Project README

This folder holds canonical story reference for a fantasy-origin story now continuing as an Earth-side slice-of-life fantasy romance. Use this README for orientation; use synopsis.md and timeline.md for latest story state and chapter coverage.

Current Earth Arc and Fantasy-Side Local Point

The chronologically latest Earth-side scene is Friday evening, 28 April 2028, at the end of Chapter 440. Presentation remains deliberately non-linear across realities: Chapter 433 contains the Earth-side Monday 24 April neutral meeting while beginning from the fantasy-side morning after the Waykeeper; Chapters 434-435 continue that fantasy-side day; Chapter 436 covers Earth Tuesday-Wednesday 25-26 April; Chapter 437 resumes on the next fantasy-side morning; Chapter 438 is Earth Thursday 27 April; Chapter 439 continues the fantasy-side local sequence; and Chapter 440 is Earth Friday 28 April. No stable conversion among Earth, fantasy-side and Ian-local time is established.

Thomas is twenty-five, Isha twenty-six, and they remain married in flat 202 under the repaired post-Ch.322 relationship baseline. Isha has completed Coach 1 and is now receiving ordinary beginner-coaching assignments inside her existing three-shift / twenty-four-hour week. Her first post-course block and later Friday floor work demonstrate one correction at a time, customer-defined success and coach/customer fit without creating management duties, a fourth day or an immediate qualification ladder. Thomas's bounded cross-department working-group practice continues: source offices own meanings and decisions, and unresolved material may remain with them.

Kanno remains the couple's closest mutual friend and an independent external-layer participant. The first four-woman neutral meeting among Isha, Kanno, Aelira and Lethira occurs on Monday 24 April in an Ian-made construct based on Golden Acre Park. Thomas deliberately does not attend. The meeting preserves separate confidences rather than making Kanno a reporting route. On Thursday 27 April, after fresh occasion-specific agreement, Aelira directly consents to a bounded portrait session. Six Aelira photographs return in Kanno's private archive; Thomas/Isha may see only one specified frame; Aelira makes one photograph of Kanno and joins Kanno in one private timer frame. On Friday 28 April Kanno makes the requested matte physical print of Aelira's chosen formal portrait. No further meeting is scheduled merely because the print exists.

Ian and Lethira are in love, together, exclusive lovers and equal joint owners of the small western Merrowford freeholding. The deed, payment, witnessed transfer and registry entry complete in Chapter 437. They spend their first night there using deliberately temporary furnishings and begin choosing ordinary household goods and food rather than replacing the property with an optimised result. The roof, chimney, mortar, sill, drainage filing and possible bathhouse remain ordinary work. Lethira later takes and passes the optional senior field assessment on a C-rank greyback contract; her Merrowford B-rank restriction is removed. Ian remains her unranked aide and receives no independent Guild rank.

The divine strand advances through two Lifegiver encounters. In Chapters 434-435, Lethira leads and Aelira supports a difficult discussion of healing, refusal and unchecked authority. The Lifegiver initially attempts uninvited diagnostic contact, then turns her own diagnostic ability inward and identifies accumulated grief, fear of helplessness, compulsive intervention, distorted responsibility, control used to relieve fear, identity fused with function and a double standard around refusal. She says I am not well, takes the rest of the day off and leaves a patch of bare earth unfilled. Ian later returns alone in Chapter 439. The Lifegiver is practising restraint and self-examination but is not cured or rewritten; the aeons-old personality and corruption remain. Their relationship is only tentatively friend-/sibling-shaped, developing a day at a time.

The Waykeeper remains on the two-way retrospective road; no return, duration or result is established. The Worldsmith and Sun Father remain unvisited. Hero-System correspondence remains 20 outgoing / 19 incoming, Cleanse remains Lv.6, and the next expected opening remains around 18 May.

all-chapters.md is current through Chapter 440. The separate Chapter 433-440 files remain useful for exact recent wording and take precedence over chat history or summaries. Cross-reality chronology must not be converted by ratio.

