Big Recap

Key Characters

• Sarah
• Apology Thirteen / Olette
• Tod
• Virgil
• Apology Twelve
• Niko
• Apology Six / Sixy / Steve
• Gameus
• Adus
• Reditus Prisha
• Daiyu / The Mad Queen / Queen Asceria
• Buru
• Jim’Zachery
• Catriona
• Harriet

Implicit Skills

• Essence Sight
• Empower
• Crimson Weapon
• Predator Instincts
• Mount

Skills

• Crimson Shards
• Charm
• Echolocation
• Sangarma
• Levis

Item Skills

• Phantom Strike
• Flash Step

Chapter 1

Shot in a library

Sarah escapes a frustrating day by indulging in a raspberry-glazed doughnut at her favorite library spot. She loves reading about fantasy adventures and romance. Alas, a very rude somebody is making a disturbance in the foyer, so she packs up and confronts—to her surprise—a robber, who shoots her dead. :(

Chapter 2

“I sorry you ugly.” —Apology Thirteen

After being shot, Sarah finds herself miraculously alive and… naked in a magical realm called Olindale. She meets Apology Thirteen—a tiny green fairy with blue wings—who explains that she is dead and must participate in a series of games. Sarah joins other confused souls in a competition created by Gameus, the god of games. The first of three challenges starts when she steps through a doorway set in a giant tree and enters a new world.

Chapter 3

Sarah murders cute slimes

This first challenge is one of survival. Sarah must gather resources and kill—murder—cute, defenseless little monsters during the day to help her survive the night. She’s totally against the idea until one such cute, defenseless little slime shoots her with an icicle. She fights to survive and wins but then accidentally kills her fairy guide. Guilt-ridden, she finds the resolve to do what is necessary to win this contest.

Chapter 4

These aren’t the magic mushrooms you’re looking for

Sarah reunites with Tod, who reveals others are playing the Hunger Games, killing off the competition. As they flee, they’re ambushed by poisonous mushrooms. Sarah—a terrible athlete—manages to clobber the fungi with Tod's help. They meet Virgil, who joins their ragtag team. Amid some awkward bonding, Sarah confesses she accidentally killed her fairy, prompting shocked laughter. They learn fairies can come back to life, and resolve to survive this insane game together.

Chapter 5

Cherry Booms just want to blow their load

Sarah, the acting leader, kills monsters for precious loot. In their last encounter, Tod accidentally draws too many Cherry Booms. They run from an advancing end zone—a deadly moving barrier—and make it to a cliff. During the escape, Sarah and Virgil end up hanging from a collapsing rope bridge with monstrous spiders attacking. To save himself, Virgil uses Sarah as bait and throws her into the abyss.

Chapter 6

How you die matters

What’s worse than falling to your death? Getting eaten by giant spider monsters first! Sarah fights off the monsters, intent on dying pain free and manages to drive her skull into the bottom of the chasm.

Chapter 7

Face pancake

As it turns out, face-first was the worst idea. In the chaos of her fall, by shear luck, she managed to steal Virgil’s ring that negates fall damage. And so, not dying happens to be quite painful. Like all pain in this world, it passes after a few seconds. What does not pass quickly is the hurt and anger at being betrayed. She vows to get revenge.

Seemingly summoned by such a vow, she finds herself lured to the realm of divinities. There, she meets Sangviteus, the self-conscious Bat divinity, who offers to make her a badass in exchange for being his first follower. Sarah agrees and accepts his challenge to climb a staircase made of bones while reciting a list of his favorite swear words and visualizing her new, fearless self.

Chapter 8

I’m a vampire… does that mean I sparkle?

Sarah wakes on a stone slab, absolutely starving. She’s inside a gazebo, walled in by well-trimmed hedges. It’s here that she meets Reditus Prisha—a priest of Light—who freaks out at seeing heaven’s first vampire.

Overwhelmed by an uncontrollable hunger, Sarah attacks her fairy—again; poor fairy—and tries to eat her. Reditus Prisha gives up her essence to help Sarah stabilize her vampiric urges. A horn sounds, signaling the start of the next contest.

Chapter 9

Adus reveals Gameus’s porn collection

Death by tardiness is not how Sarah wishes to die. She thanks Reditus Prisha, snatches her wingless fairy, and rejoins the others for the second challenge. It is here that Gameus explains the terms. They are to enter the Mad Queen’s realm and escape. Simple as that. And now that they all have a temporary divinity, death is not final. After a horrific display of why they shouldn’t fear death, Gameus asks who wants to enter the Mad Queen’s realm first.

