Before humanity called them monsters, they called them guardians.
Before they called them myths, they called them Jinn.
And before the world forgot them—
the Jinn went to war.
There were once two worlds.
Not two kingdoms.
Not two continents separated by an ocean.
Two worlds.
The first was Uniyani.
The mortal realm.
A world of humans, kingdoms, forests, deserts, oceans, mountains, war, hunger, ambition, love, cruelty, birth, and death.
Humans built cities there.
They crowned kings.
They buried their dead.
They prayed to gods.
They killed one another over borders that would eventually disappear.
They lived painfully short lives and somehow managed to fill those lives with more chaos than creatures who had existed for thousands of years.
And beside Uniyani existed another realm.
Hidden.
Ancient.
Impossible.
Klysium.
The homeland of the Jinn.
Klysium had never been created for mortals.
Its mountains floated.
Its rivers sometimes climbed upward.
Forests grew beneath violet stars that never appeared in Uniyani's sky.
There were valleys where gravity changed with the seasons and deserts where grains of sand whispered memories whenever the wind disturbed them.
Magic did not merely exist within Klysium.
Magic was Klysium.
It breathed through the soil.
It flowed through the rivers.
It burned inside its stars.
And from that magic—
the Jinn were created.
They had no single ancestor.
No first mother.
No first father.
No bloodline from which every Jinn descended.
Magic itself created them.
Sometimes one emerged from a storm.
Another might awaken beneath a mountain.
Another could simply appear somewhere in Klysium where the concentration of magic became powerful enough to develop consciousness.
They belonged to species, but members of those species were not necessarily biological relatives.
The species represented what forces had shaped them.
There were the Amalaq, keepers of balance and the great laws governing existence.
The Rhazeth, guardians of treasure, enchanted gems, relics, and forgotten knowledge.
The enormous Mazharb, whose hearts moved with the oceans and whose command of water could either heal a dying child or drown a kingdom.
The Zafirah, children of wind and spirit, who crossed the skies and guided wandering souls.
The Narath, wielders of cleansing flame, destruction, wrath, and rebirth.
The mysterious Tahlryn, who walked through dreams, memories, and minds.
The Zhalar, beings of darkness, secrets, shadows, and concealment.
The radiant Ilmar, servants of light, truth, purification, and justice.
And once—
the Shathyr.
The changers.
The shapeless.
Jinn of transformation whose rainbow eyes betrayed creatures capable of becoming almost anything.
Human.
Animal.
Monster.
Male.
Female.
Neither.
Both.
Something that had never existed before.
The Shathyr eventually disappeared so completely that even the Jinn began arguing over what had happened to them.
And then there were the Ghouls.
But Ghouls had not originally been created as a species.
They had been made.
That was another story.
A darker story.
One Klysium would spend thousands of years trying unsuccessfully to forget.
Because not everything magic created was benevolent.
There were also the Yfryths.
Jinn of hellfire.
Chaos.
Domination.
Corruption.
And hunger.
Not hunger for food.
Something worse.
The hunger to own.
For all the differences between the Jinn, there was one tradition almost every species understood.
One bond regarded as more sacred than kingdom, law, or power.
The Qarin.
Every Jinn possessed one.
Somewhere within Uniyani existed a mortal soul capable of resonating perfectly with theirs.
Not simply a lover.
Not merely a husband or wife.
A counterpart.
A companion.
A partner whose soul had been threaded into the same ancient magic.
And the strangest part was that every Qarin was human.
At first.
Because hidden within certain mortal bloodlines were remnants of Jinn magic.
The descendants of ancient unions.
Children whose children's children carried traces of Klysium within them even after everyone had forgotten where that magic originated.
The Jinn called them Jinnbloods.
Most humans never knew.
A girl might be born capable of knowing when someone was lying.
A boy might survive a wound that should have killed him.
A child might dream about places that did not exist anywhere in Uniyani.
A thief might disappear into shadows too easily.
A sailor might sense storms before clouds appeared.
An herbalist might cause dying plants to bloom beneath her fingertips.
Small things.
At first.
The blood usually began awakening as the Qarin approached adulthood.
But the laws of Klysium were absolute.
A Jinn could not enter Uniyani to search for their Qarin until that human reached twenty years of age.
