Chapter 1: Before the Ashes
Aria Solenne was the kind of girl the world never noticed, and she liked it that way.
Her life was soft, wrapped in a quiet routine. On the third floor of an aging apartment complex, nestled between an overgrown library and an always-empty bakery, Aria found solace in the stillness of her surroundings. The building creaked under the weight of forgotten years, its walls patched with memories of those who had once called it home. Her window, framed by sagging laundry lines, overlooked the faded city streets. Each morning, she watched the sun rise through these threads, casting a soft orange glow across the skyline. The light spilled over the cracked sidewalks, the peeling buildings, and the corners where shadows clung stubbornly, as though the city itself were bleeding out its past, slowly, quietly.
Aria's mornings followed a quiet rhythm. She took her tea with too much sugar, the way she'd always done. A bit too sweet for anyone else's taste, but just right for hers. The tea warmed her hands and the silence of her apartment, and for those brief moments, everything felt as though it were in its rightful place. The only sounds were the soft hum of the city waking, the occasional distant honk of a car, and the rustle of wind that always seemed to bring with it a whisper—an undercurrent of something she couldn't name.
Her life was built around small, quiet habits. Aria worked part-time at a secondhand bookstore, hidden in the shadow of the old cathedral. It smelled like ancient dust and the memory of long-lost stories. A place that smelled like history—like everything and nothing at once. The scent followed her everywhere, clinging to the fabric of her clothes, to her hair, a reminder of the silence that filled the space. She liked it there. It was safe. She had never minded the silence—it made sense to her, like the pages of the books, folded in upon themselves, each one holding a world that never asked to be disturbed.
Aria was the kind of girl who always apologized when people bumped into her. Even when it was clearly their fault, she'd lower her gaze, mumble a quiet apology, and step aside. She packed extra snacks in her bag she'd never eat, just in case someone else needed them. She smiled at strangers, though her smile often felt like a fragile thing—one that might crack and disappear if she didn't keep it in place. There was always something tentative in her expression, a quiet fear that those around her would vanish if she didn't hold onto them just a little longer.
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Her days followed a soft, unremarkable pattern. On Tuesdays, she visited her mother's shrine—an old, faded thing, tucked away in the corner of a forgotten park. It had been years since her mother passed, but Aria still made the pilgrimage. It was the only ritual she had left, the only connection to a world that seemed to drift further from her with each passing year.
On Fridays, she watered the plants in the abandoned classroom of her old high school, where the windows were cracked, and the air smelled like mildew. She wasn't sure why she did it, only that she felt a need to tend to the withering greenery, to nurture something, anything. It was as though the plants, and the memories they held, were the last fragments of something alive that Aria had forgotten how to hold.
On Sundays, she walked the long way home, passing the flower shop run by an old woman who always smiled when she saw Aria. The woman's wrinkled hands were always busy with bouquets, her voice soft and lilting as she spoke of flowers and stories—fragile, like the petals themselves, but still alive. It was the kind of place that felt timeless, and it was the only place in the city that still seemed to care about the quiet beauty of things that didn't ask for attention.
Her life was full of small things. Unimportant things, at least in the grand scheme of the world. But to Aria, they were everything.
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But something strange had begun to stir.
She didn't notice it at first. The birds had stopped flying south one morning, their absence a quiet ache in the sky. The wind had begun to hum, but the notes it carried were unfamiliar, strange, foreign. The air was thick with something she couldn't grasp, a language she couldn't understand. Aria dreamt in colors and shapes that weren't hers, twisting images of people she had never met—memories that weren't her own, whispered in the night like echoes from another world.
The first sign, the one she couldn't explain away, came when she found the flower.
It was small, crimson, a delicate bloom that seemed to pulse with a life of its own. It grew in the corner of her bookshelf, where nothing should have grown. No pot, no soil, no light. Just a single flower, thriving in defiance of all logic. Aria touched it once, and it pulsed under her fingers, a strange warmth creeping up her arm. She pulled her hand back, unsure of what she had felt, unsure if it had been real at all.
The next day, the mirror in her room had frost upon it, though the heat of summer was still thick in the air.
Her reflection blinked a second too late.
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That night, she dreamed of fire. It danced around her, curling like a serpent. Her skin burned with its touch, but she couldn't move. Her mouth was dry, her heart pounding in her chest.
And in the smoke, in the ash, there was a voice—soft, feminine, monstrous—whispering in the distance, distant yet all-encompassing.
"When the sky splits, remember your name."
Aria woke, her pulse racing, her body drenched in sweat. The world had shifted while she slept, and she had no idea how to make sense of it.
But something inside her told her she wasn't meant to understand—not yet.