Chapter 1: Pilot
📍 Month 1 – The Beginning of Spring
📍 Location: Whispergrove Village, Western Ridges
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PART 1: Mist and Morning
The morning air in Whispergrove still carried the bite of winter, but spring had begun to whisper in the trees.
Golden light slipped through half-cracked wooden blinds and fell across the cabin's wooden floor. On the porch steps sat a boy—barefoot, quiet, lost in thought. His name was Arin. Twelve years old, tall for his age, always watching the world as if it were hiding something.
Beside him, curled like a bundle of fur, was Yen, a jackal pup with mismatched eyes—one silver, one brown. It had followed Arin home after the fire. Or maybe he had followed it.
Arin stared into the mist, his fingers resting over the right side of his chest where an odd mark lived beneath his shirt. It was shaped like a trident, with six tiny symbols at its base:
⚔️ Two crossed blades — Varkaan (War)
✨ A bunch of stars — Astralis (Mythical)
∞ Infinity loop — Synthara (Tech)
💧 A curling wave — Tideborn (Aqua)
🍀 Four-leaf clover — Verdantia (Healer)
🌀 A spiral — Elarans (General Public)
He never showed it to anyone. Not even Elrin, his grandfather. Not anymore. But Elrin knows that exists as a symbol of hope.
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PART 2: Elrin and the Stories
Inside the cabin, Elrin was already awake, boiling tea over a crackling fire. His hands were strong, built from years of carving wood and carrying stories no one else wanted to remember.
He was older now, with streaks of white in his beard and a back that ached with the weather. But his eyes—his eyes still burned with secrets.
He didn't speak much in the mornings. Neither did Arin. But the silence between them was familiar, like a language of its own.
> Narration:
"Elrin came from somewhere else. Far away. He never said where. Some believed he was just an old woodsman. Others whispered that he had once been something more."
Behind the house, in his carving shed, Elrin kept hundreds of wooden figures. Masks. Totems. Creatures from old stories. On one shelf sat a strange carving—an ancient six-pointed trident, one point broken off.
Elrin never touched that one. He'd never told Arin where it came from.
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PART 3: School and the Puzzle
By mid-morning, Arin walked to the Whispergrove Learning Lodge. It was a small stone-and-timber building where a dozen village children gathered for lessons.
The teacher, Master Tarn, had a sword scar on his face and a soft voice. He taught them about: the lost history of the world the symbols of the old Clans, and the language of puzzles and riddles.
Arin loved riddles. He could solve patterns faster than anyone. Even Tarn seemed quietly impressed.
But the other children didn't know what to make of him.
He sometimes played with Jekk, Filla, Naari, and Roan, but he wasn't close to any of them. They were just village kids. He joined their games when needed—"Stone Circle", or "Hollow Beast"—and he always won.
Not because he was stronger.
Because he saw things they didn't.
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PART 4: The Fire and the Jackals
> Three nights ago, just before dawn, the silence of Whispergrove had been torn open by howls.
Arin had woken to the scent of smoke and shattering wood. A pack of jackals—eyes wild, bodies lean with hunger—had broken into their cabin.
> They were not normal jackals. Something was wrong with them. They moved like they were being driven.
Elrin was away that night, out selling carved wood in a nearby town. Arin was alone.
He remembered grabbing the old staff beside the door and standing between the snarling beasts and the back room. His arms had trembled, but he didn't back down.
Something in his chest burned.
> And then, as if drawn by instinct, his hand reached into the storage box—one that had never opened before.
Inside, under old blankets, lay a sword.
Not like the ones he'd seen in stories. This one was simple, with a worn leather grip and a symbol on its hilt—a faint, faded Varkaan insignia, visible only under the flickering light.
As he lifted it, his chest mark pulsed.
The mark glowed—not red, not blue, but white.
> A strange energy rushed into his hand—and at that exact moment, a small jackal, cornered in the room, turned on the others.
It fought them back.
> In the chaos, fire spread from the shattered lantern. A beam collapsed. Arin tried to save the pup—and everything went black.
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PART 5: The Awakening
Now, three days later, Arin sat outside again. Yen rested beside him. It hadn't left his side since.
He named it Yen, after a moon-flecked word in Elrin's carvings—"half-moon," protector from shadows.
Arin's right wrist tingled.
He looked down and saw it—a chain of faintly glowing crystals, wrapped along his wrist like a bracelet of frozen light.
They flickered, then vanished.
He rubbed his eyes. Was he seeing things?
Far away, across mountains and deserts, in a place forgotten by maps, a girl named Mir gasped awake.
On her wrist, the same chain blazed bright.
She felt something awaken.
> "Someone else has seen it."
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PART 6: A Story Before Sleep
Later that night, Elrin sat by the fire, whittling a wooden crow. Arin sat near him, brushing Yen's fur.
"Ever hear of the Sixfold Realms?" Elrin asked.
"One of your stories?" Arin said, half-listening.
Elrin smiled but didn't answer. Instead, he spoke:
> "Long ago, there were six great clans:
The Varkaan – warriors of war.
The Astralis – masters of magic and myth.
The Synthara – inventors, builders, engineers.
The Tideborn – rulers of water and storm.
The Verdantia – healers and whisperers of the land.
And the Elarans – the people. The watchers. The balance."
"They were each strong," Elrin continued. "But together, they were too powerful. So they were broken apart."
"By who?" Arin asked, eyes narrowing.
Elrin paused.
"By something even stronger."
He didn't finish the story that night.
He rarely did.
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PART 7: The Watcher
The next morning, Arin wandered toward the old stone bridge, now broken and swallowed by vines. Yen padded beside him, tail flicking.
He didn't know he was being watched.
In the trees, hidden by shadow, a figure stood. Cloaked. Silent. Holding a strange device glowing with silver light.
> The screen blinked:
Day 1 of 1988
Subject: Arin
Trident Mark: Active
Chain Pulse Detected
Begin: Phase Observation
The watcher didn't speak. Just vanished into the mist.
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PART 8: The Dream of Two Lights
That night, Arin had a dream.
He stood in a dark ocean under a silver sky. Across from him stood another child, shadowed but burning with light. She had eyes like storm clouds and a glowing chain on her wrist.
Between them floated a trident, spinning slowly.
The sea rippled as if remembering something ancient.
A voice echoed in the dark:
> "Six shall rise.
One shall fall.
The mark remembers what the world forgot."
Arin awoke, breathing hard.
The mark on his chest was warm.
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PART 9: Whispergrove Breathes
Life in Whispergrove carried on.
Old Maernis talked to her flower pots.
Thomel shouted at Birra in the bakery again.
Sera delivered milk in silence.
Drel muttered about beasts in the well.
The wind carried smells of smoke and wet leaves.
But something had changed.
A feeling. A vibration in the roots of the trees. A rhythm beneath the soil.
Spring was here.
And so was something else.
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End of chapter 1 - Pilot