In the beginning, there was only Diwa—the life force that flows through all things.

Diwa is the fundamental energy that binds the natural world, the spiritual realms, and the divine. It flows through the earth, the sea, the skies, and every living being. Those who learn to understand its essence can harness it to perform incredible feats—whether shaping the elements, healing wounds, glimpsing the future, or conjuring illusions. However, Diwa is not a single force. It manifests in three distinct alignments:

Balance Diwa – The Diwa of harmony, equilibrium, and natural order. It is rare, pure, and most often found in sacred places or deep within untouched wilderness.

Imbalance Diwa – The Diwa of chaos, destruction, and ambition. It manifests in conflict, violent storms, corrupted lands, and powerful mythical beasts.

Neutral Diwa – The Diwa of potential, free from moral alignment. It empowers the protectors, the mystics, and the seekers of truth—those who neither create nor destroy but instead preserve the flow of fate.

Across the world, cultures, civilizations, and creatures revolve around their connection to Diwa. The ancient gods, known as the Pantheon of the Diwata, were the first to master it.

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The Divine Order

At the pinnacle of creation is Lumikha, the Supreme Being, the eternal source from which all Diwa flows. Under Lumikha’s design, the world was shaped and populated with life, and powerful deities arose to govern its aspects:

Aunos, god of storms and fertility

Katingan, god of the dead and the afterlife

Tadhana, god of fate and destiny

Agrinella, goddess of agriculture and harvest

Beneath them rose a host of sub-deities—guardians of magic, elements, and secrets—who each forged an artifact imbued with divine Diwa. These relics, scattered across the world, became the key to immense power—and conflict.

The gods do not walk among mortals anymore, but their influence endures through the Diwa-infused relics and the powerful mythical beings that still roam the earth.

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The Three Nations of the Archipelago

Long after the time of gods, the world entered an age of nations—an era defined by war, rebellion, and shifting borders.

The Arkavian Empire

A centralized, imperial power built on order, conquest, and fire. Arkavia controls its territories with absolute authority and reveres the flame as a symbol of purification and strength. Their legions are disciplined and elite, backed by the state’s own religion that deifies Solon, the Flame of Dominion.

Population: 50 million

Strengths: Fire magic, siege warfare, divine military doctrine

The Malakar Federation

A tribal alliance of four ancient clans bound by tradition, spirituality, and the sea. Unlike the Arkavians, Malakar thrives through unity rather than dominion. Their people are deeply attuned to water, earth, and nature, and practice sacred rites to maintain harmony with the elements.

Population: 40 million

Strengths: Water and nature magic, guerrilla warfare, decentralized power

Vynaria

Once a proud sovereign kingdom, Vynaria is now a fragmented land. It served as the battleground during the Great War between Arkavia and Malakar, leaving its provinces divided into vassal states controlled by both powers. Though wounded, its people remain defiant—some cling to peace, others dream of revolution.

Population: 30 million

Status: Occupied and divided

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The Great War and the Present Day

Nineteen years ago, the Great War erupted between the Arkavian Empire and the Malakar Federation. It devastated the archipelago—especially the land of Vynaria, now a torn and fractured nation. Both powers continue to occupy Vynarian provinces to this day, each seeking control over its land, resources, and ancient ruins rumored to house forbidden Diwa.

Tensions simmer just beneath the surface. Whispers of rebellion rise among the occupied territories. And deep within the untouched wilds, the Mythical Creatures of Diwa—primordial beings infused with Imbalance Diwa—begin to stir.

These creatures are not just legends. They are living embodiments of chaos, and those who defeat them may inherit their terrifying power—at great cost.

The day began like every other in Elyria, though Marcio Sari, 18 years old—orphaned during the great war, always felt the city was holding its breath.

Once the crown of Vynarian culture, Elyria now bore the weight of Arkavian conquest — its towering flame-spires and Diwa-suppressant domes stretching skyward like thorns in the sky. Crimson banners of the Empire fluttered above city gates, and soldiers in gleaming armor patrolled in synchronized rhythm, boots beating down ancient Vynarian stone.

Yet in a corner of the city, tucked away from the chaos and conquest, the rhythmic clang of a blacksmith's hammer rang defiantly through the morning haze.

Clang. Clang. Clang.

Each strike was clean and precise. Marcio, sleeves rolled, muscles taut, labored over a piece of glowing metal as sparks danced from the anvil. The forge’s orange light glinted off the sweat on his brow. Though still young — not even twenty — his arms bore the strength and memory of years spent at the flame.