Active Read Order and Roles

Unsuffixed reference filenames describe the active Earth sequel unless their declared scope says otherwise. For ordinary Chapter 397+ drafting, read:

writing_style.md - slice-of-life prose, dialogue, romance, language, fourth-wall restraint and modern-Earth tone.
characters.md - current Thomas, Isha, Kanno and Lethira, their relationships, retained fantasy history and other major characters.
earth.md - Earth locations, institutions, home/artifact continuity and future local-GIS grounding.
synopsis.md - whole-story overview, current state and chapter summaries.
timeline.md - fantasy chronology followed by current Earth and later local cross-reality chronology.
spells.md - current Earth magic and correspondence mechanics; use the Spells Reference section of historic_fantasy.md for exact old mechanics.
knowledge_boundaries.md - current identities, explanations, language concealment, correspondence disclosure, Ian evidence/claims and witness scope.
minor_characters.md - Earth-side and current post-Ch.214 recurring side cast unless promoted into characters.md.
canvas.md - whole-series premise, thematic direction, sequel engine and author-level external-narrative rules.
Recent direct prose relevant to the planned scene. all-chapters.md is current through Ch.440; use the separate Chapter 433-440 files when exact recent wording or the post-review corrected chapter form matters.

Three conditional/evolving references are currently available. Load ian.md only when Ian's realistic physical baseline, projected embodiment, exertion, sleep, eating or clothing matters; it complements rather than replaces characters.md. Load merrowford.md while the current town/road arc remains active. Both are temporary continuity aids rather than durable ownership files: migrate durable outcomes into the owners above and do not let either override direct prose.

pantheon.md is the evolving author-level reference for the five builder-gods, religious masks, divine influence, spirits and possible elemental origins. Load it when developing or using deity/religion cosmology. Its agreed sections govern that developing model; candidate correspondences and unresolved questions remain explicitly non-canonical until settled. It does not broaden any character's knowledge or override direct prose and established historical witness scope.

all-chapters.md, when present, is an aggregate of direct chapter prose for targeted retrieval. Do not load it wholesale for routine drafting. Use the current durable references and relevant recent prose first; when an exact historical fact, wording or scene needs verification, search or retrieve only the relevant material from all-chapters.md. Direct chapter prose remains highest evidence.

No repository earth_arc.md or marriage_arc.md source is available. The name marriage_arc.md survives in canon only as the in-story historical planning artefact printed for Thomas by Ian. ian.md and merrowford.md are temporary/conditional packets; pantheon.md is the evolving author-level divine owner and must not be reconstructed into wider arc plans or treated as higher priority than durable canon.

As material becomes established, keep using the durable owner:

locations, institutions and useful environmental continuity -> earth.md;
major-character and relationship state -> characters.md;
side cast -> minor_characters.md;
active magic/correspondence mechanics -> spells.md;
identity, cover, disclosure and external-anomaly witness scope -> knowledge_boundaries.md;
builder-gods, religious masks, divine influence, spirits and proposed elemental origins -> pantheon.md;
chapter outcomes -> synopsis.md and timeline.md;
prose behaviour -> writing_style.md;
premise/thematic or author-level external-narrative rules -> canvas.md.

Planning files cannot override direct prose or durable canon.

Closed Fantasy-World References

historic_fantasy.md preserves canonical historical detail through Chapter 214. It is not deprecated as evidence, but it is legacy authoring context rather than the default Earth-sequel loadout. Its independently owned sections cover:

World Reference - fantasy geography, institutions, peoples, magic framework and ancient systems;
Map Notes - fantasy map reasoning, route continuity and GIS projection;
Ecology - fantasy creatures, monsters, demons, elementals and flora;
Spells Reference - exact historical spell levels, behaviour, limits, combinations and final uses;
Knowledge Boundaries - historical public cover, witness scope and restricted facts;
Minor Characters - fantasy-world side and recurring cast.

map_fantasy.in.md and world_fantasy.in.md remain the editable GIS templates for the generated Map Notes and World Reference sections. HTML generation deliberately preserves the former six split fantasy page names for stable navigation and links; there is no aggregate historic_fantasy.html.

Do not load these files for routine Earth chapters. Consult only the relevant one when a dream, memory, flashback, grief beat, comparison or historical question depends on exact fantasy-world detail. Their contents do not imply current Earth availability or knowledge.