Chapter 10

Release your vampiric inhibitions

To enter the Mad Queen’s realm, Sarah must touch a glass orb that contains the queen’s black heart. Every instinct screams at her not to touch it, but there is no choice. It is this or death. Sarah touches the orb and is pulled into a void of black that slowly forms into a room. She fights two Daemerreses—hoglike monsters covered in orange quills—and dies.

Chapter 11

The best armor is bikini armor

Sarah wakes after death on a stone slab among many, naked and confused. As a vampire, she learns that she has heightened senses and emotions, rage being among the most prominent. Reditus Prisha helps Sarah test if she can still eat food, which she can, and then guides her to a mirror where she’s shocked to find her transformed, idealized body in bikini armor, a gift from Sangviteus.

Chapter 12

SSS: Super Smart Snail

Outside the cemetery, which is more like a temple, Sarah explores the Mad Queen’s city. It’s very much not what she was expecting: lots of stores, from butter-polished bread to purple pillows with sleep enchantments. They walk to the armor shop, and on their way, Sarah learns that Apology Thirteen can’t read. The fairy uses a Super Smart Snail to tell her everything. Against fairy law, Sarah vows to teach Apology Thirteen how to read.

Chapter 13

You’re going to need some ID

Sarah and Reditus Prisha enter the armor shop and meet a cheerful Buru, who offers them candied eyeballs. Yum! Who doesn’t like candied eyeballs? It is here that Sarah learns about Teddy, the Mad Queen’s beast, who guards the exit. Sarah also learns about two of her abilities: Empower and Predator Instincts.

Buru explains how armor works, that by having it, any damage taken, even if it’s not to the armor itself, the armor will absorb it. Even so, Sarah trades in her bikini for armor that’s less revealing, much to Apology Thirteen’s dismay.

Chapter 14

Cursed Pumpkin armor

Apology Thirteen looks absolutely adorable in her new Cursed Pumpkin armor. Alas, she refuses to wear the armor unless they are in a challenge room. Sarah’s new armor is Sumilian Hide. This is where Reditus Prisha must leave them. Sarah is dirt poor, and though she wants to eat a cow and sleep a fortnight, she must go to work. The challenge rooms are at the center of the Mad Queen’s realm, where a massive, sky-touching purple crystal hovers above a black pool of corruption. The effects of the crystal bring out all her negative emotions to an overwhelming degree.

She meets a mysterious woman named Daiyu, who teaches Sarah how to manage the corruption and stay focused. Daiyu offers Sarah a questionable opportunity at a brothel to earn ID, which she firmly declines.

Chapter 15

“I waaant my cupcaaake!”

Author note: that’s a reference to a Borderlands mob. ;)

Sarah is eager to earn ID for food and a place to sleep. But first, she must read over her skills. She chooses Crimson Shards as her first skill, which gives her a point of Dexterity. With that out of the way, and after an awkward exchange with a group of Valley girls who wanted to buy Apology Thirteen, Sarah is very ready (but really not) to enter the challenge rooms.

Chapter 16

Extra protein

Sarah summons her first mob from the octahedron crystal: black skeletons. For fucks sake. She figures that she can’t take essence from the undead but learns that all things have essence, even black bones. After the battle, she’s awarded a rotten apple with +1 worms. Extra protein…

Chapter 17

How to feed a vampire

On a bench in the Mad Queen’s garden, Sarah is rudely awakened by a guard. Her inner demon or stomach thinks he’ll do well for breakfast, and she attacks him, getting a mouthful of armor instead of essence. He flees, leaving his baton, and Apology Thirteen is annoyed that Sarah can’t control her impulses. Later, while climbing the stairs to civilization, Sarah blames the lack of coffee.

Sarah beelines to the closest cafe and meets Catriona, an Irish woman who takes pity on the starving vampire and gifts her with a free breakfast. All is well until Virgil enters.

Chapter 18

The Care Bears’ Book of ABCs

(That’s actually a real book.)

Sarah confronts Virgil, slapping him and revealing his betrayal to his new friends. Sensing she’s disrupting Catriona’s business, she leaves and seeks refuge in a general store, "Things 4 You," which also sells books. Inside, she meets Harriet, the store owner, who mistakes her for someone involved with her husband. After clearing the misunderstanding, Harriet offers Sarah a place to freshen up.

