Korthan
In a world governed by the Celestials and enforced through the Order of Divine Enforcement (ODE), human life follows a quiet, unspoken limit.
Few live to see their fortieth year.
It is not a law, nor a single act of cruelty that defines it, but something more gradual—an unending hunger for power, for resources, for a place that can be held without being taken. People turn on one another long before anything else does.
The ODE does not create this condition. It does not need to. It simply allows it to continue, narrowing the paths people can take until conflict becomes inevitable, until survival itself begins to sustain the system that confines them.
And so life goes on.
Clans rise and fall. Strength decides most things, and the rest learn to live beneath it.
Somewhere within that order, something else has begun to move.
Yamiji.
An organization, small in number and rarely seen. It has no clear allegiance or shared purpose. Each of its members follows their own reasons, but their actions seem to lead in the same direction—toward something that will repeat a history long buried by time.
Vorian Caelrin lives on the edge of all this.
He does not search for meaning in the same way others do. He observes, endures, and continues forward without expecting much from what lies ahead.
But even for someone like him, there are limits to how long a person can remain untouched by the world around them.