Crimson Bloom: Ascend
In a modern world where cities still glitter and phones still ring, something ancient is stirring beneath the surface — quiet at first, like a whisper behind mirrors, a mutation in the static. But the apocalypse doesn't arrive with fire and thunder. It blooms. Slowly. Crimson and inevitable.
Aria Solenne is just trying to finish college. Her days are filled with lectures, her nights tucked between shelves at a fading bookstore. She dreams of stranger things — forests that breathe, voices in thunder, a touch that feels older than her skin. Then she meets Selene Virelle.
Selene is a former soldier with ice in her veins and secrets buried deeper than bone. Her presence is magnetic, her touch cold but reverent — and her eyes hold a grief Aria doesn't understand. What Aria doesn't know is that she already died… once.
In a timeline erased by divine hands, Aria was killed by the very Council that now pretends to protect humanity. Selene had failed her then — but not again. Reforged by a deal with Aphrodite, gifted a second chance, Selene returns to this life with a single purpose: protect Aria, no matter the cost.
But Aria is changing.
Something inside her is waking — something dark, divine, and dangerously seductive. Her bloodline is not entirely human. It's part succubus, part vampire, and entirely marked by the kind of power gods once feared. As the world around her fractures — people vanishing, monsters evolving, cities swallowed by silence — Aria becomes the eye of a storm that could unmake everything… or save it.
And she's not alone.
Five women are drawn to her — each powerful, each impossibly different, and each tied to Aria in ways she doesn't yet understand.
Nova Caelin, the lightning - born hacker who burns brighter than she should and falls harder than she admits.
Iris Vale, a war - scarred photojournalist who sees truth in shadows and wants Aria with a hunger she won't speak.
Lys Amaranthe, a healer who wields wind and devotion, her love quiet but unyielding — ready to break just to hold Aria together.
Elara Nyx, a siren in velvet, a former idol whose voice bends fire and minds alike — obsessed, devoted, dangerous.
And far away, behind veils of memory and myth, waits Athena — Aria's first lover, reborn through dreams and divine fragments, who gave her blood to awaken what slumbers in Aria's veins.
As everything begins to collapse, Aria is no longer just a girl with strange dreams. She's becoming something else — a force of divine hunger, love, ruin, and choice. And each woman drawn to her must decide: will they save her, worship her… or be destroyed by her?
Because the end isn't coming.
It's already blooming — in crimson.