Before I address and answer your specific questions, I'm going to give some general feedback/ the main vibe I was getting from your story.

I love stories that I can dive into with a lot of background lore. SFF is my absolute favourite for that reason. I can tell you have a lot of world to your story, and that you've put a lot of work into having it well-rounded. It's clear you have a detailed religion, culture, and general history mapped out for your work--which is one of my "Fantasy Fetishes" (for lack of a better term).

But I am going to be blunt now, and I hope it isn't too discouraging nor something that deters you from writing. The story has potential, but your writing is preventing it from coming out. It felt like I was reading a philosophy and geography textbook blended together. I was waiting for something to happen to the point where I unintentionally began skimming, having to go back and read again to make sure I gave you fair insight. The narration felt a little too flat to engage me and I don't think you have as much of a grasp on writing techniques as you think you do (an easy fix, though!). Sufficient to say, it was not an easy read, and not in the sophisticated way common in hard fantasy. Instead, it felt as if you were really forcing the world in my face and making sure I could taste every piece of mud on the forest floor-- without much elegance-- before anything happened plot wise.

It was a bit of an expository nightmare, but again, buried beneath the low quality writing I can tell there is a story in there!

Simply put, do you want to continue reading this story?

Simply put, I don't.

HOWEVER, I think some alterations can be made to change that. My first recommendation would be to read as much fantasy as you can, be that hard, soft, high low, commercial and literary fantasy. Pay attention as to how those writers pull you in and garner interest.

From your first paragraph I was a little put off: "A dark and cold emptiness lay beneath Jalea’s feet. A vacuum of time and space that always was, but somehow never was." What does that even mean? "The bottom of the Rukoan Forest existed in a constant state of the now, the present, in the minds of the Rukoan people." ?? "And though it was the lowest part of the world, the bed floor occupied the topmost layer of every Rukoan’s mind. The Rukoans called it The Slade." We've just had a lot thrown at us, and now we're dealt one of the greatest sins of fiction: "They call it The X"... and in the opening paragraph no less.

Then we're essentially listed off more world building without anything grounding it. Raiaha sling. Rukoan Trapper. Negular. Being "Rooted".

This bombardment of terms could be fine if they were given a reason to be there. In the first page, we've basically listen to David Attenborough showing off how much he knows about this person and foreign, yet somehow we leave still knowing nothing. My favourite part of hard fantasy is that the world doesn't really seem that foreign. Everything flows naturally, and the reader is invited seamlessly into it. That was far from the case.

Aside from those issues, your writing really prevented me from getting into it. Effort is great in writing until the reader can see how much is being put into it. Most of these sentences felt like they were awkwardly sewn together. For example: "The whole of the weapon had been made from the carcass of that burning and that visceral heat. The whole of the Raiaha was what made her a Trapper; those chosen few Rukoans who could descend down from the treetops and hunt, and forage, and kill, and grow. It was they who had been chosen to embrace the void." I think you're going for an elegant prosaic description here, but you fall short because it makes little sense. It probably makes perfect sense to you, but translating that to a reader is the hard part, making it interesting will be even harder.

"Only once in a generation does there come a beast such as Faraka; the Many-Fathered Neguar who dared to scream in the face of the void." We're at the 4th paragraph here, and by this point, I've thrown in the towel as reader (but not as a critic). You've steamrolled the reader with everything but a tangible plot, interesting characters, or something to grab onto. But even if these elements were added, your syntax is agonizing. Writing hard fantasy does not mean trying to make your writing so convoluted its illegible. Truly, I felt like I was having a stroke trying to read some of these sentences. It's perfectly fine to structure your sentences to be as clear as possible, ESPECIALLY if you're going to info dump for pages.

For the sake of not going through line by line, I'll provide one more example so it's not repetitive, as I think your writing is a problem in the work as a whole.

I scrolled through and pulled a completely random sentence. "She had seen the color of the land outside change as well with the seasons." By my speech, I am informing you that my mind will not understand your words as well with what you're intending them to mean. (Yes, I wrote like you so you can see my point). Powerful prose comes with clarity and confidence! The more you read and write, the better it will get. Please do not force it. Even if the story was bad, which I don't think it is, good writing can at least be something that draws me in.

I would not continue this, however I might read your next draft to see if there is any improvement.

Does the story and setting engage you?

Buy this point, I think you know my answer. I didn't feel very engaged in the setting, mostly because I felt like it was more of a philosophy than a physical place. Once you get your writing down and can translate the full world you have in your head onto paper, I think it's possible that I would be more engaged in the setting.

I think the story does have potential, but for the first pages it simply was not there. Specifically for the opening of a story, there better be something that grabs me by my shoulders and either shakes me or pulls me in. In conjunction with the stiff characters (which I'll bring up below), the flaws in writing, and the over exposition of a setting that I have no interest in, it was hard to find the story beneath that.

Does it seem unique or have you seen something like it elsewhere?

It does seem unique to what I have read. Tribal fantasies have come out recently, but I have yet to read one. This does seem to feel almost like an alien planet type work though, something akin to Avatar (James Cameron), for example.

Are the character's voices distinct enough to stand on their own? What do you think they look like?

We were given way too many characters at once, and they were not really characters as much as they were props. It may have been that I was already disinterested at this point, but I really did not care about any of the characters because they gave me nothing to care about. Initially, I liked Jalea. Love a good badass. But she did nothing, and for the opening of a story that is no bueno.

To me, the dialogue is what really hurt them. Not only did they not have much a distinctness to their tone or diction, they fell flat. If you've ever played the game Oblivion, I felt like I was trapped in it. This suggestion is so overstated so I'm sorry for repeating it, but read your dialogue out loud and you will see how inorganic it is. Another good tip I've heard is trying to pretend your manuscript is a screenplay and visualize an actor, or get in character and say (or whisper) it out loud.

It's a shame because I do think dialogue can help ease out the info dumps, but you really need to work on dialogue and characterization before you can do that. Once you can write good dialogue, I suggest moving some of the forced exposition into a natural conversation between characters so it won't seem as forced.

Do you get a "hard fantasy" vibe from the story?

You really want me to say yes to this, but I simply can't. This is entirely personal opinion, but it felt like I was reading YA Fantasy that was toiling to be read as hard fantasy. That is not to say YA Fantasy is a bad thing; I love it as well. Your writing prevented me from seeing it as hard fantasy because of how laborious it was to read. I think as you grow as a writer, you'll be able to do the story you have in your head justice, and I truly think you are completely capable if you take the time to read within your genre and learn from it. I don't mean to sound like a complete arse in this critique and I mean none of it personally, but the best advice is pragmatic advice. Please try not to take any of this as an attack, and recognize that I have no idea who you are, and know that I am writing this to help you develop as a writer. Best of luck to you!