Brief Flames in the Forest
- Reads 161
- Votes 23
- Parts 3
Ongoing41m
Last published Wed, Mar 25, 2026
At some point, we all step into a forest without realizing it.
For some, it is a season of doubt. For others, it is loneliness, responsibility, faith, identity, or the quiet weight of becoming who we are meant to be.
This is not a story about perfection.
It is a story about confusion. About growth. About losing certainty and discovering something deeper in its place.
Inspired by the idea that sometimes we must lose our way to find ourselves, Brief Flames follows a journey through expectation, leadership, faith, rejection, and the quiet battles no one sees.
Into the forest I went - not knowing I would leave different.
Submitted for the Open Novella Contest 2026
Prompt 16 - "And into the forest I go, to lose my mind and find my soul."
#ONC2026 #ONC16
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They performed her last rites, while she was still alive. Akshara Maheshwari was erased from her own family before she could even understand what she had done wrong. Abandoned, forgotten, and declared dead, she disappeared from the world that once called her blood. Years later, she returns.. not as a broken child begging for answers, but as AK - a name the world admires, fears, and follows. She doesn't come back for forgiveness. She doesn't ask for love. And she doesn't reveal herself easily. Because some wounds don't need apologies... they need truth, power, and reckoning. As the Maheshwaris celebrate, lie, and protect their secrets, the past claws its way back into the present. A past involving betrayal, silence, a sold child, and a savior who changed her fate. What happens when a family realizes the daughter they buried... is the woman who now controls their empire? And what if revenge isn't her goal, but taking back what was always hers? A story of abandonment, survival, silent revenge, and a girl who learned to smile while planning her return. Read to find out: Will the truth destroy them... Or will Akshara destroy the truth first?
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