The Celestial Ashes

On Andar, the Zaryan Empire flourishes in the floating city of Nur-Shahar, a civilization of poets, scholars, and ancient faith. Built upon the remnants of a destroyed world, Nur-Shahar chose, eight centuries ago, to remember its lost history. Within this fragile peace lives Prince Zayn al-Zaryan, a dreamer in a dynasty of warriors. But when his secret romance with Princess Seraphina of the rival Solari Dominion is exposed, the ensuing scandal ignites a war that threatens to consume both empires.

Inspired by the fall of Granada—the last Moorish kingdom in Spain—and drawing on the aesthetic and intellectual traditions of Moorish Islamic civilization, The Celestial Ashes constructs a far-future world from a real historical wound. Its floating cities, flying horses, and forbidden weapons root it in science fantasy, while its politics, grief, and reckoning with power are firmly grounded in history.

Morally complex, politically treacherous, and emotionally devastating, this epic explores the weapons we forge, the hatreds we inherit, and the perilous choice between peace and pride that determines whether a civilization survives or learns, too late, the true cost of its choices.