👤 Main Characters:

(FL)

Aaravi Sen: 19, daughter of India's Home Minister. Privileged, questioning everything.

(ML)

Raayan Veer: 23, revolutionary poet, branded terrorist, hiding underground.

Setting: 2035 India, where "traitors" are executed publicly, and the government monitors emotions via implanted "purity chips."

🖤 Vibe:

Intense

Steamy

Rebellious

Emotionally explosive

Ends in heartbreak or blood—or both.

⚠️ Warning:

This story includes themes of state violence, forbidden passion, rebellion, and emotional intensity. If you're ready, I’ll write it in chapters.

🔥 Backstory

The year is 2035.

India is no longer the democracy it once was.

The government now runs under a Regime of Purity, where thoughts, emotions—even love—are monitored by "Purity Chips" embedded in every citizen at birth.

Love is no longer free. It must be approved. Registered. State-sanctioned.

And romantic involvement with known traitors is treason.

💔 Conflict

Aaravi Sen, the 19-year-old daughter of the Home Minister, was born into the golden cage of privilege. She's educated, beautiful, and emotionally numb—until she discovers poetry written by a mysterious outlaw.

Raayan Veer, a 23-year-old revolutionary poet branded a terrorist, hides in the shadows of the underground movement. His words are fire. His mission: burn down the system.

They meet.

They hate.

They fall.

Their love is illegal, unthinkable, lethal.

---

⚔️ Core Themes

Forbidden desire vs. political duty

Freedom of expression vs. state censorship

Love as rebellion

Poetry as weapon

---

📜 Tone & Style

Intense, lyrical language

Gritty settings (abandoned metros, underground bunkers, secret poetry clubs)

Steamy emotional build-ups

Psychological battles between love, guilt, and loyalty

💬 Sample Quote (to set the mood):

> "You were born with a silver chip in your head, Aaravi. I was born with a bullet in mine. But your lips still taste like revolution."

LOVE IN THE ASHES – Introduction

In the year 2035, India is governed by control—not constitution. After years of political unrest, a new regime rises: The Purity State, enforcing emotion regulation and total surveillance through implanted “Purity Chips.” Every citizen’s thoughts, feelings, and desires are tracked, filtered, and punished if they deviate from the state’s definition of “clean love” and “loyal passion.” Love outside caste, class, or political alignment? Labeled sedition. Punishable by death.

Aaravi Sen, 19, is the daughter of Home Minister K.K. Sen—the very man who created the Purity Act. Aaravi’s life is full of perfection, luxury, and silence. She is obedient, emotionless, programmed to marry a state-approved boy. But everything shatters the night she discovers an illegal poem hidden behind a broken metro wall—verses so raw, so human, they burn through her chip.

Raayan Veer, 23, is a ghost—once a poetry prodigy, now India’s most wanted revolutionary. His art is banned, his words are bombs. After his brother’s execution by the state, Raayan has sworn to dismantle the regime through poetry, fire, and blood. He lives underground, spreading rebellion through whispered verses and coded literature.

Their worlds are opposite. One born to power, the other to pain.

But when they meet in the ruins of a banned library, their chemistry is instant, violent, and forbidden.

This is not a love story.

This is a war story told through kisses, betrayal, and poetry.

And like all revolutions, it ends in fire.

⊹ ࣪ ﹏𓊝﹏𓂁﹏⊹ ࣪ ˖

The metro tunnel had no name. No light. No reason to still exist.

Once it carried lovers, dreamers, students, protestors. Now, it carried only ghosts—and one girl in stolen boots.

Aaravi Sen didn’t belong in darkness. Not by blood. Not by birth.

Her father, K.K. Sen, was the architect of the Purity State—the man who rewrote India’s laws with steel and silence. She was his legacy, his polished doll. She wasn’t supposed to walk alone through abandoned tunnels with a heart hammering in her chest and rebellion blooming beneath her ribs.

But here she was.

And she had come back again.

The first time was an accident. She followed a crow into a crumbled stairwell during one of her “escorted heritage visits.” But what she found there—past the broken “No Entry” sign, past the smashed Purity Scanner, past the leaking pipes—was a wall. A wall covered in poetry.

Not digital. Not filtered. Written. In ink. Illegally. By hand.

She hadn’t touched it the first time. Just stared, shaken by the boldness of it. Words—real words—that weren’t state-approved.

Now, her fingers knew the cracks between the bricks like a lover’s jawline. And tonight, someone had added more.

> We are not our chips.

We are not their silence.

Kiss the match. Burn the lie.

— R.V.

Aaravi exhaled. Her lips formed the last line in silence.

She’d memorized all his poems now. Every outlawed syllable.

R.V. — Raayan Veer.

She knew the name. Everyone did. The Regime called him the "Poet Butcher." Said his words incited mobs, burned districts, killed officers.

