A Novel of Survival & Vengeance

The Flood & the Flame

By Mlaika Shabbir

"No. You have each other. And you have me.
That is not nothing."
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MLAIKA SHABBIR
Mlaika Shabbir
THE FLOOD & the FLAME
A Novel of Survival
I
The Story

When The World
Drowns You,
You Learn to Burn

A catastrophic flood erases the village of Blatten from the earth. A family with nothing but each other walks 230 kilometres to a glittering city that doesn't want them. And somewhere in a mansion on a hill, a dangerous young heir makes promises to a comatose father in the dark.

The Flood & the Flame is a story about the violence of class, the cruelty of blood, and the fierce, burning love that keeps people alive when everything else has been taken.

XII+
Chapters of Fire
5
Unforgettable Characters
2
Worlds Colliding
∞
Pages of Passion
Synopsis

Two Worlds.
One Collision.

From the mud of a ruined village to the marble floors of an empire, two fates spiral toward a reckoning neither can escape.

When the floodwaters devour Blatten, Adrian, Lily, and their children have nothing left — no home, no money, no future. Guided by Rowei, Lily's fierce, beautiful younger sister, the family makes the desperate journey to Zurich, the city of glass and gold that built itself on the suffering of others.

Alan Harrington is the city's most feared young heir. Cold, dangerous, brilliant — and shattered. His father lies comatose from a car bomb. His mother is dead. His secrets are buried in vaults no one has dared to open.

When a seven-year-old boy runs into the road at midnight, two worlds collide. And a truth buried in a Harrington basement threatens to destroy everything — or perhaps save it.

I
🌊
The Mud & The Ruin
A village erased. A family with nothing but each other. A young woman who refused to let the world end — and ran until her feet bled to prove it.
📍 Blatten → Zurich
II
🔥
The Blood & The Basement
A mansion on a hill. An empire built on secrets. A boy with whiskey eyes who learned to crush the world before it could crush him.
📍 Zurich — Harrington Mansion
III
⚔️
The Truth & The Reckoning
Hidden letters. Buried bloodlines. A cruel offer that cannot be refused — and a woman who refuses it anyway. Some debts can only be paid in flame.
📍 The Harrington Archive
The Characters

Souls Forged
in Floodwater & Fire

R
Protagonist
Rowei
Twenty years old, with pitch-black hair, winter-blue eyes, and a heart that beats fiercer than any empire. She walks thirty-seven miles for work and runs through the city with a dying child. She cannot be bought, cannot be broken.
Fierce Untameable Loving
A
Antagonist / Anti-Hero
Alan Harrington
Twenty-six, sole heir to an empire, with whiskey eyes that hold no warmth. He built himself from coldness — and now stands at a window watching a light he cannot reach, finally feeling something other than rage.
Dangerous Broken Complex
N
The Shadow
Natasha
Built by Alan. A weapon dressed in human skin. Cold, perfect, lethal — and somewhere beneath ten years of armour, a fourteen-year-old girl from the slums who once asked if her teddy bear could come too.
Deadly Loyal Haunted
V
The Patriarch
Victor Harrington
Eighty-three years old, trembling hands, eyes sharp as broken glass. He has seen too much death. He stops a car for a girl running through the night and pays a hospital bill for a stranger's child — because he can, and because he must.
Wise Haunted Merciful
The Story

Chapters

I
The Mud and the Sky
"Children would build a world out of anything."
Blatten
II
The Basement and the Blood
A soundproofed room. A man who had learned to crush without flinching.
Zurich
III
The Road to Zurich
"There's nothing left." "Not just our house, Lily. The whole village."
The Journey
IV
The Ball and the Broken Family
A boy in the middle of the road at midnight. A question that changed everything.
The Encounter
V
The Refusal
"We don't want help from rich people who live in mansions while villages drown."
Haven House
VI
Empty Hands
Thirty-seven doors. Thirty-seven rejections. And she kept walking.
The Search
VII
The Blood
"Give her to me. I'm taking her to the hospital. You stay. Wait for Adrian."
Crisis
VIII
The Deeper Truth
Letters that rewrote a lifetime. A mother who was never cold — only carrying everything alone.
Revelations
IX
The Cruelty of Blood
"You are nothing to me. You have no claim to my empire."
Reckoning
X
The Apartment
He stopped in front of Rowei. Too close. And the world held its breath.
Confrontation
XI
Small Walls, Heavy Hearts
"I belong to no one but me." Her voice was soft as wool, but it carried a thread of steel.
Aftermath
XII
The Fight for the Future
"Zurich is our place. I'm not letting some rich man take what's ours."
Defiance
Words That Burn

"No. You have each other. And you have me. That is not nothing."

Rowei — Chapter I

"Rich men are always nice, Brian. Until they're not."

Adrian — Chapter IV

"I am the woman who will not be bought. Who will not be intimidated. I belong to no one but me."

Rowei — Chapter X

"You are not protecting yourself. You are punishing yourself. And you are punishing a man who did nothing wrong except be born."

Natasha — Chapter IX

"I'm soft. But I am also fierce."

Rowei — The Arrival

"The flood had not ended their story. It had only begun it."

The Narrator — Chapter V

MS
DEBUT
NOVEL
The Author

Mlaika Shabbir

Storyteller of the Defiant Heart

Mlaika Shabbir writes stories about people who refuse to be erased. With a voice that is both tender and razor-sharp, she weaves together worlds of wealth and poverty, love and cruelty, survival and vengeance.

The Flood & the Flame is her debut novel — a story she built from the conviction that the most dangerous person in any room is the one who has already lost everything and decided to keep going anyway.

In Rowei, Mlaika created a heroine unlike any other: impossibly beautiful, impossible to own. In Alan, she built a villain you will find yourself hoping might still be saved. And in Natasha, she hid the quietest, most devastating portrait of loyalty you will ever read.

Begin the Story

Some Floods
Cannot Be
Survived Alone

Read the novel that asks what we owe each other — and what we become when the world takes everything and we refuse to stop.

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