This was terrific! I loved the visuals--both the sprites and that wonderful UI frame--and the music fit perfectly. The slow build of the interactions between the two leads was wonderfully done, and the cultural details about the dark elves were fascinating. I can't wait to read the later chapters!
For the later chapters--since you won't be in jam-time crunch--I'd recommend having a native English-speaker proofread your dialog. With everything else being so fantastic, the errors became more jarring. Not game-breaking, by any means, though. :) Edit: I want to simply delete the second paragraph of my comment, because in looking back it feels kind of rude, but I can't really do that because what if you already saw it and...well, my brain will spiral downward on that notion endlessly, so...I'm just putting it in strikethrough. And also apologizing that my suggestion reads like a criticism--and worse, a criticism for something I could never do in a million years. (Despite my occasional delusions to the contrary, I know myself well enough to know that I will never master a second language to the point of being able to write in it. Hopefully I'll get to the level of being able to read one, but...) I'm sorry; I'm very bad at communicating with others, even in text form. (And I'm downright useless at speaking to people...)