Sarah learns about taint, which blackens people’s fingers and arms and delays their Return from death. ID, or Identity, is used to wash the taint away. Harriet buys the loot Sarah and Apology Thirteen collected last night, and Sarah decides to purchase a hat and a children’s book to teach Apology Thirteen how to read.

Chapter 19

Charmed

Equipped with a very special frog hat—that occasionally greets passersby with a friendly “ribbit”—Sarah returns to the challenge room gates. A salesman tries to guilt her into buying potions, and eventually gives her a potion in exchange for her name. She then meets Niko, a young Asian woman who is struggling to deal with the crystal’s negative influence.

Apology Thirteen insists that Sarah choose her level 3 skill, and she chooses Charm, which can be used on neutral enemies. Niko—and her fairy, Apology Six—begs to join Sarah. She is not fond of the idea, given her history, but she relents, and the two enter a challenge room.

Chapter 20

Making golems hump walls

Niko... doesn’t have a weapon. This entire time, she survived by running away. So, it’s up to Sarah to defeat two Young Stone Elementals by herself. She uses her new Charm skill to give one fanciful ideas about the stone wall, and she attacks the other. After a fierce battle, where Niko focuses on using her Thief skills to steal loot, they win and are awarded with loot: a heavy mallet, which smashes Apology Six when Apology Thirteen drops it. Oops.

Instead of traveling deeper into the challenge rooms, they leave to find lines in front of each of the gates. Sarah doesn’t feel her partnership with Niko is fair, so proposes making the young woman a “blood bag.”

Chapter 21

A hogtied vampire gift

Drawing essence from the same target within twenty hours doesn’t grant any essence experience, but it does provide essence. Between challenge room runs, Sarah uses Niko to fill up on essence, giving them an edge in the forthcoming fights. Later that evening, the two find Catriona’s inn—the Clauran—and are treated to dinner and a free room, where they find a hogtied patron for Sarah to eat or… something.

Sarah discovers how potent Vampiric Bliss is. It’s a trait that’s given to those she feeds on, which blocks their ability to heal for 10 minutes. In exchange, it provides a sense of acceptance and love. The warmest of hugs.

Chapter 22

Time relativity in heaven

Sometime last night, the realm experienced a micro day, a day that lasted a mere hour. This is important because any day after a micro day is a short day, which is half as long as a normal day. All of this makes perfect sense… to someone. On every short day, adventurers gather in the Mad Queen’s gardens for a Short Day Swap Meet, trading items without the markup.

After a morning of shopping, selling loot, are repairing armor, Sarah and Niko tackle the challenge rooms again. But when given the option to repeat the first room for junk-tier loot or go deeper, they decide to take the risk.

Chapter 23

What’s in the black box?

The new challenge room is a lush, trap-filled jungle with an emerald summoning crystal hovering above the center of a wide pond. Sarah summons the mobs and battles two giant Feenicoppers—mechanical flamingos with deadly acid attacks. Niko tries to steal a giant egg, and would have succeeded if Sixy wasn’t showing off. Sarah uses Charm to force one of the birds to attack the other.

After a chaotic fight, they finally defeat the birds. Two chests appear: one golden and one black with a timer and a mysterious symbol. Despite their injuries and low essence, they choose the black chest, hoping for a significant reward.

Chapter 24

<Hug, hug, hug!>

Sarah and Niko appear near the ceiling in the third room. They crash into—and slide down—a massive pile of bones, lit in eerie green torchlight. It’s a boss fight against a bone demon, and the walls have long black spider legs that only wish to give loving hugs to anyone who steps too close. Niko gets trapped, and the bone demon kills her. Sarah also gets trapped but uses Charm on the wall to get free, draining all of her essence. Her inner demon takes over, and she ruthlessly tears into the boss, then empowers her strength to throw it across the room to where it dies.

Chapter 25

Legendary loot!

Sarah earns 242 ID and two legendary items: a scythe (skill: Phantom Strike) and a ring (skill: Flash Step). She’s tempted to keep both, but she’d never forgive herself. Apology Thirteen discusses the fairy’s supposed name—Olette—and why their names start with Apology anyway. The fairies are supposed to apologize to help the contestants feel better, which actually has the opposite effect. “I sorry you ugly!”

They leave the challenge room only to find chaos. Everyone is running.

