Okay, deep breath. I owe you guys an apology. Actually, several apologies. Let me line them up.
First, before anything else. I personally hate when I get a notification that a new chapter dropped, click in excited, and find out it's just an author update and not an actual chapter. So I avoided posting this for as long as I could, hoping I'd just push through and finish the chapter instead. Didn't happen. Sorry for the bait.
Sorry. Really sorry. Genuinely sorry. Sorry from the bottom of my procrastinating heart. Sorry to everyone who refreshed the page today expecting Chapter 14. Sorry to everyone who refreshed twice. Triple sorry to whoever refreshed three times, that's on me.
The chapter is not dropping today. I didn't finish editing it, and I'm not going to finish in time either. Here's the situation, in order of how much each one is currently ruining my life.
I'm in the middle of midterms. The kind of midterms that make you stare at a ceiling at 2 AM and question every life choice that led you to this exact moment. I also have a 30 pages seminar paper due in the next week and a half, which sounds like a lot of time until you remember it isn't. And these chapters are long, which means editing them properly takes real time, not the kind of time you can squeeze in between a lecture and a panic attack.
On top of all that, I had my birthday recently. I'm a year older, a year wiser, and exactly zero chapters more productive. I spent the time with family and friends, which was great, but unfortunately none of them volunteered to edit for me. Rude.
So again, sorry. I'll do my best to have the next chapter up by Monday. I'm not promising Monday, I'm promising I'll try for Monday. There's a difference and my degree depends on it.
Huge thanks to everyone still throwing Power Stones my way during this very productive radio silence. I see every one of them and they genuinely help.
Special shoutout to Psycho_Paradox for the birthday wishes, that meant a lot. And thanks to Arthur25 for checking I'm still alive. I am. Mostly. Hope you were worried about me and not just the chapter 😄
More soon. Probably. Hopefully. Stay tuned.