They showed him on screens like a monster: wild eyes, bloody hands, beard like fire.

But to her? His poems weren’t violence.

They were the first truth she had ever felt.

She crouched near the base of the wall, fingertips brushing a new verse—short, raw, almost unfinished.

> I dreamed of a girl in iron shoes, walking toward the fire.

She blinked.

That was her.

A sound echoed behind her.

Fast. Too fast to be nothing.

She froze. Then rose, turning slowly. The tunnel behind her was empty—almost. A flicker in the dark. She backed away.

A hand slammed her shoulder, shoved her hard against the wall. Cold steel kissed her neck.

“Move and I open your throat.”

His voice was low. Rough.

Real.

She didn’t scream.

Not because she wasn’t scared.

But because she knew it was him.

“Raayan,” she breathed.

Silence. A beat. Then the pressure eased just slightly.

“You know my name?” His voice was closer now, as if testing her face in the dark.

“I’ve read everything you’ve written here,” she said, slowly.

He pulled the blade back. Not far, just enough to speak.

“So you’re the rich rat sniffing through my words.”

“I’m not a rat.”

“You're Sen’s daughter. That makes you worse.”

Aaravi felt the insult land, but didn’t flinch. She met his gaze—eyes dark as the tunnel itself, ringed with sleepless fury.

“I didn’t report you,” she said.

“Yet.”

“I could’ve. Weeks ago.”

Another pause. Longer. Then a small, humorless laugh.

“You’re either stupid… or suicidal.”

“Maybe both.”

Raayan lowered the knife completely. She could finally see him clearly—leather jacket cracked, hands ink-stained, mouth chapped, hair tied back but wild at the edges. He looked like a man carved from exhaustion and defiance.

He looked nothing like the terrorist on the government screens.

“You still have your chip?” he asked suddenly.

She nodded. “Level Two. Emotional dampening only.”

He clicked his tongue. “Daddy didn’t trust you with full suppression?”

“Daddy wanted me to marry a Minister’s son with dead eyes.”

Raayan smirked. “Sounds romantic.”

Aaravi took a step closer. “You wrote about me. That last line—it’s new.”

He didn’t answer.

“I’m the girl in iron shoes, aren’t I?”

“You are in shoes that don’t fit you.”

“Then maybe you should help me take them off.”

The tension between them cracked like static. Raayan looked away first, rubbing his temple.

“You talk like someone who’s never paid a price.”

She stepped forward, unafraid now. “Then teach me the cost.”

That made him look at her again—sharply, deeply. His breath was uneven. For a moment, it felt like the tunnel stopped breathing altogether.

He reached forward slowly, touched the side of her temple. The chip glowed faintly beneath her skin.

“You know this thing reports emotional spikes, right? That it’s probably already told your father you’re aroused, scared, and lying to someone dangerous?”

“I disabled the external ping,” she whispered. “Only logs locally now.”

He raised an eyebrow. “You’re smarter than you look.”

“And you’re softer than they say.”

Wrong move. His expression hardened instantly.

“I am not soft.”

“No,” she said, holding his gaze. “You’re bleeding.”

Raayan looked down. His left arm—beneath the sleeve—was stained with dried blood.

“Police drone clipped me yesterday,” he muttered. “Nothing fatal.”

“Let me clean it.”

He scoffed. “What are you? A rebel nurse?”

“I’m bored. And dangerous when bored.”

Raayan stared at her. For a moment, the fight left his body.

Then he said quietly, “Come back tomorrow. Same time. Bring alcohol. And silence.”

“Why?”

“Because I want to see if you’ll actually do it.”

He turned and melted into the darkness like he belonged to it.

Aaravi stood alone in the tunnel, her chip still buzzing weakly.

Her heart still racing.

She had come here looking for poetry.

But she had found a man made of matches and madness.

A boy who bled ink and rage.

A criminal whose voice had no right to sound like music.

And she—daughter of the law—was already craving him like sin.

...****************...

Aaravi didn’t sleep that night.

She lay in her velvet-draped bed, staring at the ceiling—its perfect white unmarred by cracks, dust, or blood. The chandelier above her hummed softly with purified light, but all she saw were tunnels.

And eyes.

His eyes.

Not the madman from the Ministry’s crime reports. Not the terrorist projected in PSAs between state anthems.

But the man who touched her temple like it mattered.

Like he saw the cage in her head and wanted to melt the bars.

---

By morning, her mind was racing.

By evening, she was ready.

She left through the servant’s exit—hood up, chip set to “recreation” mode, fake pulse loaded onto the scanner. Her father never noticed when she was gone.

Not really.

The guards outside the compound didn’t question her. They rarely questioned anyone with a Sen blood code. That was the trick of power: it didn’t need to hide—it made others blind.

