The Amber Forge

Seventeen years ago, forgemaster Elara Maeve was exiled from the desert city of Kalrath, branded a traitor for crafting weapons too dangerous for mortal hands.  Her daughter, Malia, has lived with the shame, a shadow clinging tighter than desert dust. But the whispers of the past are stirring.
When Malia’s father vanishes, leaving behind a shard of pulsating amber, her solitary life shatters.  The shard speaks to her, echoes of a forgotten legacy intertwined with Kalrath’s very foundations—a legacy that warns of ash-born horrors rising from the ruins of a fallen empire, their whispers promising an eternity of silent dust.
Driven by desperate hope, Malia descends into Kalrath’s shadowed underbelly, a labyrinth of forgotten tunnels and dangerous secrets. She’s not alone. Rhys, a thief with quicksilver fingers and a sarcastic wit, sees her quest as his ticket to freedom. Lyra, a warrior haunted by vengeance, sees the Amber Forge as a weapon to shatter her gilded cage of grief.  Bound by a shared wound, this unlikely trio ignites a spark of rebellion in the suffocating city.
Within the forge’s molten heart, ancient murals whisper tales of a forgotten age, of weapons crafted not for conquest, but defense.  Malia discovers her own inherited gift: the ability to weave the amber’s power, to shape it, to command it. But the forge demands a price, a tithe of memory and identity paid in sorrow and blood.
As the ash-born intensify their assault, Malia must confront not only the encroaching darkness and the city’s corrupt elite but also the seductive whisper of the forge’s power. Will she forge the ultimate weapon, risking becoming the very thing she fights against? Or will she find another way, a melody of hope to awaken the dormant power within the city itself?  The fate of Kalrath rests on her choice, a choice that will determine whether the city rises from the ashes or is consumed by them.