Chapter 26

The Weenie Express & Panty Thief

An adventurer is climbing into the pool of black corruption, intent on challenging the Mad Queen’s beast. Unfortunately, whenever this happens, the center of the queen’s realm falls away to make room for a giant projection of the challenger’s attempt.

The problem? Sarah just so happens to be at the center. A man named Rudy helps her escape. The Weenie Express zips past, pelting everyone with naked hotdogs, very expensive, naked hotdogs. Sarah catches one and refuses to let go… They manage to escape, and Sarah finds Niko, who is fighting with Sixy because she accidentally cut him during the boss fight.

Apparently, Sixy is a panty hoarder. Sarah forces him to give Niko’s panties back—then the sky turns dark.

Chapter 27

Duram Boar hamburgers

The massive purple crystal—the World Sliver—shatters into particles. They form a projection of Lucas, the challenger, as he attempts to reach the exit. Everyone gathers to watch him and break out picnics and BBQs. No one expects him to win, but they celebrate his courage.

Buru and his partner, Jim’Zachery, invite Sarah and Niko to their spot for Durum Boar hamburgers. Niko happily accepts the legendary ring, which grants the skill Flash Step. She uses it to effectively crash into trees.

The challenger fights Teddy. Teddy always appears in a different form, and this time, its in the form of a giant white gorilla. Lucas loses.

Sarah hears something and turns to see a crow watching her. She approaches, stepping into the shadows that envelop her.

Chapter 28

Eek! Where be sexy armor!? —Sangviteus

Sarah is transported into a mysterious, dark realm where she meets the Mad Queen. The queen has glowing purple eyes beneath a white porcelain mask. Her black hair extends the full length of her incorporeal body. And she has two pairs of hands as white as her mask, each clasped together, floating in front of her. The queen explains her irritation with Gameus and why she can’t just let the contestants go. Everything has a price, a give and take. But she provides a clue to read the Terms of Service.

The queen fades, and Sarah meets with Sangviteus, who is distraught that she sold his armor. They talk, and he admits that Sarah is alpha. “Alpha vampire?” — “No no, alpha version.” He admits that Vampiric Bliss is too strong and her inner demon is like a honey badger. Honey badger don’t give a shit.

Chapter 29

RTFM… RTTOS?

Sarah wakes in the cemetery with her arm restored, holding the Mad Queen’s Terms of Service. Niko and the fairies arrive, and Reditus Prisha lets them use her room to split up the task of reading the Terms of Service for clues. After some false flags, Sarah finds it. With four teams, if they enter the four challenger-room gates at the same time, they will all join the same instance. The only problem is ID. They need lots of it. But Sarah has an idea for that, too.

Chapter 30

A trip to the brothel

There’s only one way to make lots of money fast: sell her services… that is, Vampiric Bliss. Sarah travels to Daiyu’s brothel, seeking a business arrangement. Misunderstandings are had, and Sarah finds herself naked in a pool, beyond a little self-conscious. Daiyu has Sarah demonstrate Vampiric Bliss on one of her girls, then proposes a deal that Sarah cannot decline.

Chapter 31

A runway model for goths

Sarah is the main attraction. She’s dressed exotically in a red dress that features underboob. A band of black makeup crosses her eyes and nose with tiny rubies. It’s all done to present her to a room of potential customers. All she has to do is not fuck it up. The doors open, and channeling her inner demon, she glides forward and puts on a show as heaven’s only vampire.

An hour later, two levels higher, and 2,400 ID richer, Sarah leaves the brothel. The streets are now mostly vacant. For her two levels, she chooses Echolocation and Sangarma. Further, she unlocked her mount and decides on a horse she calls Nightmare. So original.

Chapter 32

DWRE - Demon With Red Eyes

We see from Byron’s perspective that he’s given another chance to be a Queen’s Guard. He’s out with Adanna, a BBW—Big Beautiful Woman—intent on finding the demon with red eyes he first spotted in the gardens. Things go well until he hears a horse. It’s the demon, and it’s back to finish what it started. He pulls Adanna into a run, but before they get far, the demon attacks. She dives off her horse and knocks Byron onto his back. There, ready to consume his soul, she demands one thing.

“I want… your baton.” To which he replies, “I-Is that innuendo?”

The next day, Sarah turns in her baton quest to Harriet and forces Sixy to sell his panty collection. While talking to Harriet, a stinging warmth surges through Sarah’s hand. It’s the curse for the challenge, revealing that 9 people have escaped.

Chapter 33

Meet your allies!

