Five hundred years had passed since the Silver Heroes drove the halfwolves from human lands. From that struggle was born the Jakarta Empire, a realm forged to unite humanity and preserve peace against a threat that had never fully disappeared. The Empire was divided into seven states, each ruled by a chosen family carrying the blood of the Silver Heroes. Those seven states were Asterion, Rowanthar, Reedfall, Virelia, Sagehold, Iridia, and Lilithene.
Every state had its own character, its own culture, its own military strength, but all stood together beneath the banner of the Empire, guarding humankind from the remnants of a halfwolf menace that had never been entirely stamped out. Though attacks were rare, the shadow of that old war lingered, a reminder that peace was something that had to be actively kept.
"Orin! What are you doing up there?"
Elara's voice carried from below, black hair loose around her shoulders as she jogged toward the base of the old watchtower.
Orin glanced down at her, then back at the horizon. "Come look. You can see the whole sky from here."
She climbed up, grumbling, and when she reached the top she stopped. The evening sun was going down in pieces — red bleeding into orange bleeding into something deeper than both.
"Oh," she said. Then, after a moment: "That's actually really something."
"Told you."
She stood there a second longer, then jabbed him in the arm. "Your mother's been asking for you, by the way. For a while."
"I know."
"She was worried."
"I know, Elara."
"Just saying."
Orin let out a breath and started down the stairs. She followed, still talking.
Orin Nymphaea and Elara Kencana had been childhood friends for as long as either of them could remember. They grew up at the southernmost edge of the Empire, in Lira Village, a small settlement that fell administratively under the state of Sagehold.
Lira Village was quiet and unhurried, surrounded by thick forest and low hills. Far from the Empire's center, it lived by the rhythms of ordinary life: farmers weeding their fields, merchants arranging their stalls, children running along dirt paths.
Orin and Elara spent most of their days there together. From swimming in the river to climbing the tallest tree at the village's edge, they knew every corner of the place as well as they knew their own homes.
Then one day, the halfwolves came.
The screams came first. Orin, twelve years old, stood frozen in the chaos — livestock shrieking, villagers scattering in every direction. His mother grabbed his hand so hard it hurt.
"Run! Don't let go of me!"
His father was already ahead, shouldering through the crowd, looking for a way out. The panic split people in all directions. At a crowded crossroads, Orin looked back and saw Elara and her father being swept a different way through the press of bodies.
"Elara!"
She looked up. Her father had her by the wrist, pulling her, but she managed to fight back toward them. Orin's father grabbed his shoulder and kept him moving.
They ran through undergrowth and roots, the screaming gradually falling behind. Orin's lungs burned. Beside him, Elara glanced over every now and then, and when their eyes met, neither of them said anything. They were still alive. That was enough for now.
After close to half an hour, they reached a fortress. Orin nearly fell when he stopped — legs shaking, throat raw. Around him, other survivors were gasping, holding each other. Then he turned and looked back.
The path behind them was full. Halfwolves, hundreds of them, still coming from the treeline. Their eyes burned in the dimming light. Their feet barely seemed to make noise.
"OPEN THE GATE!" Orin's father was screaming at the fortress wall, his whole body shaking with it. "OPEN THE GATE NOW!"
"We can't!" A soldier's voice came back from above. "If we open it now, they'll follow them right through — it takes three minutes to cycle the mechanism, we can't—"
"Then do it! Do it NOW!"
But the halfwolves were already slowing down. They had stopped running. They were walking, taking their time, because they knew.
Three minutes.
"North!" It was Orin's father's voice, different now — lower, already pointed in a direction. "There's a town north, through the trees — run that way, follow the road—"
"What—" Orin's mother started.
"The gate won't open in time. They have to shelter inside. We hold them here." He was looking at Elara's father as he said it, and Elara's father was already nodding.
"No." Elara had gone white. "No, Father—"
"Listen to me." Her father took her by both shoulders. His voice was steady but his hands weren't. "Listen. If you stay here you die. I need you to run. That's the only thing I'm asking."
"I'm not leaving you."
"Elara."
"I'm not—"
"Elara." He pulled her close for a moment, one hand at the back of her head, then stepped back and looked at her. "I'll find you. I promise I'll find you. But right now you have to run."
Orin felt his mother take his hand again, gentler this time. He looked at his father. His father wasn't looking at him — he was watching the halfwolves coming down the path, measuring the distance left.
"Dad—"
"Go." His father turned for just a second and looked at him. "Take care of each other."
And then Orin took Elara's hand and pulled, because if he waited one more second he wasn't going to move at all, and they ran north into the dark of the forest while behind them the sounds of the fight started.
They kept running. The halfwolves were close — they could hear them in the trees, crashing through undergrowth, that guttural sound that wasn't quite growling and wasn't quite screaming. Orin's mother was just ahead, leading them toward where the trees were thinner.
Then she stopped.
There was a halfwolf already waiting. Larger than any they had seen, yellow eyes fixed on them from fifteen feet away. It wasn't moving. Just looking.
Orin's mother shoved him sideways. "Get behind me. Both of you — get behind me now—"
It moved.
She threw herself between it and them, and what happened next happened too fast — a sound like something tearing, a scream that wasn't like a voice anymore, and Orin's mother hit the ground and didn't get back up.
"Mom—" The word came out wrong. Too small. He ran toward her before he understood that his legs were doing it.
Something hit him from the side — Elara screaming somewhere close — a claw that opened his arm from elbow to wrist and threw him into a tree. He hit bark and went down onto roots, and when he looked up Elara was already down too, folded against another trunk, one arm wrapped around her stomach.
"Orin—" Her voice was barely anything. "Orin, I can't—"
He crawled to her. His arm wasn't working right. He grabbed her hand anyway.
"It's okay." He didn't know why he said it. It wasn't okay. Nothing about it was okay. "I've got you. Don't—"
The halfwolf had lost interest. It was moving away through the trees. Orin watched it go. He watched until it was gone, and then he looked at his mother, and he looked at Elara, and he didn't say anything else. There wasn't anything else to say.
Elara's hand went slack in his.
Orin sat there for a long time after. The forest was quiet except for his own breathing. Some distant part of him understood that the fighting had stopped, one way or another. He didn't get up. He couldn't think of a reason to get up. He just sat with his knees on the wet ground and let the night close in around him.
By morning he was walking north.
The road was cobbled, the air cold enough to see his breath. In the first town he reached, a woman came out of a doorway and pressed bread and water into his hands without asking anything — just looked at him once, at the blood on his clothes, and nodded. He found a covered corner near the market and sat there until the bread was gone. That night he slept on a bench in front of a merchant's stall, and the merchant left him alone.
The next day he kept walking.