Good morning, everyone!! I HAVEN’T BEEN SLEEPING WELL, AND THE STORY IS COMING ALONG GREAT!!

I’m only kinda lying, I had two or three days of incredible writing (for me), but I’ve also had a couple rough days of just feeling burnt out on everything. It’s mostly over, but there’s still a pretty rough slump I’m in. The lack of sleep has almost nothing to do with my writing, though. But enough about me: how’s the story look?!

Current Chapter: 17 (Last Rites and Curses)

Pages: 328 (via MS Word)

Total Word Count: 113,415 (via AutoCrit)

Ehh, 8,000-ish words over a month? I’d call that pretty good progress. Plus, I not only did a full chapter, I’m a good ways into this next one. For clarity’s sake, Chapter 16 is currently labeled “The Hawk and The Snake” (you’ll find out why eventually). I’m excited that we’re closing in on the final parts of this story, and after only a YEAR AND A HALF OF STEADY WORK!

I’ve recently looked back on my first few return posts from 2024 regarding this story, and I honestly couldn’t see myself committing to this kind of thing eight or nine years ago. Either through sheer force of will or a personal growth I didn’t notice, we’ve gone from an uncertain story barely cresting 37,000 words to a near-climax (heh) reaching over 100,000, and I’m very excited that everyone who’s followed my journey to this point has stuck with me this long. Not to sound “final” or anything, but thank y’all for joining me on my journey as an artist.

On a separate-but-related note, I will be notifying y’all of updated chapters whenever it happens. I have refrained from doing so in the past, but as I get closer to the end of Book 1, I feel the need to clarify some things to make the reveals more… noticeable. I won’t say what I’m changing in the chapters, but I will let you know that they have changed.

That being said…

Chapter #3 has been updated.

I’ll try to do this sparingly, since I should have most things figured out by this point, but I can’t help clarifying the elements I end up creating for the sake of worldbuilding. I’ve been pretty good about it up to this point, so sorry if this seems sudden.

I have been fiddling around with the idea of writing a completely different story from what I’ve ever written before, but I won’t be able to post it anywhere but here if I do commit to it. Just an idea to spread out my free time a little. It may happen, it may not. WE’LL SEE!

Lastly, I’ve been pretty steady in releasing the chapters, but I’m aware that the next few should be coming out soon, since the last release was two months ago, and I’ve finished 3 chapters since then. I’m a little delayed on these next few, but they will be coming soon, I promise. Not like the “Kizumono Review is coming soon” promise, but like they’ll probably be out in the next month or so. By the way, Kizumono coming soon.

With that, I think I’ve talked about all I need to talk about today. Please let me know of any other content you’d like to see – reviews, genres for stories, and music maybe? I might start uploading to my YouTube channel again in the future to expand my audience, but for now, I still plan on doing audiobooks (or at the very least, audio recordings).

See y’all soon!

-Marcosias