By the time she reached the metro tunnel again, the city had gone quiet. Curfew bells were echoing, red drones sliding across the smog-filled sky.

The stairs were slick with algae and darkness.

And when she reached the bottom, he was already there.

Raayan.

---

He sat against the wall like he owned the silence. One leg stretched out, the other bent, arm resting lazily over his knee. His jacket was off—black tank top clinging to lean muscle. The blood on his sleeve was gone. So was the hostility in his eyes.

Almost.

“You’re late,” he said without looking.

“You’re wounded,” she replied, tossing a small metal flask in his direction. “Disinfectant. Whiskey base.”

He caught it, opened, sniffed, and gave a grunt of approval. “Not bad for a senator’s brat.”

“I’m full of surprises.”

He looked at her then. Really looked.

Tonight she wore a black hoodie, combat boots, and no makeup. Hair braided tight. The girl who entered the tunnel wasn’t the same doll the state tried to parade on news channels.

“You clean up dirty,” he said.

She smirked. “So do you.”

He chuckled softly, but his smile didn’t reach his eyes. “Come here. Help me wrap this.”

Aaravi sat beside him, pulling out a cloth, a lighter, and a small bottle of iodine. Raayan rolled up his arm. The gash was raw—deep but healing. She cleaned it gently.

“You don’t flinch,” she noted.

“Pain’s just part of the costume now.”

She paused. “What was it before?”

“A reminder.”

“Of what?”

“That I was still alive.”

Their eyes locked. The air between them crackled.

For a few seconds, the tunnel wasn’t dark. It was pulsing—with heat, breath, want.

---

“How did it start?” she asked quietly.

Raayan’s gaze drifted to the wall across from them. One of his earliest verses was scrawled there—almost faded now:

> They killed my brother in front of my mother.

Then told us to clap.

“That line,” Aaravi whispered. “It’s real, isn’t it?”

He nodded once. Slow. “2019. Police raid. My brother wrote a satire piece calling out the regime. They dragged him out, beat him to death in our hallway.”

Aaravi felt something twist deep inside her. Guilt. Rage. Both.

“I’m sorry.”

He laughed bitterly. “You didn’t swing the baton.”

“No,” she said softly, “but my last name did.”

Raayan’s jaw tightened. He looked away.

“You know I should hate you,” he said after a pause.

“You don’t.”

He turned back. “Why not?”

“Because I’m not them.”

“And you think that’s enough?”

She looked down. “No. But it’s a start.”

Raayan studied her. Like he was trying to find the cracks. Or maybe trying not to fall into them.

“You ever killed someone?” he asked suddenly.

“No.”

“Ever lied to someone who’d die because of it?”

She hesitated. “…Yes.”

“Then you’re not innocent.”

“I never said I was.”

His smile returned—dark, sharp. “Good.”

---

They sat in silence for a while. The kind of silence that didn’t need to be filled.

Then Raayan reached into his jacket and pulled out a torn page. Handwritten. Folded tight.

“Read it.”

She opened it slowly, breath catching as she saw the lines:

> If I kiss her, the chip will spark.

If I touch her, the state will scream.

But if I don’t—I will die burning without ever setting her free.

She looked up. “This is about me.”

“No,” he said, voice low. “This is about us.”

Her throat went dry. She read the lines again, slower this time. Feeling each word like heat on her skin.

“You shouldn’t write things like this,” she whispered.

“Why?”

“Because it makes me want to do something stupid.”

Raayan leaned in, his breath warm on her cheek. “Stupidity is underrated.”

For a second, they didn’t breathe. Didn’t blink.

Their lips were inches apart.

But Raayan pulled back first. “Not yet.”

“Why not?”

“Because once we start,” he said, “we can’t stop. And we’re not ready for the ending yet.”

Aaravi nodded, heart pounding.

She wanted to argue.

She wanted to taste him.

But she understood.

This wasn’t a kiss.

This was a fuse.

---

“Your chip,” he said. “You still trust it?”

“No.”

“Then rip it out.”

She stared at him. “You’re serious?”

“I did mine at sixteen.”

“That’s… impossible.”

Raayan smiled like a sinner. “Nothing’s impossible if you hate enough.”

Her fingers brushed her temple unconsciously. The chip had been with her since birth. She didn’t know life without its buzz, its regulation, its control.

“Won’t I go… insane?”

“Maybe. But it’ll be your insanity.”

Aaravi exhaled.

“Soon,” she said. “Not yet.”

Raayan nodded once.

They sat back again, shoulders almost touching.

---

Above them, the world was clean, cold, and silent.

Down here, it was raw.

Bloody.

Real.

---

As she stood to leave, Raayan caught her wrist gently.

“Tomorrow,” he said, “I’ll show you where the real poets hide.”

“And what do they write?”

He smiled.

> “Truth, lust, and war,” he said.

“Sometimes all in one sentence.”

...****************...