In a quiet town nestled in the hills of Gusa, there lived a girl named Elira.
She was twenty-three.
Unemployed.
And for the past four years, she had struggled to find work—drifting between failed interviews, unanswered applications, and days that blurred together in a haze of sleep and silence.
Her room was dim, cluttered with books she never finished and clothes she rarely wore. The curtains were always drawn. Her phone screen lit her face more often than the sun did.
"Elira!" her mother's voice pierced the house like a blade. "How long are you going to live like this, huh?! How long are you going to be a burden?!"
Elira didn't respond.
She lay curled on her bed, staring at the ceiling.
"The daughter of Rose is taking her doctorate now!" her mother continued, voice rising. "And you? You just lie there! Eating, scrolling, sleeping! What else are you good at besides wasting time?!"
Elira closed her eyes.
She had heard it all before.
The comparisons. The disappointment. The shame.
But today, something felt different.
There was a pressure in her chest. A weight behind her eyes.
"There we go again," she muttered, grabbing her earbuds and jamming them into her ears. Music flooded her head—loud, numbing, drowning out her mother's voice.
She picked up her phone.
The novel she'd been reading had just ended. The final chapter left her hollow, unsatisfied. She needed something new—something to escape into.
She tapped the fantasy category.
Medieval romantic fantasy.
Her favorite.
She scrolled, eyes flicking past titles and covers, reading synopses that didn't spark anything. Too cliché. Too predictable. Too soft.
Then—something strange happened.
A title appeared.
Not at the top.
Not in the middle.
It simply popped into view, as if summoned.
The Ash and Vengeance
She furrowed her brows.
"What kind of edgy nonsense is that?" she muttered, half amused, half curious.
She tapped the cover.
The synopsis was long paragraph.
Long ago, in a kingdom ruled by a man praised for his kindness, a darker truth festered beneath the golden halls. The king, though beloved by his people, was consumed by desire. His palace overflowed with wives and concubines—some noble, others mere servants, many drawn from brothels for their beauty.
From this tangled web of lust and power, countless sons and daughters were born. As the king aged, whispers of succession stirred unrest. His children, each hungry for the throne, turned against one another in a silent war of ambition.
Among them was a boy—unwanted, unacknowledged. Born of a brothel woman and the king, he was treated as filth. His siblings mocked him, nobles scorned him, and servants dared not speak his name. His mother, once radiant, was crushed beneath the cruelty of the palace and eventually killed by those who saw her as nothing more than a stain on royal blood.
But the boy endured.
In secret, he trained. In silence, he watched. And in the shadows, he built an alliance of the forgotten and the betrayed. By the time he became a man, his heart had hardened into steel, and his sword thirsted for justice.
One by one, he struck down those who had tormented him—the princes and princesses, the queen, the concubines, and finally, the king himself. The palace bathed in blood, and the throne, once unreachable, now belonged to the son they had tried to erase.
He did not take the crown for glory.
He took it for vengeance.
But vengeance is a hunger that never fades.
As years passed, the boy who once sought justice became a man consumed by power. The blood of his enemies no longer satisfied him. He turned his gaze outward, conquering neighboring states, razing cities, and slaughtering innocents. Children, elders, and those who dared speak against him were silenced by the blade.
The weak boy was gone.
In his place stood a tyrant cloaked in the ashes of his past—a king feared not for his birthright, but for the wrath he unleashed upon the world.
The palace was quiet now—not with peace, but with fear.
Servants moved like ghosts through the marble halls, eyes lowered, breaths held. The scent of blood still lingered in the throne room, where the tyrant king sat draped in crimson robes, his sword resting beside him like a loyal hound.
He was no longer the boy they once mocked.
His gaze was sharp, his voice colder than steel. The crown on his head was forged not from gold, but from the bones of those who stood in his way. He ruled with an iron fist, and his name was spoken only in whispers—King Lucan, the son of the brothel, the butcher of bloodlines.
Outside the palace, the kingdom trembled. Villages burned. States fell. Children cried for fathers who would never return. And in the shadows, a rumor began to spread—of a girl marked by prophecy, a saintess born under a dying star, destined to end the reign of the bloodthirsty king.
But Lucan feared no prophecy.
He had killed gods in his dreams and saints in his sleep.
And if this girl truly existed, he would find her.
And he would silence her.
Then a voice whispered in her ear, though a music is loud in her mind.
She will hunt you.
Elira froze.
A tremor ran down her spine, cold and sharp, like ice tracing her bones. She looked around her room, heart thudding against her ribs.
The glow of her phone screen was the only light, casting pale shadows across the cluttered floor and the towers of unread books beside her bed. Midnight had long passed, but sleep was a stranger she hadn't welcomed in days.
She sat curled in a blanket, thumb hovering over the title: Throne of Ash and Vengeance. It pulsed faintly, as if it knew it was about to be chosen.
She whispered the title aloud, voice barely more than a breath.
It sounded cruel.
Dark.
Dangerous.
And exactly what she craved.
