The Burning God

"Rin had spent so long hating how she felt when she burned, hating her fire and her god. Not anymore."

"Rin had spent so long hating how she felt when she burned, hating her fire and her god. Not anymore."

(beautiful art of Rin by merijae!)

"She was capable of such cruelties, even without the Phoenix’s power, and that both delighted and scared her."

"Hate was its own kind of fire and if you had nothing else, it kept you warm."

"You don’t fix hurts by pretending they never happened. You treat them like infected wounds. You dig deep with a burning knife and gouge out the rotten flesh and then, maybe, you have a chance to heal."

"They want to erase us. It’s their divine mandate. They want to make us better, to improve us, by turning us into a mirror of themselves."

"There are never any new stories, just old ones told again and again as this universe moves through its cycles of civilization and crumbles into despair."

"When you conquered as a totally and completely as he had, you could alter the course of everything. You could determine the stories that people told about you for generations."

"Take what you want, it said. I’ll hate you for it. But I’ll love you forever. I can’t help but love you. Ruin me, ruin us, and I’ll let you."

The quotes above were taken from an ARC and are subject to change upon publication.

Buddy read with Maëlys! ❤

Dying was easy. Living was so much harder—that was the most important lesson.

It’s so much harder to stay alive. That doesn’t mean you don’t deserve to live. It means you’re brave.

It’s so much harder to stay alive. That doesn’t mean you don’t deserve to live. It means you’re brave.

This was chaos, but chaos was where she thrived. A world at peace, at stalemate, at cease-fire, had no use for her. She understood now what she needed to do to cling to power; submerge the world in chaos, and forget her authority from the broken pieces.

Rin had spent so long hating how she felt when she burned, hating her fire and her god. Not anymore.

Let them think of us as dirt, Rin thought. She was dirt. Her army was dirt. But dirt was common, ubiquitous, patient, and necessary. The soil gave life to the country. And the earth always reclaimed what it was owed.

“I am the force of creation,” Rin murmured as she stared at the ceiling and watched it spin. Vaisra’s sorghum wine burned sweet and sour on her tongue; she wanted to swig more of it, just to feel her insides blaze. “I am the end and the beginning. The world is a painting and I hold the brush. I am a god.”

Do you know what your problem is? You’ve been fighting this entire war on the defensive. You’re still thinking like someone on the run. But it’s time you started thinking like a ruler.

You’re not fighting a campaign for this land, you’re fighting for the people. And if you learn to trust them, they’ll be your best weapons. They’ll be your eyes and ears on the ground. They’ll be natural extensions of your army. But you never, ever endanger them against their will.

Enjoy your Republic, she thought, fingers curling against the cold armrest. Enjoy it while it lasts, Young Marshal. Take a good look at your splendor, and remember well how it feels. Because I am coming to burn it all down beneath you.

And she would promise them all that she would make their sacrifices worth it. Because that was what the dead were for her—necessary sacrifices, chess pieces lost to advance her position, tradeoffs that, if she were given the chance, she would make all over again.

So Rin marched because she knew that, at the end of their journey, salvation was waiting. She marched because every step brought her closer to the gods.

“One will die. One will rule. And one will sleep for eternity.”

“One will die. One will rule. And one will sleep for eternity.”

“Hate was its own kind of fire and if you had nothing else, it kept you warm.”

“And you should know by now that when you leave your enemies alive, wars don’t end.”

“You don’t fix hurts by pretending they never happened. You treat them like infected wounds. You dig deep with a burning knife and gouge out the rotten flesh and then, maybe, you have a chance to heal.”

“You don’t fix hurts by pretending they never happened. You treat them like infected wounds. You dig deep with a burning knife and gouge out the rotten flesh and then, maybe, you have a chance to heal.”

[I absolutely loathe the trope of the antihero sacrificing themselves as redemption, because it feels lazy and cheap. Rin’s ‘sacrifice’ differs from that trope in that she doesn’t do it as a form of redemption. At least that’s how I read it. She makes/lets Nezha kill her because she knows she cannot bow, she would never bow to the Hesperians. But the country needs compromise to survive. So rather than admit defeat, Rin chooses death. She still doesn’t see her actions as wrong and given the choice, she admits she would do it all over again. She doesn’t attempt to redeem herself. The epilogue from Nezha’s point of view confirms it—Rin is a monster, but she paved the way for a new Nikara. With no more wars to fight, she chooses death rather than concede defeat.



It’s disappointing that Nezha's shaman powers will be shackled and that Nikara will have to accept occupation, but I feel like the series was trying to show us that sometimes compromise is necessary. Rin’s way, of extremes, leads to war and destruction.

What happened to Lianshu, the healer shaman, by the way? I hope someone checks on her, makes sure she’s eating enough. (hide spoiler)]