Where Cai's Story Actually Is

This one is a recap, not a thought. I am writing it because the thing I lose first after a week away is not where the save is — the site tells me that — it is why anybody in it is doing anything.

Everything below is material I have personally been shown by the end of Chapter 3. Nothing here is ahead of my save.

So: the sewer. I went through it slowly, because of course I did, and came out the other side into the part of the story where the game finally stops being a tutorial.

Cai's mother is the goddess. That is not a theory the story is teasing; it has been said. It reframes a good deal of what the early chapters were quietly doing, and it is the single fact I would be most annoyed to have forgotten.

Cai's father has been taken by the temple guards and is facing execution. That is the clock the chapter is running on, and it is why the Heroic Games suddenly matter rather than being background colour.

The Games themselves moved from lore into something Cai can actually chase. I went to the Colosseum and asked about entering. The answer was no — not yet, there is no opening — with a clear implication that when one exists, the way in is proving you deserve it. That is the hook I am on.

Around all of that, the ordinary business of the city carried on: the hair clip Kindness Quest, the trip to the mine, and the first stretch of Free Time that the game seems to actually want me to spend on something.

Chapter title is Partings and Hopes, which is not subtle, and I am choosing to take it as a warning.