If the war against the Empire had a shape at all, it was the shape of a slow, deliberate consumption, one continent devoured to the bone before the next one suffered their wrath.
The Human Continent was learning that lesson first and hardest, its cities consumed one by one under a siege that never seemed to end, only to pause to breathe.
The Beast Continent had not yet been forced to learn it. Not fully, at least. But the war here was no gentler, only quieter, its violence carried out beneath a jungle canopy rather than against city walls, in its ever-growing threats and vanishing villages rather than grand sieges the world could watch unfold.
Thirteen tribes called this land home, yet the fracture running through them was its own kind of siege, one fought without walls, waged instead through blood ties, old grudges, and new alliances forged in the hope of securing a promising future.