Outside, the world was still. No dragons. No tyrant kings. Just the hum of a broken fan and the occasional bark of a stray dog. But inside the story—there was fire. Blood. A boy who rose from nothing and burned everything to claim his place.
She envied him.
Not the destruction. Not the madness.
But the certainty.
The clarity of purpose.
Something she hadn't felt in years.
She tapped the screen.
The next chapter loaded.
And then—something shifted.
The words shimmered. Just for a second. She blinked, rubbed her eyes. Maybe it was exhaustion. Maybe—
The screen flickered again.
The letters rearranged themselves, forming a single line:
"I invite you, my precious guest."
Her breath caught. It's not just a word, it's more like a whispers from a woman.
Before she could react, the room darkened.
The light from her phone pulsed like a heartbeat.
And then—silence.
Not the kind that comes with power outages.
The kind that feels alive.
The kind that watches.
She reached for her lamp.
It didn't turn on.
She tried to scream.
No sound came.
And then—
She was no longer in her room.
She was floating—suspended in a vast, endless void.
There was no ground beneath her feet, no sky above her head. Just darkness. Silence. And then—
Scenes began to bloom around her like memories not her own.
The first was a grand hall, gilded and cold. A king sat upon a throne, surrounded by wives—dozens of them, dressed in silks and jewels. But one stood out. She wore peasant's clothes, threadbare and stained, yet her face held a beauty that eclipsed every queen in the room.
She did not smile.
She did not speak.
She was forced to sleep with the king—dragged into his chambers, stripped of dignity, treated like a possession. Her eyes held no light. Only resignation.
The scene shifted.
Now the woman was in a brothel, her beauty drawing the king's attention once more. He brought her to the palace, paraded her like a trophy. And every night, he forced himself upon her—relentlessly, cruelly, until she conceived.
When she bore the child, the king discarded her.
Forgot her.
She became a ghost in the palace halls.
Servants fed her like an animal—cold scraps, no words. They avoided her gaze, treated her like a curse.
All but one.
A young servant girl stayed by her side, offering kindness in a place built on cruelty. She helped her through the pregnancy, held her hand when the woman tried to end her life, whispered hope when there was none.
And when the time came to give birth, no one came.
No midwife.
No guards.
Not even the king.
She bore the child alone.
A son.
Beautiful. Pale. Eyes like the king.
The servant placed the baby in her arms.
She didn't flinch.
She cried.
She wanted to hate him—for being born of violence, not love. For carrying the blood of the man who ruined her.
But she couldn't.
She held him close.
And whispered, "You are mine. Not his."
Elira watched the scenes unfold around her, suspended in the void like a ghost drifting through memory.
The woman cradled her son with tenderness, shielding him from the cold world beyond their chamber walls. But when the boy turned six, the king returned—again and again—forcing himself upon her just as he had in the past. She fought, screamed, begged. But the king threatened to kill her son if she resisted.
So she submitted.
Not out of weakness.
But out of love.
And once again, she conceived.
And once again, the king discarded her.
When the day came for her to give birth, no one came. No midwife. No healer. No hand to hold.
She died in agony.
And the child died with her.
The boy was only seven when his mother passed.
No mourning.
No funeral.
Not even a whisper of grief from the king.
She was forgotten.
And the boy was left alone.
That was when the cruelty began.
The princes and princesses mocked him. The queens and concubines spat at him. Even the servants and guards treated him like filth—barely feeding him, locking him in cold rooms, denying him warmth, dignity, and care.
Elira saw it all.
She saw the bruises.
The hunger.
The loneliness.
And then—they threw him into the Abyss.
A place no one survived.
A cursed realm beyond the palace walls, crawling with monsters and demons that fed on fear and flesh. A punishment disguised as exile.
He was just a child.
But he fought.
Relentlessly.
He battled creatures twice his size, endured wounds that should have killed him, and kept moving—driven by something deeper than survival.
Until his body finally gave out.
He collapsed in the dark.
And the void swallowed him.
A tear slipped down Elira's cheek.
She didn't know the boy's name.
But she felt his pain like it was her own.
Darkness filled the void once more.
She blinked.
And the scene shifted.
Now, a man stood before her.
Dressed in black armor, face half-hidden beneath a jagged helmet. His eyes glowed faintly beneath the steel—cold, merciless.
He moved like a shadow.
And killed without hesitation.
Soldiers. Nobles. Mages. Entire battalions fell beneath his blade.
He was a weapon.
A storm.
A king.
Elira's breath caught.
She recognized him.
The boy.
He had survived.
And he had become something else.
Something terrifying.
Something unstoppable.
And then—he turned.
Looked directly at her.
Though she floated in the void, though she was unseen, his gaze pierced through the veil.
As if he knew.
As if he had always known.
Their eyes met across the void—his gaze sharp as steel, hers wide with silent dread.
And then—
A dazzling light erupted, flooding the darkness with blinding brilliance. It wasn't warm. It wasn't gentle. It was raw, ancient, and alive. The kind of light that didn't illuminate, but revealed.
Elira shielded her eyes, but the light pierced through her fingers, through her skin, through her soul.