Equipped with new armor, a great strategy, and two dozen doughnuts, Sarah heads to the center of the Mad Queen’s realm to meet the other ten recruits. But when she gets there, they are short… until the nasal-sounding voice of Virgil speaks up. Reditus Prisha recruited him and his friends. Sarah can hardly contain her rage, and as she explains what he had done in the first challenge, he makes up excuses and turns the others against Sarah, taking over the group.

Sarah is about to leave, but Niko pleads for her to stay, secretly promising to help kill Virgil in the next contest. Sarah stays.

The group triggers the exploit and completes the first room of the hardest dungeon.

Chapter 34

The final boss

Despite being under-leveled, the twelve adventurers manage to clear all but the last challenge rooms. The shit-stain Virgil had taken the lead to distribute loot, which he never included Sarah’s group in. The tension between them grows. But Niko keeps the calm. She’s cool like that. In the final room, they encounter a formidable boss, Maelfacio, and its minions. The boss is massive, looming over the broken floor where gaps threaten to swallow anyone who steps in the wrong spot.

The battle is intense. Sarah’s party narrowly avoids death, trying to keep the minions aggroed. When the boss is defeated, an exit door appears. They did it! Sarah and Niko run to escape the Mad Queen’s realm only to discover Virgil’s true intention…

Chapter 35

Betrayal

Virgil laid a trap of interwoven strands of light, disguised until Sarah and Niko stepped into it. They crash to the ground, and Virgil laughs at how easy it has been to play her from the start. His voice is entirely different. The whole thing has been an act. He also admits to killing Tod, calling him a sissy boy lawyer. Virgil steps through the exit before it vanishes.

Sarah and Niko wake up in the cemetery. Sarah is outraged. Niko is pensive. She says she wants to come back as a butterfly with beautiful purple wings. She removes her ring and tells Sarah that she still has a chance. But they only have three hours… Niko scratches a mana line through her curse and turns into a billion blue lights before fading.

Sixy relays a message to Sarah, saying only the coolest people escape through Teddy. He points to the Niko’s ring that has Flash Step.

Sarah has to try. She rushes out into the rain and rides to Buru’s shop, but is turned away. There is an arrest warrant for her. But she just needs armor and thinks of Ken, Catriona’s dragon-slaying husband. When she arrives, she finds the guards there. Catriona betrays Sarah, and the guards capture her and sentence her to the Pit of Despair.

Chapter 36

The Pit of Despair

All hope is lost. Sarah is bound, lying on her back, rain tapping around her. She sobs, angry and sad, wanting to have never existed in this heaven. Voices pull her out of her downward spiral. They notice that she has ID. But other things notice as well. Tar-like creatures, hiding a skeleton beneath the muck, climb over her and start to draw her ID out. It’s too much. She gives in to her rage and attacks the monsters, draining them of essence until they’re all reduced to ash.

She meets Henry, the leader of those in the pit, and they devise a strategy to escape using her legendary scythe’s skill: Phantom Strike. This allows them to cut wedges into the pit’s walls to climb out. Sarah escapes the pit first and confronts the guards.

Chapter 37

Escape at the pit!

Sarah summons her horse and draws the guards’ attention away from the pit so the others can escape. Even if she fails, she will have done something good. The guards chase her to the center of the Mad Queen’s realm, and she dives into the black pool of corruption, forcing everyone to flee as the ground starts to fall away. Inside, she only has 7 minutes to get to the exit.

She mentally equips her ring to absorb fall damage and jumps off the side toward the arena far below. Before hitting the ground, something slams into her. Teddy has taken the form of a giant snake. She fights it long enough to get close to the exit, then Flash Steps to it, only to find an invisible wall blocking her path. Teddy wraps around her, and the timer on her curse hits zero.

Chapter 38

The Queen’s deal

Time slows. The Mad Queen appears and offers Sarah a deal. If she binds herself to the queen, she can leave to get her revenge. But she must return.

For revenge? Sarah accepts the terms.

Chapter 39

The last contest

Due to the time dilation between realms, Sarah arrives just in time for the last contest. It’s a massive circular arena made of different biomes. There is an audience of gods on many floating platforms. They’ve been given power over the arena to deliver blessings or curses to the contestants. Virgil is alarmed by her arrival, and Olette is excited. All contestants are teleported to the edges of the arena and instructed to get to the center.

