"Chapter 1"
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"Scene: Lucien's First Step — Exiled from the Aether Realm"
Location: Golden Grasslands
Biome: Breezy, bright golden plains under a cloudy sky
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The wind howled softly, stirring the endless golden waves of tall grass. Each blade shimmered under the broken sun, bending like dancers in rhythm with the air. Somewhere in this bright emptiness…
Lucien woke up.
His sapphire eyes opened slowly, blinking as the clouds drifted past overhead. His hands touched the warm earth below him — dry, soft, and filled with the scent of life. There was no skybridge here. No glowing code-lines. No floating relic rings.
The Aether Realm was gone.
He sat up, instinctively checking his side.
The Aether Realm Bracelets were still locked on both wrists, humming faintly like a heartbeat. He could feel the energy inside them — chaotic, pulsing...wrong.
> "They kicked me out," he whispered, the words barely audible over the wind.
It wasn't anger or sadness in his voice. Just acceptance. Something in the system rejected him — and yet let him keep the relic. And that meant something was very, very broken.
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Lucien stood up, brushing loose seeds and grass off his clothes. The open world ahead greeted him like a blank canvas. He reached into his small pack and checked what he had:
Wooden Axe
Wooden Sword
Wooden Shovel
A few bundles of raw forest wood
And exactly 50 granola bars — still slightly warm, thanks to Aether-pack preservation
The wind shifted again, brushing his blonde hair to the side. He squinted at the horizon.
> Forest to the west.
Mountains far to the north.
A faint green glow in the east — likely Dwarven Tree-Villages.
Behind him… only the swaying plains and the silent void of where he fell from.
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He took a bite of a granola bar. Crunchy. Sweet. A bit too chewy. But it kept his stomach from complaining.
> "Alright," he murmured to himself, gripping the wooden axe and turning toward the horizon. "Time to return it."
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Far off in the grasslands, hidden in the distance, things were already watching —
Low-eyed creatures with moss-covered backs stalked the wind, and a shadow of a Feathered Maw Beast drifted over the golden sea.
Lucien's foot met the dirt trail.
The journey had begun.
And the world of Elorian waited — with biomes unexplored, dwarven plant villages, taigas and tundras, monsters without names, and the fading memory of the sky he once called home.
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