CHAPTER ONE: FIRE BENEATH THE ASHES
Arav lay on the cold marble, blood pooling beneath him, eyes locked on his wife. "Please... don't do this," he managed, desperation drying his throat, hand reaching, trembling, for Niya.
The masked man gripped Niya's neck tighter, his tone almost mocking. ''Niya, you should have stayed within your limits. But You crossed the line, and look where it has brought you.''
A knife flashed—fabric and skin tearing in one ruthless motion. Niya let out a strangled cry, but her eyes—fierce and unbroken—never left her attacker's. Even as poison stung her veins, the fire within only grew sharper.
He sneered, as if searching for weakness. "Look at you. Even broken, you're dangerous. You could've lived like a queen. But no, now this stubbornness is your loss ."
A crooked smile flickered across Niya's lips as she shot back, her voice steady and biting:
''No, becoming a queen needs more than just power — it requires the passion to smile through wounds, which you cannot possess. You may snatch my throne, but I am the prey who becomes a hunter even when trapped. You may consider me defeated, but your defeat begins with my fall.''
He paused, a flicker of anger in his eyes. ''You've lost everything, and yet you still have so much attitude?''
Her smirk sharpened. ''It's not attitude; it's my nature. I've never learned to break — I am the fire that burns even the winds. Just try to touch me, today you'll burn; tomorrow you'll gather your own ashes.''
He pressed the blade to her throat. "You think you're tough?"
Niya's eyes flashed like steel—a warning, deadly and clear. ''I am more dangerous than you can imagine. My anger will write your destruction—and your death will be the beginning.''
Niya's biting, defiant words hung in the air—each syllable dripping with sass and barely concealed contempt. The masked man's composure broke in an instant. Anger contorted what little could be seen of his face as he surged forward, closing the distance between them like a storm rolling in.
Without warning, his gloved hand shot out, wrapping mercilessly around Niya's slender neck. The pressure was instant and unyielding. Niya's body tensed, her hands instinctively flying up to claw at his grip. Her vision began to blur at the edges, and though she fought to stay strong, a small, desperate whimper slipped free. Tears sprang to her eyes, streaking down her cheeks as her lungs screamed for air. The defiance in her gaze flickered, but didn't die—even as she gasped and struggled beneath his grasp.
For a heartbeat, time seemed to freeze. The only sounds were the rasp of Niya's breath and the wild thrum of fury dancing in the masked man's eyes. Yet even in that moment of danger, something unspoken passed between them—a silent battle of wills, as raw and unforgiving as the grip around her throat.
Arav, Niya's husband, lay frozen—helpless on the ground—his eyes wide with fury as he watched the masked man's iron grip tighten around his wife's neck. Every instinct screamed at him to fight, to protect her. But the drug coursing through his veins held him captive, paralyzing his body and shattering his strength.
Pain twisted deep inside his chest as Niya's desperate struggle played out before him. Helplessness crashed over him like a tidal wave, igniting a fierce ache he couldn't silence. His heart shattered with every fleeting whimper she let out.
And then, as if the walls of his restraint cracked just for a moment, a solitary tear rolled down his cheek—silent testimony to the torment of watching the woman he loved choke beneath someone else's cruelty, powerless to save her.
Arav, gathering the last of his strength, shouted, "Get your filthy hands off her, bastard! I swear I'll—" The words froze as the masked man aimed the gun. A single, echoing shot silenced him forever.
Everything froze. Time itself seemed to splinter apart as Niya's strength finally gave way; her knees crashed against the marble, the cold biting through her skin. For a moment, she was suspended in a nightmare—the lifeless body of her husband beside her, the echo of gunfire lingering like poison in the air. She drew in a breath jagged with agony, and from the pit of her soul, a scream tore free—a sound so raw, so grief-stricken, it felt as if it could shatter glass.
Her vision blurred with tears and blood, but the horror before her stayed sharp. She reached, hands shaking, towards Arav's unmoving form—desperate, helpless, broken. Her voice, splintered and hoarse, barely found the words: "Why? Why us?" Each syllable was soaked in disbelief and pain, as if her whole life was unraveling in front of her eyes. "What did we ever do to deserve this?" Her world—her love, her hope, her future—had been ripped away while she watched, utterly powerless.
In that agony, Niya's scream was more than pain; it was a soul's lament for everything lost—a mother, a wife, a woman watching every piece of her world crumble in a moment she could never undo.
The masked man knelt, shadow looming. "Game over, Niya." His hand hovered, menacing—but his eyes seemed to hesitate , because he knows that an injured lion is way more dangerous than a regular one. At this moment Niya was not less that injured lion or you can say injured lioness.
As the masked man's hand reached out toward Niya, she lifted her tear-streaked face, the weight of losing the love of her life—her husband—etched deep in her eyes. Pain glimmered fiercely there, raw and undeniable, but she refused to crumble. Gathering every shattered fragment of her broken heart, even as they sliced through her soul like jagged glass, she clenched them tightly.
