After the Rise came three years of amity. Three years characterized by rebuilding and healing and recovery. Three years full of hard-fought unity across Human World, its myriad governments working as one to forge a fresh future for humanity. Three years of novel governance in Demon World, the newly crowned queen bringing together Gandara and Tourin and Alaric as never before.

Through it all, a tiny shrine tucked along the spine of a mountain range served as a focal point. It began as a halfway home, a place for apparitions crushed beneath the Fall to rediscover themselves—to heal themselves. But as time wore on, it became more than that.

It became the home of the Union.

As he had as a teen, Yusuke Urameshi again served at the behest of Spirit World, and as before, his team rallied at his side—Kazuma Kuwabara, Yoko Kurama, Hiei Jaganshi. Together, they proved humans and demons need not remain divided as they always had. Together, they invoked the Fall's second coming.

But this time, when the barrier between worlds disappeared, no storm clouds of war gathered on the horizon. Rather, the Fall was orchestrated not with machinery and subterfuge, but by Spirit World itself, and parties from all three worlds presided over the proceedings.

Koenma and his Spirit Defense Force. Demon World's queen and the lords who served her. A vast sprawl of Human World's leaders—presidents and prime ministers, kings and generals.

And the former spirit detectives, too. The fighters who had brought the worlds back from the brink of ruin. The stubborn, ever-resilient men who became ambassadors between their kinds, between humans and demons, between half-breeds and blended souls.

And last of all, a pair of siblings. A girl whose hands gleamed with iron, silver whorls shimmering across her fingers, metallic lines twining up her forearms, and a boy with a mop of incorrigible curls and dancing hazel eyes.

And so, three years after the Rise, the barrier came down for the final time. No crush of apparitions flooding through the in-between followed. Nor any panicked armament by human armies or the Spirit Defense Force.

There was only the Union—the bringing together of humans and demons forevermore.

There was only peace.

AN: And that, my friends, is the end. Thank you so much for reading! It was an absolute blast to share this story with you! I can't say thank you enough to everyone who has reviewed. Every last one of those email notifications made my day. Truly!

In a few of those reviews, some of you have mentioned how excited you are for whatever I post next, and well… That's sort of complicated, so I figured I'd address it now. I do have a KuramaOC story jangling around in my brain (the first two chapters of which I actually drafted back in December), but I can't promise I'll be posting soon (or even at all).

See, Once We've Fallen was sort of a perfect storm. It came to me one night when my friend and I were chatting about fanfic, and suddenly Kalanie and her whole story dropped into my head. It happened right when I needed it most, right when I was at the bottom of a massive anxiety spiral.

This story was a labor of love in a way no story ever has been for me. It reminded me of all the reasons I love writing (at a time when the publishing industry was giving me a whole lot of reasons not to), and every day that I sat down to draft Kalanie's journey was more wonderful and joyful than the last. I'm not sure I'll ever feel that way when writing again, but I'm so glad I got to experience it with Once We've Fallen.

I'm so thankful that I remembered YYH and these amazing, incredible characters we all love, but at the same time, I have to focus on my original works again. They've been rather cruelly ignored over the last months while I devoted myself to this. So for now, I won't be writing any more fanfic (or at least, not a pace sufficient enough to start posting, certainly not at a two-chapter-a-week clip). By all means, feel free to keep me on your alerts if a KuramaOC fic interests you, but know that I'm not promising it'll appear.

I hope that's okay!

And thank you again for reading Once We've Fallen. Writing this story was some of the most fun I've ever had, and I'm so glad I got to share it with you all!