forging ash of the beloved
Book One: Air and ash and All We Lost
By Jesse Annette
Posted: Feb 26th, 2026
Length: approx. 2.1k words
The burn before the wildfire
Austra- Reluctant RepoRTS
Austra’s nerves were stretched impossibly thin the morning after the final trial, the kiss, the oath. She felt like one wrong breath might snap her clean in half. She dragged herself from her bunk long before the others stirred, slipping into the quiet tunnels with her hands shoved deep into her pockets. Ember sconces flickered low, star-red. The air tasted of cooled ash and iron. She needed to think. She needed a plan. Because the ache of last night, the missing Daria, the memory of her mouth, the way she vanished from the bonfire, was nothing compared to the deeper dread gnawing at her.
Her mother was expecting a report.
Austra had been careful. She’d built cover stories, slipped through auxiliary vents to use her sending stone, layered half-truths over truths until even she almost believed them. But the celebration had run until dawn, and she’d been too raw, too shaken to disappear unnoticed. She pressed her fingers to the hidden pocket in her belt. The stone warmed faintly at her touch. She’d have to risk it tonight.
But how? Everyone was watching her now. The new Oathsworn clustered together, murmuring about upcoming squad placements, about which commanders they hoped to impress. The tunnels felt crowded, thick with attention. Austra leaned her forehead against the cool stone wall and exhaled. “Gods,” she muttered. “Get it together.”
She couldn’t. Every time she focused on the mission, her mind slid back to Daria. Daria’s mouth on hers. Daria’s hands pinning her. Daria disappearing without a word. Austra’s chest tightened.
What had she expected? A promise? A whispered meet me later? An apology? A second kiss?
She didn’t know. She only knew the absence had landed like a blow. I need her to talk to me. The thought sounded pathetic, even as it rang true. She needed Daria’s attention…and not just emotionally, but practically. Her mission required proximity. Trust. Conversation. Distance was dangerous. Distance invited suspicion. Distance meant she couldn’t control what that kiss became.
Austra exhaled shakily. “Okay,” she whispered into the empty tunnel. “One problem at a time.”
First: contact her mother without being seen. Second: figure out how to get Daria Cross to look at her again.
What could she even say? What apology made sense when she didn’t know what she was apologizing for? The kiss? The duel? Being too obvious? Too distracting?
She wasn’t supposed to get attached. Daria was a mission objective, not a person she was allowed to want. But she did want her. She wanted Daria’s discipline, her sharp eyes, the way she softened, not openly, never openly, but just enough when no one else was watching. Austra swallowed hard. Maybe she could start small. A greeting. A respectful salute. Not finger guns, not after the way Daria’s jaw had clenched the last time, even if it had led to that kiss.
Something simple. “Commander,” she murmured, practicing under her breath. “Do you have a moment?” She winced. She sounded like a child.
Maybe after training, or maybe before breakfast. Maybe she could ask for pointers on her blade stance, or offer a formal report on her first day as Oathsworn. Something professional. Something that didn’t scream I’ve been thinking about your mouth for twelve straight hours.
She pushed off the wall and squared her shoulders. One problem at a time. She’d lie to the Queendom tonight. She’d try to earn a word from Daria tomorrow. And maybe, just maybe, she’d survive both.
The day passed in a haze of recovery. The training caverns felt different now, just heavier, as if the oath itself had thickened the air and settled into every glowing seam of volcanic stone. The other newly sworn initiates collapsed into their bunks that night, murmuring proudly about the title…Oathsworn…before sleep claimed them. Austra didn’t say the word aloud. It felt like wearing something she hadn’t earned.
She waited until the cavern’s quiet deepened. Until every movement echoed. Until no one questioned why she rose when everyone else was wrapped in rest. The sending stone warmed beneath her belt, too warm, as if it sensed the emotions she hadn’t smoothed since the oathfire dimmed.
She took one of the sanctioned exits Commander Seryn had shown them earlier that day, climbing a tight basalt stairwell until the air shifted from molten heat to cool night wind. When the stone door ground open and the sky spilled over her, faded stars, ash-hazed moon, her breath caught. She hadn’t felt open air like this in weeks. Not since the night on the Overlook.
Pyronous stretched below her like a restless emberfield, lanterns flickering along crooked streets. She stepped onto a jagged outcropping where the wind curled without carrying her silhouette to the city below. Her hands trembled as she unwrapped the stone. This was her first report since becoming Oathsworn. Her first since swearing loyalty to people she intended to betray.
Thumb to stone. Deep breath. Oath completed. Status confirmed. The stone pulsed, the warmth sharper than before, like it recognized the lie inside the truth. She added technical details. Routes. Entrances. Surface access. Clean. Controlled.
Another pulse. She should have stopped. But the stone waited, warm and patient, sensing the roil beneath her ribs. Her thoughts slipped for just a heartbeat, back to the end of the duel. The kiss. The crack that had split something open in both of them.
Austra forced her mind flat. Captain Cross comported herself with professionalism during the ceremony. The stone accepted the reshaped thought. Its warmth spiked anyway. Guilt followed fast and sharp, about the kiss she couldn’t stop replaying, about sending this report at all, about wearing a title that would become a brand if the rebellion ever unmasked her.
She finished quickly. Position strengthening. Cover intact. Proceeding toward full integration. Tap. Tap. Sent.
She pressed the stone to her sternum as its glow faded, grounding herself in its cooling weight. The night air slipped between her fingers.
“I shouldn’t have,” she whispered, to the wind, the stone, herself. The wind offered no answer. The stone never judged. She turned back toward the caverns, though the air outside had been easier to breathe. Tomorrow, she would begin learning what it meant to be Oathsworn. Tonight, guilt followed her down the stairs like a shadow.