Not nineteen years and eleven months.
Not because the Jinn was impatient.
Not because their Qarin was endangered.
Twenty.
Only then could the crossing be made.
For some Jinn, waiting was easy.
For others—
it was torture.
They could sometimes sense their Qarin before meeting them.
A distant warmth.
A dream.
An inexplicable ache.
The sensation that somewhere beyond the veil separating worlds, someone was missing from them.
When the twentieth year arrived, the Jinn crossed into Uniyani.
Many began their search in Riedana, where the veil separating Klysium and Uniyani had always been unusually thin.
Others searched for months.
Years.
Occasionally decades.
Uniyani was enormous.
Destiny, apparently, had never learned the value of providing directions.
But eventually—
they found one another.
And when Jinn met Qarin, the dormant Jinnblood within the human awakened.
Their abilities strengthened.
Their lifespan lengthened.
Their bodies gradually changed.
The transformation could take years.
Sometimes decades.
But eventually the human became something more.
And when their mortal life finally ended, their soul crossed into Klysium.
There—
they were reborn as full Jinn.
Their partner waiting for them.
Together thereafter.
Forever.
It was why unmated Jinn rarely took other full-blooded Jinn as lovers.
No one knew whose ancient bloodline their future Qarin might carry.
As one particularly vulgar Klysian proverb eventually summarized:
Do not bed another Jinn before finding your Qarin.
You may discover you have slept with your future in-laws.
Even immortal magical beings had standards.
Usually.
There had been an age when humans knew all of this.
An age when Jinn walked openly through Uniyani.
They advised kings.
Married mortals.
Raised families.
Protected villages.
Destroyed armies.
Argued in marketplaces.
Drank in taverns.
Made enemies.
Made legends.
And occasionally caused enough property damage that mortal governments attempted to ban them from entire cities.
That age ended with the Yfryths.
The Yfryths believed the Qarin bond made Jinn weak.
Love made them weak.
Balance made them weak.
Protecting mortals made them weak.
Why protect humanity when humanity could kneel?
Why maintain balance when power could belong to those strong enough to seize it?
Why accept a Qarin as an equal—
when they could be made a servant?
Some Yfryths tortured their own Qarins.
Some enslaved them.
Some murdered them.
And some attempted something so horrific that Klysium itself seemed to recoil from them.
They split their Qarins.
Body.
Soul.
Essence.
The results became creatures called the Snas.
Half a body.
Half a face.
One arm.
One leg.
Twisted wings.
And a soul forever screaming for the half that had been stolen from it.
That crime finally united much of Klysium against the Yfryths.
They were banished.
But exile did not end the threat.
It merely moved it.
The Yfryths entered Uniyani.
And conquered.
Kingdom after kingdom fell beneath hellfire.
Mortals were enslaved.
Cities burned.
Jinn who attempted to intervene were killed with flames capable of consuming not merely flesh, but magical essence itself.
Hellfire could erase a Jinn so completely that nothing remained to return to Klysium.
Then humanity rebelled.
Knights from conquered kingdoms gathered beneath a common banner.
They knew they would probably die.
They rode anyway.
The rebellion failed.
The Yfryths captured them.
And instead of granting the knights death—
they made an example of them.
The knights were skinned alive.
So were their horses.
Magic prevented either from dying.
Then human and horse were fused together.
Bone into bone.
Muscle into muscle.
Agony into obedience.
Thus arose the Ilitriun.
The Skinless Army.
The Yfryths commanded those knights to return home.
To the families they had fought to protect.
Their minds remained intact.
They recognized their husbands.
Their wives.
Their mothers.
Their fathers.
Their children.
They simply could not control their bodies.
The Yfryths made them slaughter everyone.
And afterward—
the Ilitriun became soldiers.
That was when neutrality became impossible.
Jinn entered the war in numbers never before witnessed.
Rhazeth opened vaults containing weapons that had not seen daylight in millennia.
Mazharb rose from the oceans.
Narath burned corruption from entire battlefields.
Zafirah carried messages and souls between armies.
Ilmar brought light against hellfire.
Zhalar assassinated commanders from darkness.
Tahlryn shattered enemy minds.
