You know, it's funny that I complete Rise two full days early and yet I leave the fucking afterword of all things to the last minute. Oh well. Okay, so here's where we go from here. I've mentioned more than a few times that this is just the first part of a longer story and I hope the unresolved plot threads not only make that all the clearer, but also entice you back for more. My intention is to do as many as thirteen parts just to resolve Tom's story alone. That said, there will be something of a potential stopping point at the end of part three. The way I have things structured as of right now, the first three parts will be a slow introduction to the larger mythology of my series, and then the next ten parts will dive into the various stories that make up Tom's adventure. As for the people wondering about Legend of Korra, now perhaps you see why I've been so evasive about that. Thirteen planned parts for Tom, then I have to do the generation between Aang and Korra (oh, boy do I have plans for that one if I get that far), and they I can finally address the Legend of Korra era. Some people have suggested timeskipping Tom forward into the LoK era, but I have a number of problems with that I needn't get into here. Besides, the way I set up my own in-universe cosmology basically prevents that from happening. But all of that is getting ahead of myself a little bit.

In the immediate future, I'm not going to be uploading anything for a while. I kind of want to take a bit of a break, but I'll still write at my leisure and build up a backlog again. Once I have most if not all of another chunk of Dragon Knight done, I'll start posting it probably on a weekly schedule every Friday. There are two things are the second part, of course, but also the long awaited second draft of Rise. It's sort of funny looking back on some of my more angry A/Ns. I don't rescind a word of any of them, but I must admit, having a version of this story where I don't have to be reminded of them will be nice. Because I'm going to be doing a lot of things (a retcon here or there, whole new chapters, adding some things I forgot) I'm going to be posting the second draft as its own separate story and leaving this one for posterity's sake. Obviously, the second draft will fix things like spelling mistakes and whatnot. I recall one silly mistake I made back in the day was to spell Pressure Barrier as "Pressure Burrier". I don't know why that one sticks out in my mind. Maybe it's because it's one of the few mistakes I made that some of my reviewers pointed out. Also, many of the chapters will be combine. Most (but not all) of the two parters will be made into single chapters as they should have been all along. My time crunch did bad things to the pacing of my story (Alternate Gundam has the same problem actually), but I don't regret doing it this way. I'd have probably quit around chapter 6 had I not cracked the whip on myself.

On another note, I want to thank the people who have shown support for this story and praised it so highly. Frankly, I think the praise is undue and I'm way more inclined to accept praise if it's attached to some criticism, but it's very heartening to hear people speaking of my little passion project so highly.

So much has changed in my life since I started this story. Frankly, this story has changed a lot too. Really looking forward to part four. But I digress, it's been a ride and it's the greatest feeling to reach the final(ish) destination. For me, I've always looked forward to the end of long running serialized stories. That's when you get to look back on them, analyze them, interpret them. So I hope you see this story finally coming to a close as an exciting and happy thing too. And besides, there's a lot more to come.

I hope to see you next time in The Dragon Knight: Aspect Fire!