I am going to play this WIP not only because of premise, but because of authors last post, which it freaking hilarious.
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Still only a few chapters into my first playthrough, and I’m already hooked. Loving the story.
Does anyone else get the general vibe that the main climax of the story is going to heavily feature the MC learning or noticing 4 things?
I’ve noticed it seems to be a very common occurrence, not that I’m complaining. It does give some sense of foreshadowing though!
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Okay, that was amazing. Interesting story, detailed lore, great characters. And hell, I have a very soft spot for the stories in media that have russian characters with, you know, adequate sound names.
Absolutely looking forward for more.
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So… Camilla is almost certainly Callum right? Like reincarnated or otherwise via magic. Right?
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I…don’t think so? she may possibly be a descendant, or somehow has obtained the artifact that let Callum do his magic, but I do not think Callum has been reincarnated into Camilla 
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Maybe, but the MC wouldn’t have been able to feel or sense it in Callums magic during life. Plus the amulet was taken by some mystery mage, not a descendant of Callum. And even if MC could have a sense of familiarity towards a descendant of Callum, Camilla had a sense of familiarity too, so a descendant seems unlikely.
Either that or Charlotte, I’m pretty sure in my playthrough so far, her fate hasn’t been revealed. She didn’t die in the flashback. Mostly because of my intervention.
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It’s definitely a possibility! However, there are other options, as @Mistyleaf123 suggested, or even as this choice shows:
Familiarity
I am personally leaning towards the “the familiarity comes from the talisman” option.
Maybe, but the MC wouldn’t have been able to feel or sense it in Callums magic during life.
hmmm, I’m not sure what you mean by that?
When Callum used his magic in the Memoriam_i-2, to save himself and the MC from Cartwell/Leydriss, his magic is correlated to the color gray.
"Gray energy courses through Callum's hand, and, with a deep breath, he snaps his fingers."
However, in the prologue, his magic energy is associated with black due to the enhancement of the talisman. This black energy is the one that kills MC and the one which attracts them. Consequently, the attraction for bombs and Camilla is not related to the magic signature of Callum, but of the talisman. I find the following excerpt especially revealing of this assumption:
Also, if you refer to the fact that the MC was a “mundy”, therefore, shouldn’t have been able to sense the Talisman’s vibe, well that’s a rather interesting topic! Because the MC was able to see Callum’s eyes turn black. If every mundy was able to see this phenomenon, to me, that suggests the power of the talisman is ridiculous. Plus, the MC just felt the attraction after he became a spirit.
Does anyone else get the general vibe that the main climax of the story is going to heavily feature the MC learning or noticing 4 things?
Ooooh, that’s really interesting!! gonna have to think about it, to make a bit of speculation, but it’s definitely possible *u*
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I am ungodly amounts of late to the party but I just played the demo and literally made an account just to tell you how good it is!!! Haha, do you have a tumblr or something so I can see more of your writing? Also fuck Callum and stan Valerie
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I couldn’t agree more lmao.
Regarding the other points, I believe the writer is avoiding posting on this treat until she has the update… either that or she or died or fled - as she explained here:
I personally find it somewhat disheartening when authors post nothing but increasingly unreliable progress updates with nothing to show for it, so this will be my last comment in this thread before the next actual story update, regardless of how long it takes. (If you never hear from me again, it either means I’ve died a tragic death, or that I have fled my Spellbound -related responsibilities and likely been forced to change my identity. You are free to interpret such a turn of events however you please.)
So, I’m going to give the info I have according to what she previously said on the discord. (Btw, Spellbound has a discord server, here’s the link to join it: The Corvus Coven)
- Corvus doesn’t have a Tumblr. But she posts sneak peeks about Spellbound and other projects of hers on discord! If you join the server, you could search for “sneak peek” on the search bar to find them!
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A while ago, I took a vow of silence and declared that I wasn’t going to post here until I had something to show for it, update-wise.
This turned out to be…half true. Which is appropriate, because everything I say is half true.
But before I get into that, I want to report on the state of the WIP in general, and maybe give some sort of context for what’s been taking me so damn long, or more specifically, what hasn’t.
Apologies in advance for my verbosity. I know I talk a lot when I post. But this time, I really do have a lot of things to say.