“Still thinkin’ about books, boy?” came a voice behind him.

Marcio glanced back at Gorio, the burly, flame-tempered man who had taken him in long ago. With his soot-streaked face and grumbling kindness, Gorio was more than a blacksmith — he was the closest thing Marcio had to a father.

“Always,” Marcio replied with a grin, wiping his hands on his apron.

Gorio snorted and returned to the bellows. “One day, those books’ll melt in your hands and you’ll have nothin’ but ashes.”

“Then I’ll make something from the ashes,” Marcio muttered.

Their forge was modest, nestled in the quieter district of the city where patrols thinned and suspicion lessened. It served farmers, traveling traders, and the occasional Arkavian officer needing a blade reforged. The work was honest. Stable. Unassuming.

But beneath the soot and repetition, Marcio harbored a restlessness.

During breaks, he often wandered to the back wall of the shop — a place no one touched. There, a blackened crescent-shaped scorch mark scarred the brick. The fire from nineteen years ago had left its mark not just on the building, but on Marcio’s soul.

He had no memory of his parents’ names. Only flashes — a burning sky, his mother’s voice, the sea, and then silence.

“You were one of the lucky ones,” Gorio once told him.

But Marcio knew better.

Survivors carry the heaviest burdens.

When the forge cooled that evening and the Arkavian curfew sirens had not yet rung, Marcio slipped into the Old Quarter — a place left to rot and memory. The conquerors had no interest in restoring its temples or towers. What they couldn’t use, they buried beneath dust and time.

But within that forgotten place stood the Elyrian Library.

The doors creaked as he entered, vines and cracked marble lining the entry. Inside, silence reigned. Ancient tomes slept on wooden shelves. Faded banners whispered tales of a lost kingdom. To Marcio, this was sanctuary.

He walked along the familiar aisles until he found his place — an open scroll depicting an ancient battle between a Diwa-bound warrior and a serpent of shadows.

“The Diwa flows through all — mountain, river, beast, and blood,” the text read. “When the world is in harmony, it sings. When it suffers, it roars.”

As he read, the ink shimmered. Just for a moment — a soft pulse of silver beneath his fingers. He gasped and pulled away. The page was still. The light was gone.

He looked around.

No one.

And yet something inside him stirred, like a distant tide rolling beneath his skin.

By the time he left the library, the moon was rising. Elyria was still — too still. As Marcio crossed an alley near the barracks, he stopped. Voices.

Three Arkavian guards stood in the shadow of a watchtower, speaking in hushed tones.

“Another disappearance?” one asked.

“Fourth this week,” said another. “No footprints. No Diwa signature. Just… gone.”

“Rebels?”

“Or something else. Something worse.”

Marcio leaned closer, heart pounding.

“They say a shadow figure walks among us. Someone who moves without sound. A ghost. Maybe not even human.”

The soldiers moved on.

Marcio remained frozen, their words echoing in his mind. Not from fear — but fascination. Rebellion. Ghosts. Shadows moving beneath the Empire's nose.

Could it be true?

Could something — or someone — be resisting?

That word pulsed again in his chest.

Rebellion.

He walked home slowly, head down, mind adrift. The streets were empty. The murals of old Vynarian kings had been painted over, their faces erased by imperial red. Even history had been conquered.

At the forge, he unlocked the door and stepped into the quiet. Gorio had already turned in. The coals in the hearth had cooled, leaving only soft embers.

Marcio sat near them, pulling from his shirt a crescent-shaped pendant. It was old, rough, and worn — the only thing he’d had with him the day Gorio found him.

It thrummed faintly now, as if stirred by the night.

He closed his eyes.

And in that darkness, he heard them — whispers. Faint, impossible to understand, but undeniable. Not imagined. Not dreamed. Whispers like running water. Like breath on flame.

And within them — a name.

His.

Somewhere far above the city, across the rooftops near the old chapel, a cloaked figure stood. Cloak rustling in the wind. Eyes golden, unreadable.

They watched the forge below.

“The spark is alive,” the figure whispered.

Days slipped by in Elyria like fading breath on glass—present, but slowly vanishing.

Marcio Sari tried to return to the rhythm of his life: the forge, the flame, the library. But something had shifted in him since that night beneath the barracks—the whispers of rebellion still echoed in his bones, and the mysterious stirrings of his Diwa had grown more insistent.

He stopped sleeping through the night. Each time he closed his eyes, his dreams filled with half-formed visions: a cloaked woman standing in ash, a blackbird flying through burning skies, and always, always the sound of water and fire clashing like voices in a long-forgotten language.