Completed fantasy arc workspaces are obsolete once durable facts have been migrated. long-range-seal-ending-arc-plan.md has been deleted and must not be recreated or used as current planning. Any other completed fantasy arc file should likewise be treated as deprecated, not as an active source for the Earth sequel.

Fantasy-World Closure and Open Questions

The Hero Summoning failed: Thomas was recognised; the event was an error; Thomas was not. Green Road reached the Broken Court, defeated the Greater Demon/First Hand and removed the Demon Lord from the fantasy world (Ch.210-214). Thomas sacrificed Pocket Island as a one-way destination, restored Kelda, reached Isha and disappeared with her. Kelda carried the bounded account and eventually returned to the Green Road homes outside Larchmeet.

Durable fantasy-world questions remain unresolved unless later prose answers them:

why the Hero System targeted Thomas, who built it and what recognised individual / continuity exception mean;
whether summoning or preservation machinery continues after the Demon Lord's removal;
what remains active in Ironvein, the High Elf continuity anchor, Crown Deep and the wider passage network;
what dark fire was and why it answered both damaged and protective intent;
whether elementals stand down and what the Magnog's rise still signifies;
how western survivors, Black Lock, erased dark-elf care/work records and Hero-seeking institutions rewrite the ending.

Generated Fantasy Files and GIS

earth.md is currently hand-maintained. It contains the canonical home-building massing, floor/unit schedule and common-space register needed for Earth-side GIS/CAD work, including 202 as Thomas and Isha's current large corner flat and 304 as their vacated former flat. A future Earth GIS may receive its own explicitly named source and projection workflow, but none exists yet; until then, treat earth.md as the authoritative source and preserve its canon/inference labels rather than treating the prose as generated.

map_fantasy.in.md is the hand-edited fantasy map template. gis/world-map.gpkg supplies generated spatial tables and diagrams; the Map Notes section of historic_fantasy.md is the committed reading projection. Edit the template or GeoPackage rather than that generated section, then run make gis-sync-map. make gis-map-check fails when the projection is stale.

world_fantasy.in.md is the hand-edited fantasy world template. Inline {{gis:layer:id:field}} tokens draw selected physical facts from the GeoPackage exports while preserving hand-authored narrative canon. The World Reference section of historic_fantasy.md is the committed reading projection. Regenerate it with make gis-sync-world; make gis-world-check rejects stale or unresolved output.

map-data.md, when generated, is non-canonical GIS context. Load it only for fantasy geography, route, drainage or local-layout work; prose canon and qualifications in the Map Notes section of historic_fantasy.md override provisional geometry and derived measurements.

