“Long ago, before these cliffs sheltered us, many tribes lived together in the north,” Aruya explains, her voice taking on the rhythm of age-old storytelling. “Near Xakora, where dark waters separated two peoples who could not have been more different.” 

“Those who worshipped the fire spirits with their brown and golden eyes built boats along the coast, praising the flame spirits. Those who were blessed by the spirits of the Earth with green eyes and freckled skin tended gardens and healed the sick. Those who spoke with animal spirits bonded with creatures great and small. Many different tribes that worshipped various spirits and gods lived in harmony together.”

“But above them all were Narobei, the Ethereal's tribe, the blue-eyed ones. In her tribe, the women are worshipped. She was called the Ethereal because she was blessed by various earthly spirits. She was the only one who could channel multiple Terrestrial spirits and speak directly with them. She was the living vessel of Àse that governed earth, sky, and soul. She was worshipped as a sacred vessel; her bloodline was revered as closest to divine.”

She pauses, letting the weight of history settle over the room.

“Narobei believed herself chosen for greatness beyond imagining,” Aruya says, her gaze finding Kana Nambiri’s face across the dim room. “She dreamed of children who could wield both Àse and Aura demon strength wedded to mage spirituality. The spirits of our earth murmured to her in sleep, convincing her this was destiny carved in stone.”

“So she made herself the Bapht, the Demon King’s wife,” the Elder intoned, voice rising and falling like a drumbeat in the dark. “It was against our way, against the law of our people. For we believe in one man, one woman, one home made sacred by balance. But in Xakora, the demons take wives as they take land, as many as their greed can hold. Yet the Ethereal did not marry for love. No, she married for power. She wanted Bapht's Aura, the storm inside his veins that made the air hard to breathe when he raged.

“At night Narobei traced dark sigils in oil across Bapht’s chest while he slept. His breathing was deep and uneven, his powerful frame relaxed in their marriage bed. His eyes closed, unaware that the wife he favored over the others worked forbidden magic into his flesh. She bound him with blood darker than night. Narobei whispered an old chant binding her will to his body. Drop by precious drop of oil. She pressed her palm against his heart and felt the lightning-like Aura that ran through the demon's veins, raw, untamed, and electric. For a moment, she tasted what it would be like to command that power alongside her own Àse. 

Soon, our children will carry both. She promised herself.

Elder Aruya’s voice seemed to trail off as Kana’s mind wandered elsewhere. Her voice fills the temple room carved into the northern cliffside of Eshari’s mountains, her words echoing off the frosted windows. Ten scholars sit transfixed on the elder's words, studying them. 

Her fingers trace absent patterns on her knee as the Elder continues the same story she's heard time and time again. 

Aruya’s voice drops lower, more ominous.

“This is where our history begins,”  she continues, her withered hands gesturing towards the carved reliefs spiraling up the stone walls. “ Not with love but a forged unity built on the desire for power. Narobei believed the terrestrial Spirits had chosen her lineage to rule all magic. She wanted Bapht’s Aura.”

Kana’s gaze slips past the Elder’s form, her blue eyes reflecting the soft shimmer of candlelight. Something trembles inside her that feels small, persistent, and alive. The Elder’s voice blurs into rhythm, a story she’s heard too many times to feel. She wonders, her thoughts betray her discipline, if one day her name will be spoken in that same cadence. If a griot will remember her laughter, her defiance, or will her story die quietly, buried beneath the snow like many of the others Ethereals before her?

But the Demon King was no fool,” the Elder said, and the hall grew still. “He tasted betrayal on his tongue,  felt her compulsions coiled in his soul like serpents in sleep. His passion, once bright as fire in his eyes, curdled into obsession. If he could not have her loyalty, he would claim her sorrow. he would make her people bleed. He turned to torment and from his shadow,  the first war between Aura and Àse was born.” 

The room seems to grow colder as the Elder builds toward the tale’s darkest turn.

“He enslaved many tribes,” the Elder cried, and the candles seemed to waver.
“He chained us, made us raise monuments to his name with bleeding hands.
He whipped us,  killed us, and laughed as vessels of the spirits were broken for his pleasure. Death became the drumbeat of our days. Hope, a whisper too soft to hear.

Narobei raged. Her womb wept with loss. Child after child returned to the earth before breath.
Her dreams of power turned to ash. It was when she saw her people bowed beneath demon chains. Fury stormed within her and it rained heavily that night. A mother’s wrath reflected by the heavens.”

For a moment, Kana’s pulse matched the rhythm of the tale. A strange hunger moved through her and she tasted something metallic as if the memory itself had found her tongue.

So she began to prepare in secret,” the Elder murmured, her voice low.
“Smuggling what she could. She gathered herbs for healing, seeds for planting, livestock for the long road ahead. Each thing she gathered was small and yet heavy with hope.

And when the night came,  when the wind spirits howled in pain, she rose.

Narobei gathered the brave, the broken,  the ones who still remembered the sound of freedom. Many people from different tribes that worshipped the same earthly spirits. Together, they fled that cursed land. Step by step, beneath a sky that mourned and watched.
The earth trembled beneath their feet,  but the spirits walked with them.

Elder moved closer to the frosted windows where moonlight streamed into the room. 

They traveled across plains of dying grass. The air stung of heat and sorrow. Then came the endless white snow so deep it swallowed screams. Warriors froze. Mothers sang their children into sleep, they would not wake from. By the time they reached these cliffs, grief weighed heavier than their packs, and many wished the mountain would claim them, too

The silence is absolute now, every eye in the room hanging on her words.

“The survivors huddled against certain death,” the Elder said, voice soft as falling snow.
“And there amid blood and ice the first Ethereal stood.  Frost in her hair, red on her hands, she whispered a bargain to the land itself. ‘Let us stay,’ she said to the spirits of snow and stone and wind. ‘We will love you fierce. We will build altars in the dirt and in our chests.  We will dance on your frost with bare feet, singing.  Our children will know your names before they know their own. The mountain will give, and we will give back. The mountain will take, and we will bear it.  Let us stay.’

The Elder’s tone became reverent, and even the air seemed to listen.
The room chilled; the mountain remembered. Then, from the dark forest trees white wolves appeared, silent as smoke. They pressed close, their warmth becoming ours,
their eyes bright and knowing. They guided the tribe through paths only they could see. And the land answered. Trees began to glow, their bark pulsing with heat.
Springs of hot water could be seen beyond the ice and snow, steam rising.
The earth opened its chest and offered what it had hidden:
warmth in the endless cold,  life in the killing frost.

There, the wolves bound their spirits to ours not as servants, not as beasts, but as kin.

And so was born Eshari, a promise kept. Named to honor the terrestrial spirits that blessed them through Narobei prayer. 

‘In honor, our soldiers painted their faces white like the wolves,’” Aruya’s voice trembled with pride. “White as snow, white as bark, so they remain unseen when we hunt, unbroken when we fight.  We carved our homes into the mountain’s ribs. We swore oaths to the spirits that saved us,  with the Ethereal line as their chosen vessels.  From the refugee trail of broken tribes, we built a nation that would never bow to demon kings again. A Nation built on Àse.

She turned from the window then, her gaze older than stone, moonlight caught in her eyes as they settled on Kana.  ‘The spirits of the land listen and we must honor and trust them.’ she said.

The words lingered, Kana’s breath caught. Her heart pulsed with inexplicable nervousness, almost like a presence hovered over her. Not patient.
Not waiting.
Claiming.