athousandminds
"The boy i buried is alive. And so are the people who wants me dead."
Maria Valeha thought her semester break would be peaceful-two months of quiet in Selangor, video calls with her boyfriend, maybe a part-time job at Tealive. But peace doesn't last when your past was never really buried.
An email arrives.
The sender? A name she hasn't seen in five years.
The boy she loved.
The one who vanished when everything around her started to fall apart.
The one who was never supposed to survive.
Now, people tied to her are going missing. Again.
And the ones who reach out-through games, through old threads, through shadows-aren't strangers. They're ghosts from a life she was forced to leave behind.
"He told me to forget him. But that's the thing about first loves-you don't."
What started in a mobile game is now spiraling into a war tied to powerful families, old betrayals, and a mafia conflict that runs deeper than anyone knew.
"The target was never me. It was everyone I let close."
Set in modern-day Malaysia, Ashes We Breathe is a slow-burn thriller about love, revenge, and the danger of remembering what the world wanted you to forget.