Hi. I hope the new year is being good to you. I want to thank you for your patience and understanding so far.

  Some good progress has been made on the rewrite, but it isn’t finished yet. There has turned out to be more work involved than I initially assumed. I’ve added new scenes, tightened elements of causation and character motivation, tweaked various parts of the magic system and setting, and clarified several plot elements that weren’t as apparent in the previous version.

  These changes, however, have had secondary effects. Some existing reasons, mechanics, and transitions no longer work cleanly, and I’m still in the process of resolving those structural issues. This has been especially challenging given the size of the draft (nearly 350k words), and I underestimated how disruptive those cascade effects would be.

  The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  I am very sorry for the delay. I do have clear, actionable goals for where the rewrite needs to end up, but it’s taking longer to lock everything into a cohesive shape than I expected. Before giving a new release date, I’m going to first take a bit more time to finish straightening things out properly. That's likely to take several more weeks. I would rather get the draft into a fully coherent state before putting a timeline in front of you, but by the end of February, I'll be back with an update and a clearer picture of what remains.

  Thank you again for your patience and for sticking with the project while I make sure the rewrite is worth the wait.

  TL;DR:

  The rewrite is making solid progress, but the scope turned out to be larger than expected. Changes to scenes, character motivation, and mechanics caused structural knock-on issues that still need resolving. I’m taking more time to sort that out before giving a new release date. I'll be back with an update by the end of February. Thank you for your patience.