Please all be still, gather close and listen. Feel the coolness of the desert night settle upon your skin, feel the grit of ages beneath your feet. You ask about the whispers, the signs that trouble the wind, the feeling that eyes watch us from the shimmering heat where none should be. You ask if they have returned. We do not know for sure.

But these first signs do resonate with the teachings of our great ancestors. These we hoped mere stories, passed down through generations like the patterns in our weavings, were etched into our souls like the scars on this land. But we’ve always feared the stories of the Great Hunt, the time long ago when our world nearly ended, may not be mere stories anymore.

It did not begin with fire and screams. It began like a shadow stretching unnaturally long in the twilight. Our ancestors spoke of lone figures, glimpsed only for moments, moving along the high dunes or within the skeletal forests, with an agility no mortal possessed. They were phantoms, shimmering like heat mirages, leaving tracks that defied reason. Large and heavy, yet they vanishing into thin air.

They watched and studied our defences. They could be within a spear’s distance, but yet unseen. Our strongest hunters, could instantly disappear, leaving only a splash of blood on the sand. Sometimes they would leave marks, three burns in the rocks.

We learned fear then, not of the beasts of our world, but of the unseen. They spoke in whispers of the ‘Sky-Demons’, beings who fell from the stars only to vanish again, leaving only destruction and death in their wake. The early lone beings were believed to be scouts, who visited over the course of many years. They were measuring us. Testing our strength. Finding our weaknesses.

Then came the day the sky bled fire.

Not one falling star, but the sky was filled. Vessels unlike anything seen before descended, dark against the harsh sun and moving in complete silence. They hovered above our ancient cities, cities built not of mud and hide as they are now, but of carved stone and sun-dried clay, tall and proud.

From these vessels descended an army. They were not phantoms now, but towering figures, armoured and grotesque. They hid behind their masks and armour that seemed to drink the light.

Their Great Hunt had begun. It was not war, but a methodical extermination, a sport for beings who saw us as little more than pebbles along the sands. Our spears shattered against their armour, our arrows glanced off unseen shields. They moved with terrifying speed, able to leap through the branches of the ironwood trees and striking when least expected.

Their weapons were beyond our comprehension. Blades of pure energy extended from their wrists, so sharp they could cleave through our strongest shields and armour as if they were mere cloth. But worse were the blasts of heat and light that erupted from their armour. These beams reduced our homes, our temples and our hallowed halls of knowledge, to ash in moments. Entire communities vanished in blinding flashes, the air filled with the stench of burned flesh. Our great cities were destroyed before the sun rose.

The terror was absolute. They seemed invincible, invisible killers who toyed with us, sometimes leaving terrifying trophies of the fallen. Panic reigned. Our people scattered into the deepest deserts, abandoning the ruins of our civilisation. More than three-quarters of our population perished in those first terrible years. We were broken, hunted, reduced to shadows flitting across our own ancestral lands, praying only for a quick end. Hope was a forgotten word.

But desperation breeds courage, or perhaps madness. A story is told of a small band, led by the Huntress Kaelen, may her memory be sharp as obsidian. They had watched, learned and seen the patterns in the chaos. They knew they could not win by strength, but perhaps by cunning. Their plan was suicide: to board one of the Sky-Demons’ smaller vessels while it landed to collect trophies.

The tale speaks of unimaginable bravery and loss. Of crawling through vents slick with unknown fluids, of disabling sentries with nothing but knives and knowledge of anatomy, of reaching the heart of the vessel. They did not seek to destroy it, but to steal. They returned bearing impossible gifts. They returned with the enemy’s fire.

That was the turning point. It was not swift, nor was it easy, but they learned to use their weapons throughout the following season. Our ancestors turned their invisibility against them, ambushing lone hunters. They set fierce traps and they used their own weapons against them to bring down their vessels. The war lasted for only a few more seasons after that.

It was a brutal, grinding conflict fought in ruins and across desolate plains. But they used their knowledge of this land, their only remaining advantage, against their technology.

Slowly, agonisingly, they pushed the demons back. The hunters became the hunted. Whether their losses became too great, or whether they simply deemed us no longer worthy sport, we do not know. But one day, the skies ceased to bleed fire. The remaining vessels ascended, vanishing back into the stars from whence they came.

They left behind a shattered world and a scarred people. It took generations to rebuild, not our cities, but our lives, our culture, our numbers. We returned to the old ways, a simple settlement, but one we have built to one day defend again. Our people carry the memory of the Great Hunt as both a warning and a testament to our endurance.

So, when you ask if they have returned, understand the weight of that question. Look at the ruins half-buried in the sand, listen to the silence where cities once stood. Remember Kaelen and the sacrifice. Remember the Sky-Demons. We survived them once. If the stars have brought them back to our sands, then the spirits of our ancestors demand we be ready to survive them again. The Hunt never truly ends, it only sleeps.