The Altar and the Ink

<p><strong>The Altar and the Ink</strong><br><em>A sacred scribe. A silenced truth. A language that remembers.</em></p><p>In a vast empire where women are forbidden to read the old tongues and the sacred temple script is controlled by the High Order seventeen-year-old Ariela serves as a novice scribe in the House of Ink. Trained to transcribe state-sanctioned scripture she has been taught that obedience is sacred and silence is divine.</p><p>But when Ariela discovers a scroll written in the outlawed language of the First Women-a language said to awaken the soul-she begins to hear words that have not been spoken in generations. Ink bleeds from her fingertips. Symbols bloom across her skin. And memories not her own whisper of a time before the gods were rewritten and the altars were sealed.</p><p>As the empire tightens its grip and the High Order prepares to destroy the last traces of the old world Ariela is drawn into a hidden sisterhood of rebels poets and priestesses who remember the truth the empire tried to erase: that the first stories were not written in conquest but in the shape of a woman's voice.</p><p>Caught between duty and desire history and prophecy Ariela must decide whether to protect the lie that sustains the empire-or speak the language that could break it.</p><p><strong>The Altar and the Ink</strong> is a lyrical feminist fantasy about forbidden knowledge sacred memory and the power of language to liberate and transform. For readers of <em>The Grace Year</em> <em>An Ember in the Ashes</em> and <em>The Book Thief</em> this is a story for every girl who was told to write in silence-and chose instead to let the ink speak.</p>