Sep 04, 2026
Small fun fact for any linguistics fans out there: Ghrian-Nuadh is Scottish Gaelic for "New Sun." Solaria is a name taken from the romantic language family but the original intent for fire mages was to have a culture based highland Scots.
Heavy spoilers for the chapter so if you're down here for some reason before reading it, don't read any further: the sun not being visible or even known of to anyone in Umbria is something that I've been hinting at throughout. All references to day and night reference the moon, and the word "sun" is only used a couple of times through the entire story, entirely within Kasai's dialogue, since she as a Solarian has seen the sun.
The story has just about exceeded 80,000 words but in my document is just under. Does anyone know if this is because of a difference in counting method around hyphens and stuff? And does it mean I'll be disqualified if I don't cut down slightly? I even had a short 300 word epilogue but I'll obviously have to hold off on that