The pendant he wore now felt heavier around his neck. Warmer. Alive.

The city, too, felt different. More hushed. Whispers traveled quickly through the narrow alleys and old market squares — whispers of strange disappearances in the night. Young men and women vanishing without a trace. Some believed they’d been taken by the Empire. Others said something worse.

But Marcio overheard the truth from two guards outside a checkpoint.

“They’re not being taken,” one muttered. “They’re leaving.”

“Recruiters,” the other whispered back. “Resistance rats pulling people into their war.”

The Empire had chalked up the disappearances as runaways or bandits, but the fear in the guards’ voices was real. The resistance wasn’t a ghost anymore. It was a current flowing just beneath the surface, and it was growing stronger.

Even in the Elyrian Library, where Marcio tried to escape into forgotten stories, he began to notice odd patterns. Pages had been recently turned. Margins marked with fresh ink. One evening, he stumbled across a fragment of prophecy etched in the back of a forgotten volume:

> “When the land weeps in silence,

And Diwa dims in a shackled flame,

The orphaned spark shall rise unseen,

And awakened Vynaria’s ancient name.”

He stared at the passage for a long time.

An orphaned spark.

The thought rooted deep into his mind. Was this why the resistance was searching? Was that why he had been watched?

Later that evening, as he left the library later than usual, a sudden gust of wind extinguished the street lamps ahead of him. He turned a corner beneath the old aqueduct and stopped.

A figure stepped out from the shadows, as if formed from the darkness itself.

A woman—tall, calm, deliberate. She wore a raven-stitched cloak, her piercing golden eyes locking onto his as if she already knew him.

She removed her hood.

“Marcio Sari,” she said.

His breath caught in his throat.

“You’ve felt it, haven’t you?” she asked. “The change. The stirring inside you.”

He didn’t answer.

“The others like you—the ones who’ve disappeared—they weren’t taken. They were called. We’ve been recruiting. Training. Preparing for what’s to come. But you—” she took a careful step closer—“you’re different.”

“You’ve been following me,” he said, guarded.

“We had to be sure,” she replied. “The legend speaks of an orphan—an untrained bearer of Diwa energy, born from fire, hidden in plain sight. A symbol. A catalyst.”

“That’s just a story,” Marcio said, almost laughing. But his voice cracked. The words clung to him like smoke.

“We thought it was just a story too,” she said softly. “Until people like you start to surface.”

“I’m not a hero,” he said firmly. “I work in a forge.”

“And yet the Empire’s glyphs don’t silence you,” she replied. “The books glow when you touch them. The pendant you wear is older than the city itself. And you’ve been dreaming, haven’t you?”

His heart thudded in his chest.

Elianore stepped closer. “You can deny it, Marcio. Or you can step into it.”

Silence hung between them, heavy and fragile.

“I need time,” he said finally.

Elianore nodded. “Then take tonight. But we leave before dawn. Meet me at the southern gate before the bell tolls six. If you’re not there, we vanish. No second offer.”

She turned and disappeared into the mist.

Later that night, Marcio returned to the forge. Gorio was asleep in the back room. The fire had been banked, but Marcio quietly stoked it, just enough to see the anvil one last time. He touched its surface—scarred from years of work—and whispered, “Thank you.”

He walked to the back wall, placing a hand on the scorched crescent burn. He’d stared at it for years, never knowing why it mattered so much to him. Now, it felt like a closing chapter.

In the small room where he slept, he packed little: a waterskin, a shard of coal he’d carved into a crescent, and a folded scrap of paper with the prophecy he’d copied from the library. His pendant hummed faintly as he tied it around his neck again.

Then he made his way quietly through the streets to the Elyrian Library—his sanctuary.

He stood at the entrance, running his fingers over the vines coiled around the doorframe. The moonlight bathed the stone in silver. The building looked asleep. He did not enter. He merely whispered, “I’ll come back for you.”

And then he turned.

By the time he reached the southern gate, the sky had turned violet. Distant thunder rumbled, and the Empire’s watchtowers glowed in the hills like unblinking eyes.

Elianore waited beneath a dying tree, arms crossed. Her raven cloak fluttered in the wind.

“You came,” she said.

Marcio didn’t respond right away. He looked over his shoulder once more—at Elyria, still sleeping under the weight of the Empire.

“I don’t know what I am,” he said.

“You will,” Elianore replied. “Soon.”

And without another word, they disappeared into the morning mist.