Four hundred and fifty years before the present age, the world was still raw from war.
The Great Conflict had fractured the land into rival powers: the Human Empire, the Elven Empire, the Nation of Intelligent Monsters, the Demonic Empire, and the Dwarven Keep bound in uneasy alliance to humanity. The Beast-men roamed as a sovereign people of their own, mistrusted yet resilient. Beyond the continents, the World's Oceans watched in silence under the mermaid empire, where whispers of betrayal stirred beneath the tides.
High above them all, the dragons abstained.
To them, the war was a quarrel of lesser beings—unworthy of their fire.
Of all nations, none were more despised than the elves.
Yet the world saw them as one when they were not.
The Elven Empire was divided in blood and belief.
The Dark Elves possessed superior mana sensitivity—arcane perception of rare precision and depth. But their philosophy was one of restraint. Conflict, they believed, consumed more life than it justified.
The Light Elves believed the opposite.
Blessed with powerful affinity to nature, they saw war as cultivation. Growth demanded pruning. Empires demanded sacrifice.
Over generations, Light Elven leadership bent strength into hierarchy. Through doctrine and ritual, they carved a lie into society: Dark Elves were born lesser. Born to serve. Born incomplete.
They were enslaved. Deployed. Replaced when broken.
And among the Light Elves existed a harsher law still—blood purity. To mix with Dark Elven blood was defilement, punishable by execution unless atoned for through conquest. A significant military victory could cleanse even forbidden union.
The gods, meanwhile, were bound by a law of their own.
They could not directly exercise divinity upon the mortal world. They were permitted to act only through mortal medians. To violate this decree invited consequences even gods would not risk.
Thus Vestifiny walked the earth in secret.
On the day Karniby burned, she wore the form of a Dark Elven woman.
She lived among the war-orphans of the small human village on the empire's outskirts, tending scraped knees and quiet fears. To most of the children, she was kind.
To one boy, she was mother.
Donavan.
The Light Elven force that descended upon Karniby bore no imperial banner.
They were deserters.
Four of them.
Within an hour, the village was ash. No adult survived.
Vestifiny did not understand the danger at the first scream.
Nor the second.
Nor the third.
By the fifth, the air itself had changed.
Smoke thickened the wind. Steel rang too close.
She gathered the children and led them toward a narrow cave hidden along the forest's edge. Though she could not use divinity, her mortal body carried strength and precision beyond ordinary measure.
Inside the cave, she knelt before them.
"Stay hidden. No matter what you hear."
As she turned—
"Mom… please come back."
Donavan's voice trembled.
Her smile did too.
"I will."
She stepped into the forest.
An elven tracker waited among the trees.
The dagger came without warning.
She sensed it a breath before impact—caught it mid-flight and redirected it in one fluid motion. The elf twisted aside, surprise flashing across his face.
"A mere Dark Elf…?"
He attacked without finishing the thought.
Steel met movement. She fought swiftly, efficiently—but the others joined within moments. The deserters could not afford delay. Their own hunters were rumored close behind.
Ropes lashed around her arms as she turned from a feint. A blade sliced low, severing the tendons at her heels.
Balance vanished.
She fell.
The leading elf stepped forward, blade rising—
A burst of unstable flame tore through the trees.
He sidestepped it easily.
Behind him stood Donavan.
Small. Shaking. Mana wildly uncontrolled.
"Leave my mother alone!"
He charged.
One precise strike to his abdomen drove him to his knees.
Vestifiny's scream split the air.
"No! He is only a child—he has no part in this!"
The elf's smile deepened.
"Only a child?"
He stepped closer to her.
"Then let us make him a man."
They forced the boy to watch.
The blade entered her once.
Twice.
Again.
Her eyes never left Donavan.
There was no anger in them.
Only apology.
The final stroke severed her head.
The forest fell silent.
The elf lifted it by the hair and held it before the trembling boy whose rage could burn hotter than the sun.
"Now," he said softly, before striking him unconscious,
"you are a man."
The deserters did not flee.
They returned to the cave and dragged the hidden children into the open, binding them quickly.
When the elven elite arrived—execution squads sent to enforce Light Elven law—the deserters knelt.
They offered the village.
They offered the slaves.
They offered proof of slaughter.
The debt in blood was paid.
Each deserter was branded over the collarbone with a heated sigil—the Mark of Sin. A visible reminder to their people: transgressor, atoned, watched.
They were reinstated.
Useful once more.
Donavan was found unconscious in the forest and catalogued with the other captured children.
Vestifiny's mortal body was left behind.
Gods do not truly die.
Her divine consciousness withdrew to the realm of the divine, bound by law and unable to intervene.
No lightning struck.
No miracle came.
Three days later, Donavan awoke in chains.
The first thing he saw was iron.
The second was another child crying in a language he did not understand.
The third—
Was absence.