Chapter 1: Prologue
Within the Genos Realm, female orcs were the sacred lifeline of each spiritual beast tribe—revered, protected, and desperately needed. But for all their reverence, the truth was grim. The number of female beasts was rapidly plummeting, scattered like whispers in a storm.
Compared to the overflowing ranks of males, females were as rare as stars in the day.
It was a crisis.
Without females, their bloodline would surely become stagnant like a murky water and wither like a parched tree trunk.
Amidst the countless stars within the infinite universe blessed by the heavens with supernatural strength, the beast world, vast and fierce, could not sustain itself on brute force alone.
In the beginning, it wasn't just the low birth rate that plagued them—it was the harshness of evolution. Only transcendent males, those who clawed their way through fire and tribulation, could shift into their human form.
While females were born with the gift of innate transformation, they were too delicate. Feeble. And often, too fragile to survive long enough to carry life.
Thus, faced with extinction, the ruling beast archons of that time made a desperate decision—sending their women to the mortal realm to sow a seed of hope for the future of their race.
There, with carefully chosen human partners, they would breed and give birth to hybrids children born of deep-rooted alpha bloodlines. To which, a generation of special females, rare and radiant, who carried the strength beasts within a human form had became.
They were the hybrids who could withstand the crushing spiritual energy of a purebred spirit beast during coitus—and more importantly, they could conceive like a true-born female orc without much complications.
As such, those daughters were sent back to Genos. To be mothers. To rebuild. To save a world on the edge of vanishing.
And for a while, it worked. The high human birth rate led to a surge in the Genos beast population.
Hybrid females gave birth to healthy cub and what's more astonishing is that many of whom could naturally transform just like their transcendent sires, without having to go through arduous tribulations to transcend and become a sacred spirit beast who could freely morph.
Born from the union of hybrid mothers and sacred beast fathers, the new generation became known as beastmen, a mix of pride and derision, as though their existence was an experiment that happened to succeed.
But good things don't last long and that golden age ended.
Human blood thinned their legacy.
Not only were their lifespans shortened, but their presence became like a slow-acting poison—especially to the hybrid females, who withered gradually through natural breeding.
In time, even the formidable and highly sought hybrid alpha females lost their compatibility with beastmen.
Females capable of enduring a beastman's potent energy became exceedingly rare.
Once more, the Genos Beasts found themselves at a crossroads, the consequence of their complacency. They had grown too close to mortals, forsaking their primal nature and sullying a bloodline once revered as sacred.
Their once-thriving numbers began to decline—steadily, tragically—nearly vanishing altogether.
And yet, perhaps not all gods had turned away.
In the darkest moment of their decline, a miracle stirred.
From the scattered hybrid bloodlines, Spirit Beast Maidens emerged—females born with natal beasts, capable of giving birth to an Enigma.
A being bearing the purest bloodline with the most potent energy strand known to beast kind for its heavy toll on a female's body during copulation.
Meanwhile, it was said to rival the transcendent sacred beasts of Genos' first era and held great power gifted by the Beast God—Bulwark.
With the arrival of these purebreds, the beastmen seized a second chance—to rebuild, and to amend the sins of their past.
From then on, breeding with hybrid females was carefully regulated, limited to fixed generations to preserve purity. Powerful Enigmas, in particular, were bound to reproduce solely with Spirit Beast Maidens to ensure the birth of exceptional offsprings and grow the number of the current Enigmas but that was no simple feat.
Still, these rare females became even scarcer—treasured, coveted, and tragically, hunted. Some were sold to the highest bidder; others, cruelly forced to bear the spawn of wicked beasts who longs to topple the current status quo and reign over the lands, including that of the mortals.
Through the past centuries, the Hale Family was one of the last ancient lineages with thick, untainted alpha strands able to produce spirit beast maidens who became brides of the surviving Enigmas in the beast world.
The chosen females born to this gift were fated—no, bred—to carry the next generation of Enigmas to keep the bloodline's purity at all cost.
Previously, the last female born with an imperial jade sparrow natal beast had come from the Velnos bloodline. Now, it was her turn.
Asha's room was a prison masquerading as a palace. A cavernous suite with high ceilings and silken sheets that felt like chains. Her windows were barred with iron while the doors only opened from the outside.
It didn't matter how lavish the walls were—to her, they still closed in like a tomb.
She sat at the edge of her bed, bare feet brushing against the cold marble floor. Her fingers ghosted across the fabric of the sheets, trailing invisible lines like she was unraveling the thread of her fate.
Most people think she was born with a diamond spoon yet only she knew how she bears a fate worse than a lowborn.
She was a relic in a museum. A commodity. A cage bird waiting to be sold.
Born to breed. Raised to birth. Destined to be a broodmare and conceive some strangers'— those beastly creatures' offsprings.
A broodmare...
The word echoed in her mind like bile on her tongue.
They called her blessed. Chosen. A savior of their dying bloodlines. But what savior was locked behind walls? What kind of honor smelled like rot and desperation?
Asha stared blankly at the fake sky projected above her, yearning for a real wind to run through her hair, to feel real grass beneath her feet—not this artificial illusion designed to keep her docile.
No matter how much they smear gold and glimmers to cover her inevitable truth, Asha already knew how much more dreary her future was than that of a homeless person.
She was born a prisoner of an accursed future woven by the pact her ancestors made with the beastmen of Genos.