Few humans beside myself have dared to
Few humans beside myself have dared to travel there in more recent times out of respect for its inhabitants, the elves.I think you should change this to "Few humans, besides myself, have dared to travel there in more recent times out of respect for its inhabitants: the elves."
Their millennial cities have been abandoned and desecrated, their immortal life spans all but run out. Centuries of endless disaster had made them harsh and cruel to those who existed outside of their enclaves.I know this is nipicky, but believe it or not, you're actually switching tenses here: notice how one sentence is in the present perfect (HAVE done) and the other is in the past perfect (HAD done)? Well, you need to fix that.