I did like the glimpses I got of the Havoc Warriors and the Wood Elves. You could definitely create further pieces exploring other aspects of both cultures. Remembering that we're limited to a thousand words over a weekend for the jam I think you did a great job presenting just enough of the cultures that I got the sense there was more, without burdening the story or taxing your wordcount trying to go into immense detail.
I think the axe thing was simply because there's a lot of story between Yivoraea's enemy dropping the axe, and her picking it up. A quick reminder to the reader why there was an axe would have cleaned that right up. As for the transition from past to present, yes, that needs some tightening up, but the raw material is still there.
Maybe it's more on me than you that I didn't pick up on what you were trying to evoke with the theme. At the same time, we as jam authors have (this time around) 32,000 words of story to read and absorb in a week, so personally I've found that subtlety isn't my friend when it comes to OPR writing jam submissions. With a longer work, without the time pressures to write, submit, and then rate, you can afford to play around with your themes, hide them and twist them around and explore them.
Anyway I'm glad you found the feedback helpful. I did like the story overall; hopefully that hasn't gotten lost in all this!