Chapter One — The Ones Who Were Above
“Elyndra was a world built on the promise that every voice mattered.”
Everyone was sent to Elyndra with a mission—to prove whether they were worthy of paradise or not.
But somewhere along the way, people forgot the promise they had made to the Almighty.
They became consumed by worldly desires—the desire to be praised, to be admired, to stand above everyone else, and to lead those beneath them.
Slowly, that desire became the reason for their destruction.
Everywhere, everyone wanted to be praised. Nobody wanted to listen. Nobody wanted to stand beneath another.
A war began—not between nations, but among people themselves.
They forgot that they were human and began behaving like demons.
Cruelty grew until even the bonds of family meant nothing. Brothers turned against brothers. Children stopped trusting parents. Friends became rivals.
The only voice that mattered was the voice inside each person's soul whispering:
“Be superior.”
And those who managed to rise above everyone else became the leaders.
They made the decisions.
They lived in comfort.
And those beneath them—the ordinary citizens of Elyndra—were left struggling simply to survive.
Perhaps paradise had never been lost.
Perhaps humanity had simply forgotten how to deserve it.
For years, the people of Elyndra believed this was simply the way the world worked.
There were those who ruled.
There were those who obeyed.
And there were those who struggled quietly between the two.
The cities were divided into three levels.
The higher you rose, the closer you came to Aurelis—the Golden District, a name meaning golden or light-filled city.
It was where the leaders and the most influential citizens lived.
Their streets were clean.
Their homes were enormous.
Their children studied in the finest schools.
They had everything they could possibly desire.
Below Aurelis were the ordinary districts.
Crowded streets.
Long queues.
Empty promises.
This level was known as Elvaria, meaning a land of hope.
Here, everyone had a desire to live better.
Everyone wanted to rise.
And everyone worked—not only for themselves, but for those living in Aurelis.
Yet every morning, the people of Elvaria woke up and went to work.
They worked because they had families to feed.
They worked because they had dreams to protect.
They worked because they had nowhere else to go.
And slowly, they had been taught that suffering was simply the price of being ordinary.
The government called it order.
The people called it life.
Everyone ran in the race.
Everyone wanted to prove themselves.
Because they knew one thing—
The farther you remained from Aurelis, the harder life became.
And beneath Elvaria was the third and final level.
Veyra.
A land of vision and change.
Ironically, it was the place where people struggled the most just to exist.
Their homes were small.
Their streets were forgotten.
Their voices rarely travelled beyond their own neighbourhoods.
The people above them hardly bothered to look down.
Everyone was too busy protecting what they already had.
Too busy chasing what they wanted.
Too busy trying to climb higher.
And somewhere along the way, they had forgotten something their ancestors once understood:
A society cannot rise when the people at the bottom are being crushed beneath it.
In Elyndra, everyone wanted to reach the light.
But nobody wanted to ask—
Who was being left in the darkness?