For the first time, she hadn’t wanted to tell her mother anything of importance. Not Daria’s name. Not the shape of their defenses. Not the rhythms of their patrols. She pressed a hand to her sternum and didn’t finish the thought. The tunnels felt smaller on the way back. Darker. Lonelier.
Daria- Avoidance
The first day back to drills had been easy as Daria kept her distance. She assigned Mika to supervise morning training, sent Darvin to handle patrol rotations, and buried herself in logistics to avoid crossing paths with Austra. She told herself it was discipline. Control. The correct choice.
That night, she dreamed. Not of the rebellion. Not of the Caldera. Of Austra. Silver hair against obsidian. Wind curling around her fingers. The moment before the kiss…Austra’s eyes widening, and Daria realizing she was already falling. She woke furious.
The following days were harder. Austra kept appearing at the edges of her vision: sparring rings, meal rotations, supply checks. Every time Daria sensed her approach, she pivoted sharply and redirected without explanation. Austra noticed. Of course she did. But she didn’t push. Not yet. Daria appreciated that. And hated it.
The dreams returned, sharper now. This time, there was no restraint. She dreamed of the duel again, but instead of stopping at the kiss, she pulled Austra closer. Hands on skin as they slipped under her shirt. Heat meeting wind until she couldn’t tell where one of them ended. She woke shaking.
She ran drills until her body ached, trying to sweat the dreams out. It didn’t work. Something cracked, not outwardly, not visibly, but under her ribs. During afternoon weapons practice, she glanced, just once, at Austra moving through a blade form. It was enough.
Austra had tightened since the trial. Cleaner footwork. More economical strikes. The kind of discipline that came from trying to bury something. She looked haunted. Daria wanted to walk over. To ask what was wrong. To touch her. To fix it. Instead, she turned away so abruptly that Mika nearly collided with her.
By day five, duty forced her hand. As the Initiate Oathsworn’s commander for the day, she had to brief them on a scouting mission. She delivered the assignment without looking directly at Austra, but she could feel her attention like pressure in the air before a storm. When she finally glanced up, their eyes met. One second. That was all. In that second, Daria saw the exhaustion in Austra’s face. The tightness in her jaw. The faint bruise across her knuckles. The fear she was trying to hide. Daria looked away first.
Distance. Professionalism. Avoidance. She repeated the words like a mantra. That night, she dreamed again. This time, Austra whispered her name. She woke breathing hard, like she’d run miles.
Daria corrected Mika’s form. Scolded Varn for sloppy footwork. Barked orders at the Oathsworn, anything to keep her attention off the silver-haired woman who kept pulling at her like a magnet. For one terrifying second, Austra caught her looking. Daria snapped her gaze away so fast she nearly strained her neck. She ended training early.
That night, she lay awake staring at the rocky ceiling of her quarters, exhausted, furious, trembling with everything she refused to feel. Avoidance wasn’t working. Distance wasn’t working. Professionalism was unraveling. One week. Seven days. And every night, she still dreamed of Austra.
Austra- The Hallways
The first few days of squad placement trials blurred together in a numb haze of drills, exhaustion, and trying not to stare at Daria. Trying, and failing.
The final trial replayed on a relentless loop: the kiss, the heat of Daria’s body, the way the rebellion had cheered Oathsworn! like they already knew her, like she already belonged. And then the report she’d sent her mother that night, each clipped word still lodged under her skin.
Every time Austra caught sight of Daria, the Commander turned sharply away, as if eye contact alone might fracture something fragile. Austra told herself she wasn’t hurt. That it was fine. That it made sense. But it wasn’t, and it didn’t. It felt like being shut out of warmth she’d only just discovered existed.
The more Daria avoided her, the tighter the pressure in Austra’s chest became, an ache she couldn’t name, only endure. She tried to distract herself: sparring with Mika, running drills with Varn, mapping the flow of the GPR caverns until she knew them by muscle memory. None of it helped. Everything felt muted without Daria’s sharp gaze tracking her, without that quiet, assessing presence she’d learned to crave.
By the fourth night, the loneliness was unbearable. She had no one to talk to. No one she could trust. She started doubting every choice she’d made since leaving Zephyra three months ago, every step that had brought her here.
By day six, the conflict had rooted itself deep and tangled. Whenever Daria entered a room, Austra straightened without thinking. Whenever Daria turned away, the hollow in her chest widened. She didn’t know when it had started hurting, only that it hadn’t stopped. She needed to fix it. Or break it completely.
By day seven, Austra was done being expertly avoided. That evening, she found herself wandering the corridor that led toward Daria’s quarters, a location she only knew thanks to carefully disguised questions when Darvin had given them a tour of the full GPR headquarters earlier in the week. She was barefoot, restless, heart lodged in her throat. She told herself she was just walking.
She wasn’t. When she looked up and realized she was standing outside Daria’s door, pulse hammering, breath unsteady, the truth landed hard: she hadn’t come here by accident. She missed Daria. She wanted answers. She wanted… something she couldn’t name without tearing herself open.
She paced the nearby hallways, pretending she had a purpose other than waiting. Eventually, Daria appeared, one turn away from her quarters, stoic, unreadable, infuriatingly perfect. Austra jogged after her without thinking.
“Commander!”
Daria kept walking.
“Ahem. Commander.”
Daria stopped abruptly. “What.”
Austra grinned, tilted her head, and, gods help her, finger-gunned. With a wink. Daria inhaled sharply, color rising along her throat.
“Stop doing that,” she snapped.
“You kissed me,” Austra said simply.
Daria glared. “It was a mistake.”
Austra stepped closer and whispered, “Was it?”
Silence crackled between them like lightning. Daria’s jaw clenched.
© 2026 Jesse Annette. All rights reserved.
Forging Ash of the Beloved 
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