Standing Rules

Chapters must begin on the first line with the prefix ## Chapter . A normal hyphen, en dash or em dash may separate the chapter number and title. Keep one chapter heading only, and preserve a final newline so shell tools such as cat compose files safely.
Chapters 50-58, 110, and 177 do not exist and never existed. Do not call them skipped chapters or infer off-page events from those numbers.
Thomas used to be called David; ensure the name David does not resurface.
For fantasy-world authoring databases and date arithmetic, use the proleptic Gregorian calendar with 8 February 4000 as the opening of Chapter 1. This is a technical epoch, not an in-world calendar or a date characters should state in prose.
Dates derived from that epoch remain author assumptions unless chapter prose establishes them; preserve uncertainty markers such as estimated dates or ranges.
Direct chapter prose remains highest evidence. Later direct prose supersedes older reference wording and earlier contradictory prose where the project explicitly resolves the conflict. After canonising future material, update every owning reference affected by it.
historic_fantasy.md preserves historical witness state through Chapter 214 and is not advanced by Earth-side inference. Later Earth prose may refine facts Thomas had never fully disclosed in the fantasy chapters—such as Daniel Mercer's name, age and original-Earth location—without rewriting the historical witness state. Returned pages establish later fantasy-world receipt and disclosure only through their exact wording; active references must not broaden that circle to crowns, temples, Guilds, mountain authorities or anyone else not named by the correspondence.
Earth references may record Chapter 215 survival and retained memories, but must not imply that historical fantasy spells, ranks, bodies, institutions or physical rules remain active on Earth.
Planning files cannot override direct prose or durable owning references. Keep planned, inferred, cover-story and unresolved material explicitly qualified.
Current relationship prose must begin from the post-Ch.322 repaired baseline. Ch.310-313 remains causal history, not unresolved current behaviour.
The Ch.324 physical assessment supersedes the incompatible isolated Ch.300 140 kg bench line; use 65 kg × 4 as Isha's current canonical bench result.
Kanno Emi's birthday is 17 April. Her exact age and birth year remain unestablished; conflicting later date-check reminders are non-canonical.
Isha's Graves/System correction is complete and medically monitored. Do not reopen active disease or active external repair without new prose; broader System influence remains an open question.
Ch.357 begins the bounded external-narrative layer, but Chapters 371-440 supersede the old absolute “no physical return / rare senderless contact only” rule. Ian can create neutral door/room constructs, physically visit the fantasy world, accompany a consenting Kanno into real Berlin in the protagonists' Earth, create/transport objects and digital media, and participate in an invitation-based four-person chat. None of this gives him standing permission to appear in 202, approach uninformed people, or intervene in somebody's body, memories, belongings or meaningful choices. Each contact must inherit the specific consent/boundaries established in direct prose.
The external mechanism and Hero System remain distinct unless direct evidence proves otherwise. Ian's Ch.390 claim that he instructed his machine to add PROTECTION ENABLED and then modified future transfer side effects creates a plausible causal link at the intervention level, not proof that the systems are ontologically the same thing.
Fourth-wall/group-chat contact is now an established relationship among Ian, Thomas, Isha and Kanno, but ordinary chapters must not become continuous author chat. Ian may read machine-supplied material beyond the chat; the core cast knows that privacy cannot be guaranteed. The durable agency rule is stronger than the old silence rule: if the substance of an option is a meaningful character decision, Ian is to leave the answer to that character and choose only to learn/hear what they decide.
Lethira-specific non-alteration rule: the Ch.421 displayed machine response is absolute. Ian and the machine must refuse direct, indirect, retroactive, disguised or delegated attempts to alter Lethira's memory, mind, personality, identity, thoughts, desires, preferences, values, emotional disposition, agency or past self, or to engineer equivalent changes by circumstances selected for that purpose. Her later memories—including recognition of her B-rank history—must arise through ordinary memory, evidence and interaction.
Cross-reality time is not synchronised. Never convert Ian-time, Earth-time and fantasy-world time by ratio. Explicit intervals such as the three fantasy-side days in Ch.373 are local facts only.
Aelira photograph continuity: Ch.392 supersedes Ch.374 and establishes that Aelira was unphotographed at that point. Ch.438 later supplies her direct, bounded consent and is now controlling: six approved Aelira photographs return with Kanno; one specified frame may be shown to Thomas/Isha; the remaining images are private; Aelira also makes one photograph of Kanno and joins one private timer frame. Consent to that session is not standing consent for future photography or sharing.
No general Earth-arc workspace currently exists. ian.md and merrowford.md are temporary/conditional packets for the current strand; references to the in-story marriage_arc.md printout remain historical evidence, not an instruction to locate or recreate a repository planning file.
A send/receive Hero-System opening is a simultaneous swap of two already-prepared pages. Never let the incoming page answer the outgoing page from that same opening.
Intentional-door access is occasion-specific. A prior neutral-room route does not stay enabled for later meetings; Ian must ask/agree/enable each new use.
Before prose that crosses knowledge boundaries, audit how each character learned the fact. Direct experience, a Hero-System page, a deliberate summary, a private Ian conversation and a machine-generated reconstruction are different sources and are not interchangeable.
In interactive drafting Ian is user-controlled. Never supply his dialogue, decisions, physical actions, messages or reality changes unless the user has done so. If another character asks Ian a direct question, stop for the user's response. Before consolidating an interactive chapter, make a turn-by-turn inclusion pass: preserve every user-authored Ian line/action once, use the latest corrected version of a rewritten segment, and remove superseded duplicates.

Cross-world meeting and transport boundary

Ian may create occasion-specific neutral constructs in which people from Earth and the fantasy world meet, provided every participant independently agrees and retains the agreed return. This does not authorise direct or indirect transport from Earth into the fantasy world or from the fantasy world into Earth. A neutral construct, planet or intermediate destination may not be used to launder such a transfer. The current four-woman gathering is a proposed neutral meeting, not a visit to either lived world.