Elfese

The Elfese are a people carved from loss and gilded with memory. Once they ruled the continent as Chikara, a flawless empire of marble towers and moonlit discipline that endured ten-thousand years. Its gardens were sculpted by hand, its wars fought with poetry and precision, its laws written like scripture on silk. For a time, it seemed nothing could break them, not rebellion, nor famine, nor time itself. Then The Great Schism came like a blade in the dark, the world they had polished to mirror-perfection shattered into a thousand distant, unrecognizable pieces; The land of Everwealth. What survived crawled into the jungles of old Halash, now Kibonoji, carrying not just relics but a hatred so refined it gleamed. The Schism did not humble the Elfs; it distilled them. They emerged thinner, colder, every smile sharpened into ceremony, every breath measured by ritual. Where once they ruled as gods, they now live as exiles, and every custom, every gesture, is a prayer that one day their chains will rust. Their way of life, still bound by the iron petals of their Way of the Flower, is both religion and cage. It demands grace even in agony, beauty in servitude, composure in defeat. Their warrior creed, the Way of the Falling Petal, teaches that death is not to be feared, only delayed until it can be performed properly. For the Elfese, the line between art and violence no longer exists; Both are forms of obedience to a world that no longer exists. They hold themselves as nearer to perfection than any other race, an old truth curdled into arrogance and despair. In Everwealth today, they labor as scribes, field-hands, or servants, their centuries of experience sold by the hour. Yet even beneath rags, they move like ghosts of kings. To speak with an Elf is to hear a dirge sung through clenched teeth. To meet their eyes is to glimpse an empire still burning behind them. They remember every insult carved upon their fall, and they have learned to smile while they sharpen the blade that will repay it.