Namarti Thralls

Namarti Thralls are born owing a debt they never incurred: half-souls that gutter out within decades unless fed with harvested essence. Eyeless from birth, they perceive the world as pressure, current, and the bright wake that living souls leave in the ethersea, and in that drowned gloom they are far from helpless, swinging their lanmari blades with a dancer's certainty at foes who cannot see their own hands.

The Akhelians name them thralls, but every enclave is built upon their backs: tenders of the kelp terraces, crafters, and the broad mass of every raiding tide. When the conches sound, the Thralls go over the shore-walls first, and they know precisely what victory is worth: the souls taken beneath their blades will be grafted to their failing kin, and perhaps, if the tally favors them, to their own.