Condensing in case you just want to skip to the relevant parts
So, it’s been a while. Specifically, it’s been about two months since the time I said I was hoping to post the next update.
Which was about three months after I told people I was writing again.
Which was about five months after the last update.
God, it’s been almost a year since this demo actually updated. It really doesn’t feel like it. Nevertheless, every calendar and astrolabe I’ve checked has corroborated this reality, so barring a potential global conspiracy between all timekeepers and clockmakers in the world (always a big concern, to be fair), I must reluctantly accept this to be true. Time, as this very story will attest, is a very strange thing.
The honest-to-god truth is that I don’t really have a great excuse for why it’s taken me so fucking long to get new content out there since my “official return” to writing in January, except that I guess there’s a part of my brain that just kinda stopped working over the past year. It might be related to the pandemic, or possibly the forced hiatus I took near the end of 2020. I’m not sure. Either way, one debilitating way this has manifested is that a lot of the time, I just…don’t write.
It’s not really for the usual reasons. It’s not because I have writer’s block, it’s not because I feel burned out, it’s not because the content I had to write was particularly difficult or tedious, it’s not because I lost interest in the story, it’s not because I was busy with important responsibilities, it’s not because I was depressed (well…not all of the time, at least). Most of the time, there was a part of me that wanted to write. There still is. This is a story that I still feel really strongly about, and that I’m passionate about finishing eventually.
Nevertheless, for long periods of time, it wouldn’t happen. Each day, I would think about writing…and then just not do that. I would do other things instead, and then eventually it would be time to sleep, and then I would wake up and repeat. Ad infinitum.
When I did write, it felt natural, and I would come to the thread and report that I thought I was on track again. This happened in January, and then again in April. And both times, at some point I would just…drift away for a few weeks. Or months. Again, there didn’t feel like there was any particular reason for it. It would just happen, gradually, day by day, until eventually long periods of time had passed and I hadn’t made any real progress.
Truth be told, this is still sort of a problem. It’s something I’m trying to figure out. Please don’t feel the need to comfort me or offer advice, that’s not why I’m telling you this. I just want to be transparent about what’s been going on with me and why you shouldn’t expect a miracle resurgence. Hopefully this will pass, or at least I will find a way to work through it, but until then I cannot make any promises, except that I will always try to do what I can to keep this project from dying.
Thanks for understanding.
With that all being said, I do have something to offer to you. Specifically, a choice (which is, of course, what we are all ultimately here for).
So, Chapter II was originally supposed to be 3 parts, like Chapter I before it. At some point, Chapter II-3 became obviously too long to comfortably fit all the content I had planned for it, and there was a natural break point in the middle, so this became 4 parts. Fair enough. This sort of thing happens to me a lot.
What became difficult for me to reconcile in my head, though, is that I really wanted to come back with a bang, which meant bundling Chapter II-3 (mostly investigation and recon, meeting some of the major players to set up upcoming events) with Chapter II-4 (the “climax” of the chapter, where Actual Things happen), as was the intention back when they were a single subchapter, and simply posting both at the same time so we could finally just finish out this long drawn-out segment of the story once and for all.
I don’t know if this is a dream worth holding onto. A big part of me really does still want to come back strong with a really meaningful sequence of events, to hopefully remind people why they were invested in the first place, rather than slinking back into frame with “just another bit of the story”. Another big part of me wants to just post something again, maybe try to get back in the proverbial groove of things, attempt to get even a modicum of momentum going, because god, it’s been so, so long.
All this to say, Chapter II-3 is…close to presentable. I don’t want to say “done”, because I don’t really know what that means anymore. I have not playtested it at all unless you count routine passes with Quicktest to ensure that no completely gamebreaking bugs should occur. I have no idea if it’s good or not, or if it gels tonally with the previous subchapter that I wrote 10+ months ago, or if the stats are balanced with the expected values from previous parts, or if it will even feel satisfying after such a long wait.
Chapter II-4 would be a stronger, more robust chunk of story. I am more confident in the content I have planned for Chapter II-4. But Chapter II-4 is not ready. I do not know when it will be ready. Knowing me, it could be months. I hope not—I have parts of it written already, so I’d like to think I could get it done in a semi-reasonable timeframe—but a long wait is a real possibility that must be acknowledged.
