, not a voice, but a thread tied to her ribs, tightening, guiding, calling. And as she turned a corner, she stopped dead. A figure stood in the hall ahead, tall, hooded, and eerily still.

The light caught the faint curve of a pale face beneath the hood, eyes glinting like storm light. He didn’t move. He didn’t speak, but Lyra knew, without a doubt, that he had come for her. Lyra’s fingers twitched at her side, instinct pulling her back a step, even as something inside her leaned forward. The hooded figure remained still, his gaze locked to hers.

Her throat worked around a dry swallow. “Who are you?” she managed, her voice rough.

The figure tilted his head, just slightly. Just enough for the edge of his mouth to catch the faint light. “Lyrael,” he said softly.

She flinched. “No,” she whispered, shaking her head. “That’s not my name.” But even as she said it, she felt the lie burn across her tongue.

The figure took one step forward. His cloak stirred faintly around his boots, not brushing the ground, but moving as if caught in a wind only he could feel. Lyra’s heart hammered, the pulse in her chest syncing to a rhythm she didn’t understand but recognized all the same.

“What do you want from me?” she asked, voice barely above a breath.

A long pause stretched between them, deep, intense. Then, quietly, like a memory, he said, “You called us.”

Her stomach lurched. She took another step back, boots scraping lightly over stone. “I… I didn’t call anyone.”

“You opened the scroll,” the figure murmured. “You spoke the name. You marked the seal.” His eyes gleamed. “You’re awake.”

Her skin prickled, every hair standing on end. She shook her head again, backing up another step. “No. No, I didn’t mean—”

“You remember,” he interrupted softly. His voice wasn’t cruel. It wasn’t kind, either. It was something much deeper, much older.

A thread tightening around her ribs, just like before. “I don’t know you,” Lyra whispered, but her chest ached. Her fingertips burned and somewhere deep in her mind, a door she hadn’t known existed began to crack open.

The figure stepped closer again, his shadow spilling long across the floor, and for the first time she realized. He wasn’t alone. Behind him, farther down the corridor, other shapes stirred. Dark figures, cloaked, and silent. Not an army, not yet, but enough. Lyra’s breath hitched. Her feet shifted, ready to turn, to run and then the figure’s hand lifted, palm open, and fingers spread.

“Lyrael,” he said softly, almost tender. “Come back to us. Come back to me.”

Lyra’s chest tightened, the burn in her ribs spreading like a slow, rising fire. The words pulsed through her, not just in her ears, but deep in the marrow of her bones, as if her blood itself recognized them. She shook her head hard, fists clenching at her sides.

“I don’t know you,” she whispered again.

But the figures behind the hooded man were already stepping forward, shapes emerging from shadow, their presence folding over the narrow corridor like the closing jaws of something ancient and patient. Her heart lurched. Her body wanted to turn, to flee, to vanish back into the scriptorium, into the bolted door, the desk, the ink-stained safety of who she thought she was, but her feet stayed rooted. Because deep inside, beneath the rising panic, a voice stirred. It wasn’t theirs, but hers, You were not lost. You were hidden.

Her breath caught, sharp and ragged. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to crush the words down, but they surged up like a wave, carrying with them fragments she couldn’t control. A battlefield of light and shadow. A voice calling her name, not Lyra, but Lyrael. Flashes of hands reaching and wings burning. She staggered back against the cold stone wall, gasping. The hooded figure watched her calmly, no rush in his stance, no threat in his voice.

“You remember,” he murmured again, softer this time. “It’s why you woke the seal.”

Seal. The scroll. Her eyes snapped open, darting to the satchel at her hip. The parchment pulsed faintly inside, as if sensing the nearness of the one who spoke. Her fingers twitched toward it.

“Don’t,” the figure warned gently. “Not here. Not now.”

The figures behind him moved closer. Their presence wrapped around her like a net. Lyra’s breath shook. She could run. She should run, but every instinct told her it wouldn’t matter. They weren’t here to drag her away. They were here because she had called them. Even if she didn’t understand how.

The figure extended his hand again. “Come back to us, Lyrael,” he said, voice low. “Before the others find you first.”

Others. Her pulse jumped. There were more. The thought hit her like a jolt, slicing through the fog. Her body surged into motion, shoving away from the wall, shoving past the first few steps of panic. “No,” she choked, stumbling back. “I… I don’t—”

A sound split the air. A roar, deep, shuddering, shaking the very bones of the monastery. The hooded figure’s head snapped up. The shadows behind him recoiled, rippling like startled animals. Lyra didn’t wait. She turned and ran down the corridor, around the curve of the stone, boots slamming over ancient flagstones, the satchel bouncing against her side, the scroll inside burning like a brand.

She didn’t look back. She didn’t have to. She could feel it. The air had thickened, electric and sharp, humming with something vast and waking. The monastery was no longer still. Something deep beneath it had begun to stir.