And among those fighting were Jinn who had themselves been captured.
Tortured.
Twisted.
Changed by Yfryth corruption until they barely resembled what they had once been.
The Yfryths called them monsters.
The prisoners reclaimed the insult.
They called themselves Ghouls.
And they rebelled.
Their leader was a woman named—
Vam.
The Jinn of Death.
She killed Hashtar, one of the greatest Yfryth generals.
And suddenly the impossible war became winnable.
Humans fought beside Jinn.
Jinn fought beside Qarins.
And descendants of Yfryth-human unions eventually divided themselves between darkness and light.
The dark became known as the Azalym.
The others rejected their ancestry.
They called themselves the Alnohr.
Together, Jinn, Qarins, mortals, Ghouls, and Alnohr finally defeated the Yfryths.
They could not destroy them all.
So they imprisoned them.
The remaining Snas were driven inside.
The surviving Ilitriun followed.
The Yfryths were sealed behind wards strengthened by Jinn magic, mortal blood, enchanted relics, and ancient gems.
The Rhazeth became some of the prison's greatest guardians.
And the world survived.
But surviving something and remembering it were very different things.
Thousands of years passed.
Then thousands more.
Human kingdoms collapsed.
New ones rose upon their ruins.
Languages disappeared.
Religions changed.
Maps were redrawn.
History became folklore.
Folklore became bedtime stories.
Bedtime stories became superstition.
And superstition eventually became nonsense.
The Jinn withdrew.
Not completely.
They still crossed into Uniyani when their Qarins reached twenty.
They still searched.
Still loved.
Still bonded.
Still protected descendants.
But they learned discretion.
Humanity had changed.
And humans feared what they could not explain.
A Jinn who once might have walked through a capital openly now concealed their eyes.
Their skin.
Their magic.
Their nature.
Qarins learned to hide what they became.
Families stopped telling children why their grandmother never seemed to age.
Why Uncle Rian could speak to storms.
Why certain relatives disappeared after death without leaving bodies.
Why every few generations someone was born with impossible eyes.
Eventually even the descendants forgot.
The Age of Jinn ended without anyone noticing.
And in modern Uniyani—
the word Jinn meant something very different.
A spirit.
A demon.
A wish-granter trapped inside a lamp.
A monster from children's stories.
A myth.
There were plays about them.
Cheap novels.
Drunken tavern stories.
Children rubbed old brass lamps and demanded three wishes.
Actual Jinn found this extremely irritating.
Especially the lamps.
The lamps had never been funny.
Not to them.
Because somewhere beneath the myths lay the memory of something real.
Jinn had once been trapped inside them.
Enslaved.
Forced to serve.
And while humanity laughed—
someone else remembered.
The Azalym remembered.
The descendants of darkness remembered.
The prison remembered.
And deep beneath a land whose modern inhabitants no longer knew what had once been buried there—
something burned.
Hellfire.
Deep beneath Uniyani, hellfire continued burning through the crack.
A hand appeared on the other side.
Blackened.
Clawed.
Burning.
It curled around the stone.
The ancient ward screamed.
Somewhere inside the prison, a voice whispered:
"Seven."
Another answered.
"Seven have awakened."
A third laughed.
"Then the prophecy lives."
Silence followed.
Then an older voice spoke.
One even the other Yfryths obeyed.
"Let them come."
The claw tightened.
Stone fractured beneath it.
"Let Klysium send its champions."
Hellfire flooded through the crack.
"Let them find their Qarins."
The darkness behind the gate filled with countless burning eyes.
"Let them fall in love."
A pause.
Then laughter.
Because the Yfryths remembered something humanity had forgotten.
A Jinn's greatest strength had always been their Qarin.
And their greatest weakness—
was exactly the same.
"Then," the voice whispered,
"we will take them away."
Once, humanity knew the Jinn.
Then humanity feared them.
Then humanity forgot them.
But legends have a peculiar habit.
They die.
They disappear.
They wait.
And when the world needs them most—
they return.
The First War had become a myth.
The Second—
had just begun.
And this time, the fate of two worlds would rest in the hands of seven Jinn—
and the seven humans destined to become their equals.
The Age of Jinn was returning.
And Uniyani had no idea what was coming.