To put it briefly, my laptop had rebooting issues and I had to restore everything to factory settings, permanently deleting all the written lore and planning stored locally on my hard drive. I have no idea why I stored everything else on the cloud and external hard drives with the exception of my story. Unexpectedly, I feel a weight off my shoulders, so maybe it's a sign I let this project go. I thank the few readers who chose to stick to the story even between long chapter releases.

For this story, I had no end in mind, though I had a general direction in which I wanted to story to go. It's also my first time writing fiction, and therefore everything including the characters, the style, and the themes were experimental. Despite that, every sentence and word was as intentional as it could be. It was an exercise to express something as clearly as possible, without intention to appeal to a particular audience but myself.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

The next chapter was going to be Notemi's POV, then Laizen's, and things would've sped up from there. The style and pacing of the story also seemed a bit too slow for me the more I wrote, so I spent most of my time reconciling whether I should continue or drop it altogether. Seems like I ran out of juice to write this particular story.

Anyway, I learned plenty about writing on the fly and when to plan. Whether I will start another story or not is something I cannot foresee. Off I go~