The Last Phoenix Crown: Rise of Ashes: Book One of The Last Phoenix Crown

Condemned for a magic he never asked for. Branded a traitor to a throne she was born to inherit.
In the shadowed empire of Evernight, justice is swift, brutal, and absolute—delivered by torchlight and iron chains. Beneath its crumbling towers and blood-stained banners, Kael Valoria awaits death not as a villain, but as a boy who dared to survive the unimaginable. Born with magic in a world where sorcery is forbidden, Kael is sentenced to execution by arcane fire, a spectacle meant to remind the masses that defiance is unforgivable.
But fate, it seems, has other plans.
When the execution spell fractures in midair, Kael does the impossible: he survives. What awakens inside him is no simple magic, no mere accident of birth—it is something ancient, something sentient, something hungry. A force older than kings and empires, a memory that blazes beneath his skin, whispering of forgotten wars and the crown that once ruled them all.
Declared an abomination, Kael becomes a hunted shadow, slipping through Evernight's smoke-choked alleys, forgotten catacombs, and crumbling sanctuaries. Every heartbeat draws him closer to the truth—the magic is changing him. Claiming him. And deep in the marrow of his soul, something stirs, remembering not just who he is... but what he was meant to become.
Across the empire's broken spine, Princess Lysara Valoria watches her birthright slip through bloodied fingers. Framed for her father's murder, exiled by those she once called kin, she becomes a ghost haunting the ruins of her former life. With nothing left but the shards of her crown and a dagger too small to carve out her vengeance, Lysara vows to reclaim her throne—or bury the betrayers beneath it.
But vengeance demands allies. And in a world where loyalty is bought and sold like bread, trust is the rarest currency of all.
When Kael and Lysara's paths collide, their fates entwine like kindling in a firestorm. Bound by shared blood, broken oaths, and the haunting echo of a power long thought lost, they forge a fragile alliance. Yet as assassins close in, dark prophecies stir, and the true enemy of Evernight rises from the ashes, both must confront a brutal truth: some crowns were never meant to be worn.
For the Phoenix Crown—the ancient artifact of myth and memory—is awakening.
And it remembers everything.