📖 Ashes of the Forgotten Star Prologue – The Final Equation
In the end, it wasn't war that ended me.
It was peace.
A peace I had built with blood, steel, and intellect — forged in the crucible of a shattered world. I had ended the last great war with a single theory, a formula so perfect it bound reality itself. They called me a genius, a living myth.
But a world ruled by perfection leaves no place for the imperfect.
The Council feared what I knew. What I was. So they did what every trembling government does when faced with a man they cannot control:
They erased me.
They failed.
Even as the poison gripped my lungs and the light dimmed from my lab's vaulted ceilings, I knew — death would not be the end. My last breath carried a single promise:
"If this world has no place for me… I will make a new one."
Chapter 1 – Waking Fire
I awoke choking on smoke.
Pain. Heat. The smell of burning wood.
My body — smaller, leaner. Younger. Weak.
"What—?"
Screams outside. A village? People were running. A red haze lit the edges of my blurred vision as a shadow loomed overhead — wings darkening the sky.
A dragon?
No — not quite. Its scales shimmered with mana, its breath melting stone. A flarebeast, my mind supplied, as if I had known it all along.
Instinct moved me before memory. I grabbed the arm of a woman — no, my mother, in this life — and pulled her away just as the roof collapsed behind us.
"Lioren! Stay with me!" she cried, her voice breaking.
Lioren. That's my name now.
The fire answered for me, and something stirred inside. A warmth that wasn't heat — a pull from deep within my chest.
Mana.
I could feel it. Flowing like current beneath skin. Untamed, but there. I reached for it. It resisted — then yielded.
My fingers sparked.
A surge. A burst of blue light. The falling beam above us shattered mid-air, pieces veering off like they had refused to touch me.
Her eyes widened. "You used… magic?"
I said nothing. I was too busy marveling at the sensation.
Not invention. Not theory.
This was power.
Real. Raw. Mine.