So I’m gonna leave it up to you. Tell me what you think, because I’ve been stuck with nothing but my own thoughts for way too long now.
Should I post Chapter II-3 ASAP or wait until Chapter II-4 is done and post them together?
- We just want new content—please give us what you have, even if it’s not exactly what you hoped for
- Stick to your original vision and hit us with the full impact of Chapter II’s conclusion, even if it takes a long time to get there
0 voters
Thanks for your consideration, and for sticking with the story for such a long hiatus. Hopefully, I’ll be able to pay that back soon.
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I’ll wait a little longer
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Just to be clear, it could be a lot longer, not a little. If you’re still okay with that, cool, but I want to be transparent that the choice here is getting some content that I already have mostly done, which I think is fit for human consumption, at the cost of it (possibly) coming across as underwhelming, vs. waiting a potentially very long time for me to (possibly) strengthen the narrative beat, at the cost of me just sitting on the content I have available now while I finish the rest.
I’m not trying to convince you one way or the other, for the record, I just want to say this for clarity’s sake, since early votes seem to be heavily skewed and I’m not 100% sure if I communicated the weight of the scenario correctly.
Chapter II-3 is like an appetizer—it was originally designed to be served with a main course (Chapter II-4) immediately following it, and in a perfect world, that’s how it would work. That doesn’t mean I don’t think it can be enjoyed on its own, though. I like to believe that it stands on its own, in a number of ways. It’s just that it would be ideal for the whole second half of the chapter to come all at once, if you’re able to put aside the potential wait time.
Honestly, I’m a little surprised that such a large proportion of people so far seem cool with that, given the admittedly ambiguous metrics involved. But of course, I’ll go with whatever you collectively decide would be most satisfying as an audience.
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I’m happy with anything. Good to hear that you’re still alive and writing. Take care and don’t push yourself too hard.
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I’m just happy you’re alive.
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Alright, even though it’s only been a day, I think it’s pretty safe to call it at this point. I guess I’ll be finishing up Chapter II-4, hopefully within a reasonable timeframe (but no promises).
My one regret with this decision is that I had some decent 4th of July themed jokes I could have told if I’d had a reason to make an update post today. But I guess there’s always next year! (Or the many years after that, during which I’m sure I’ll still be writing this story.)
Thanks for giving your input on the matter. I don’t plan on going completely dark again, necessarily, but don’t expect progress updates from me for the foreseeable future.
So, I’ll see you when I see you. Don’t hold your breath, but maybe keep an eye out. An update will come at some point.
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Today is August 27th.
It’s officially been a year since this WIP updated. That’s a pretty long time!
I mean, not compared to the 813 years the Spellbound MC spent in eternal torment and despair.
But for what was supposed to be an ongoing creative project? That’s pretty long.
I’ve offered plenty of explanations and excuses in my past few posts, so I’m not gonna rehash all of that, but what I will say is that despite everything, I’ve made a pretty decent amount of headway since the last time I posted. In addition to a fair chunk of Chapter II-4, parts of Chapter II-3 have been revised and expanded to the point that I’d no longer feel wary about sharing it.
It’s not as much as I would have liked, or as much as I feel like you all deserve after such a long wait, but it’s something—which is, by certain definitions, better than nothing. (Trust me, I’ve done the calculations, and that actually checks out.)
Anyway, all this to say that I am really gonna push for an update in September. I’m not gonna make promises I don’t know I can keep (because I think that already happened once, like…three or four months ago), but I think I can get it done.
And if not, you can rest easy knowing that you still will have a shorter wait than your MC—I still have a few years before that clock runs out, I think.
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It’s okay, take your time, we can wait 813 years and more 
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Aw mate, you don’t owe anyone here anything. It’s nice to see you’re still plugging at it though.
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So excited for the upcoming update! I figured you would post today and has been waiting for it since 5 am in the morning while also cramming stuff for school
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I am really glad you decided to write this because I am hooked
It’s straight into my top 2 favourite WIPs
Will be waiting patiently for the update whenever it comes 
take your time!
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