When Sarah appears, her legs are encased in stone. She breaks the stone by striking weak points, then is nearly trampled by a stampeding herd of rhino-like monsters that can shoot flames from their horns. She Charms the monster that she managed to climb and rides it out of the biome to sand dunes before switching to her horse.

She finds Liam—one of her team members from the last contest—in the dunes and saves him. The cost of a ride, she tells him, is half his health. She needs the essence. He agrees since it’s his best option of survival. They race into a winter biome, but the gods curse them, and the ground cracks open to reveal water. She directs her mount across fragments of ice, using Empowered senses to determine where to go.

A worm-like monster, as wide as a house, bursts through the surface. It’s clear that they are sound-sensitive. Sarah and Liam separate, and she rides toward the beach on the other side. But before she can get there the ice breaks, and she plummets deep into the cold water.

Chapter 40

Revenge

Sarah uses her Phantom Strike and Flash Step skills to avoid getting eaten. The monster returns, and Olette slaps her Cursed Pumpkin armor to produce its haunting laugh and draw the attention of the monster. It works, but she dies, leaving Sarah alone in the final stretch.

Her Echolocation skill locates Virgil, giving her all the motivation she needs to keep going. She summons her mount and races toward the last biome, a magma biome at the center of the arena. Bright pink bird-like monsters pursue, but the gods bless her and make the monsters pop like glitter bombs.

She catches up to Virgil, who looks concerned and tries to tell her they don’t need to do this. But Sarah’s here for revenge. She Flash Steps to close the distance and attacks, finding him to be a fake copy. And once again, she’s in his trap. He laughs and mocks her, then walks away, leaving her to her death by the approaching arena wall of orange.

Sarah senses one last untapped option: her horse. She summons it into the trap, which forces the trap to expand and break. She escapes and catches Virgil, the real Virgil, taking his essence. The piece of shit is Favored, giving her more essence per point of health than typical. She throws him off the cliffside, but he clings to her and begs for her to pull him up. He tells her the queen made him do it. And he didn’t kill Tod.

Sarah hates this, hates holding someone’s life in her hands. The heroes in her books would grow over the adventure and save him. But she’s not the hero. She takes his ring off—the one he says he knew she had when he discarded her into the ravine—and shoves it against his chest.

Virgil falls to his death.

Chapter 41

Guilt

Full of guilt and disgust about who she has become, Sarah doesn’t believe she deserves to live. She steps toward the cliff, intent on jumping. Apology Twelve—Virgil’s fairy—stops her. “Win for Thirteenie.” Sarah triggers Levis and races to the top. Gameus congratulates the remaining contestants and teleports them away to give them soul devices.

Olette returns and learns about Sarah’s deal with the queen. The fairy uses her wish—to be human—to save Sarah, but it requires Gameus to tear her soul. She agrees on the condition that Olette is taught how to read.

Epilogue I

She’s going to be okay

Gameus tears a chunk of Sarah’s soul away, kicking and screaming, and then the world turns black. Sarah feels confined. She Empowers her strength and pushes, exploding the stone statue that encased her and freaking out a woman. Reditus Prisha takes Sarah away to Ceratree City’s grand library. The priest of Light gives Sarah a library card and a doughnut in the shape of a fairy. Scratched into the glaze is the name: Niko. “She’s going to be okay.”

Epilogue II

Purple wings!

After sacrificing herself, Niko appears in the biggest of big trees. In her periphery, she catches sight of something and spins to see it. Whatever it is, it’s on her back! She freaks out and falls out of the tree, rescued by a human-sized Sixy. He says his real name is Steve. She discovers that she has wings. Beautiful purple wings. They meet with Olette and Gameus, and he gives Niko a choice to return to the Cycle or remain a fairy and teach the others how to read. She happily accepts.

Epilogue III - Part 1

Will it work?

Adus is in Gameus’s home, fretting over whether her curse will work. The Mad Queen’s realm is a heaven, leaching off of Olindale and stealing their soulbounds. Gameus and Adus devised a plan to force the heaven to fall, which is strictly against the rules. They created the contest as a cover to throw off the inquisitors. Now, all they need to do is activate the curse…

Epilogue III - Part 2

And so it begins…

Daiyu, Asceria, the Mad Queen, glides up to her black throne and sits. She strokes the head of one of her crows, drawing out its memories. Her kingdom is covered in hidden pink symbols designed to lure out the corruption. The weight of it will upset the balance unless cleared. She smiles. Everything is going according to plan.

The story continues in Arachnomancer.