She locked eyes with the man before her and spat out with fierce resolve, "You think this is over? No… you are gravely mistaken. The day will come when you and the leader of your organization will crawl, begging for your lives. Even if you press your noses to the floor, groveling for mercy, you will never be forgiven. You will witness the fall of your entire empire."
Her voice cracked with pain but was laced with unshakable defiance—an unyielding promise that this was far from the end.
For a breath, his hand faltered. Something about her, some secret beneath the pain, unsettled even him.
Niya's thoughts flashed back to her daughter, now alone. Grief and regret tangled in her chest; she mouthed, "Sorry," as tears fell. And then, softly but fiercely, she bit her tongue, letting blood fill her mouth—a last, wordless act of battle.
Niya's strength faded with each breath. Her eyes held that fierce glimmer as they slid shut. The world slipped away—the pain, the loss, the villain's creeping shadow—everything dissolving as she collapsed onto the marble.
A fourteen year old girl, sealed behind a panel of soundproof, bulletproof glass—an invisible cage keeping her hidden from the monster outside. In which her parents had locked her , desperate to shield her fragile body from violence, never imagining the devastation such "safety" would inflict on her soul. They protected her from the physical pain but the emotion pain ?.
She watched, powerless, as the people she loved most—her mother and father—were brutalized before her wide, terrified eyes. She pressed her small hands desperately against the cold glass, pounding until her knuckles split and blood smeared crimson streaks across the surface. Each scream for her parents tore her throat raw; the room swallowed her pleas, trapping her agony within its silent walls.
Her voice dissolved into nothing but broken gasps. Tears streamed down her swollen cheeks, blurring the nightmare beyond the glass. She was just a child, yet grief crashed through her in merciless waves, each more crushing than the last. She didn't care about the pain in her battered fists—her entire universe had been ripped from her, and all she wanted was to run to her parents' arms.
''Aaaaahhhhhhhh!!!!'''
''Maamaaaa...paaapaaaaaaa!!''
"Mamma! Papaaa!" Her cries grew weaker, the weight of loss heavy enough to suffocate her little heart.
The last thing she remembered was the soundless agony, a growing emptiness devouring her from the inside out. The world faded to pitch black—as if she had fallen into a chasm where even hope could not survive.
There, in that endless darkness, the only things left were pain, misery, and the unshakeable terror of being alone. The kind of sorrow that made every heartbeat feel like a punishment—a grief so deep it could not be spoken, only endured, in total, unbearable silence.
Suddenly—darkness shifted.
Avayanna jolted awake , tears flowing from her eyes .Her heart pounded against her chest, sweat trailing down her neck. Her body lay frozen; breath came in ragged pulls as the nightmare's talons loosened but refused to leave. The familiar shadows of her room were still there, but for now nothing, nowhere, felt safe.
She sat in the gray light, paralyzed, as memory and nightmare blurred together. For most, nightmares faded with morning. For her, night was simply when truth stopped pretending to be a story.
The horror replayed: her mother's blazing eyes, the mask's cruel smirk, the staccato bark of the gun. The coppery tang of blood always seemed fresh in her nose. Sometimes she still felt pain shot through her fists from pounding the mirror, could still taste the empty, helpless screams that never pierced the glass. Powerless, invisible—a fourteen -year-old girl who hadn't saved anyone.
The guilt clung to her; every morning she wore it like a second skin. She relived her father's plea, her mother's unflinching defiance—saw, over and over, "Sorry" on her mother's lips, the final gift of a woman who'd always been more fire than flesh. There were days she believed maybe if she had fought harder, tried more desperately—somehow, things could have been different.
She learned to let those doubts simmer beneath the mask she wore for the world. She learned to answer cruel taunts with silence, to survive each day by hiding every sharp edge, to walk through the house trailing meekness and shadow. But at night, when everything else faded, she met her ghosts—her mother's fury and her father's desperate courage—over and over again. Sometimes she wondered if the curse was not only that she survived, but that she could never stop reliving that night.
Yet beneath all the pain, deep inside the hollowed-out ache, something ancient and fierce kept burning. For her parents, for herself, for every lost promise, she clung to the belief that she would not let them go forgotten or unavenged. Each nightmare was both a wound and a warning—a scar, a resistance.
Only she knew what storms she survived in silence.
A faint light filtered through her curtains, barely easing the ache inside. She squeezed her eyes shut, but the pain held fast. The wound time refused to heal burned inside her, as relentless as the slow crawl of dawn.
Downstairs, reality returned in her aunt's grating summons, ''Avyanna! Get down, now!''
Drifting between night terrors and morning routine, Avayanna remembered the look in her mother's eyes—never break, never beg, never forgive. The truth—her truth—would blaze back through the shadows. For now, she moved quietly, invisible among them, her heart a secret flame. She would watch, endure, and remember everything.
The legacy of fire, after all, was hers alone to carry.