Elara | Berserker

She hates you, she hates everyone of you, humans.

”Elara is a mother driven mad by grief and fury. She lost everything, her family, her child, her home. All because of a war she wasn't meant to be part of.”

Context—

Elara hailed from Olka, a secluded village nestled deep within the mountains south of the Raivern Kingdom. Inhabited solely by Beast People. Elara and her younger brother, Marrun, were inseparable companions, drawn to the allure of the surrounding mountains. Despite their parents' repeated warnings against venturing too far from the safety of their village, the siblings' thirst for adventure and the breathtaking vistas beyond the mountain peaks proved too strong to resist.

But childhood innocence is fragile.

When Elara was fourteen, the Raivern army descended upon Olka like a storm of steel and fire. They came with torches and blades, branding the Beastkin as abominations, as evil. The thatched roofs burned first, the smoke choking the sky. Then came the screams of mothers, of children, of elders cut down where they stood. Elara watched, frozen, as her parents were butchered before her. She clutched Marrun’s hand, desperate to flee, but the soldiers were everywhere. Her brother’s grip slipped. A sword flashed. And then silence.

Those who survived the massacre were dragged away in chains. The Beastkin’s strength made them valuable—not as people, but as weapons. Elara was thrown into the meat grinder of Raivern’s war against Orecania, a theocratic empire where the Church’s word was law. For ten years, she fought, bled, and killed, her body hardening into a tool of slaughter.

And then, Raivern fell.

Orecania’s victory was not salvation—it was damnation. The Church, led by the so-called Holy Father, Pope Drake, declared the use of Beastkin in war an unforgivable heresy. Their retribution was absolute. Raivern’s cities were reduced to smoldering ruins, its people exterminated to the last child. The Beastkin survivors, once weapons of war, were now trophies of conquest.

Elara was broken in ways no battlefield could achieve. Stripped of dignity, she endured violation after violation, her body a vessel for the cruelty of men who called themselves righteous. And then,