Chapter One
The Girl Who Harvested Stars
On the night Elara disappeared, she was harvesting cranberries beneath a sky that had never known weather.
The farm was flawless.
Iridium sprinklers turned in perfect, mathematical arcs, each droplet landing exactly where it should. Rows of ancient fruit bowed heavily on their trellises, jewel-toned and obedient. Junimos flickered at the edges of her vision like shy thoughts, carrying bundles of produce into neatly labeled chests. Even the soil seemed curated—dark, cooperative, incapable of surprise.
Beyond the fields, her farmhouse stood with warm, programmed coziness. Kegs hummed softly in the shed. Inside the cellar, casks breathed through their slow alchemy, deepening starfruit wine into liquid gold. She had calculated the yield down to the day. She knew the value of each bottle before it matured. She knew precisely how many would age into iridium quality by winter.
She had optimized everything.
Max farming.
Max combat.
Max foraging.
Max fishing.
Max friendship, too — every heart filled, every birthday remembered. Even the loneliest villagers smiled when she passed.
She never grew tired.
She never failed.
She never truly feared.
Her boots crunched over the path as she harvested. A clean sound. A satisfying sound. Cranberries popped free in tidy clusters and vanished into her inventory with a cheerful chime.
Pop.
Pop.
Pop.
She smiled.
The rhythm stuttered.
The chime clipped in half.
The air above the field rippled, as though the sky were made of stretched fabric and something pressed hard from the other side.
Elara paused.
The sprinklers continued their immaculate rotation, but the droplets hung in midair a fraction too long before falling.
The screen flickered.
A thin seam appeared across the horizon — not light, not shadow, but absence. A tear in the world, jagged and wrong, like wet parchment splitting under careless hands.
The soil beneath her boots shuddered.
"No," she breathed, though she did not know who she was speaking to.
Her inventory window blinked open on instinct.
Galaxy Sword.
Return Scepter.
Life Elixirs — 37.
Starfruit Wine — 162 (Iridium).
847,322g.
Numbers glowed with reassuring permanence.
The tear widened.
Sound distorted into a low metallic groan. The ancient fruit withered to gray outlines. The Junimos froze mid-step. The sky peeled back like paint scraped from canvas.
And then—
Everything collapsed inward.
—
She woke face-down in mud.
Real mud.
It was thick and cold and invasive, seeping through coarse wool and stiff linen. It smelled of rot and iron and something sharper—smoke. Not the comforting curl of a hearth fire. This smoke clawed at her throat.
Elara coughed and rolled onto her back.
The sky above her was not a fixed blue gradient.
It was a bruised vault of iron clouds, swollen and moving with deliberate malice. Ash drifted down like black snow.
For a moment she could not move.
Her body felt heavier than it ever had. Not exhausted—she did not recognize exhaustion—but burdened. Gravity pressed with unfamiliar insistence.
Somewhere in the distance, a woman screamed.
It was not stylized. It was not a looping audio file. It broke midway into a sob.
Elara pushed herself upright slowly, palms sinking into muck. Her hands trembled—not from low stamina, but from something far more disorienting.
She blinked.
And a translucent shimmer appeared in the corner of her vision.
Inventory.
Her stomach dropped so sharply she nearly retched.
"No," she whispered.
But there it was.
The grid hovered faintly before her eyes, responsive to thought alone.
Galaxy Sword. Its prismatic edge glowed even in this dim light. Return Scepter, cool and ornate.
Life Elixirs.
Starfruit Wine.
847,322g.
The numbers were steady.
Her cheat had followed her.
A horn split the air.
Deep. Resonant. Not ceremonial — commanding.
Elara flinched and scrambled toward the edge of the treeline. The forest ahead was not symmetrical rows of lumber waiting politely to be harvested. It was tangled and raw, branches clawing at the sky.
Beyond it, orange light pulsed.
Flames.
She crept forward, boots slipping in mud, and reached a break in the trees.
The world opened below her into chaos.
A village burned.
Thatched roofs collapsed inward, beams cracking in showers of sparks. Livestock screamed in pens. Men in steel rode through smoke on armored horses, their silhouettes monstrous in the firelight.
They bore banners marked with a crowned stag.
The cloth snapped violently in the wind, dark with soot and blood.
One rider dragged someone behind him.
Another cut down a man who ran with nothing but a pitchfork.
There were no health bars.
No damage numbers.
No cheerful combat music.
Only the wet sound of steel entering flesh.
Elara's breath came shallow and fast.
This was not fantasy.
There were no quest markers hovering helpfully above the dying. No tidy objectives. No promise that the day would reset if she failed.
A child stumbled from a doorway, coughing, face streaked with ash.
An armored rider turned his horse toward her.
Elara's fingers twitched.
The Galaxy Sword slid into her hand with familiar weight.
Its hum felt obscenely clean in this ruin.
She did not know how she understood it, but certainty settled cold in her bones:
She had not fallen into a story.
She had fallen into brutality.
And unlike the farm—
There would be no save file here.