Today is World Goth Day
…Or so Wikipedia tells me. Having never heard of the event before this year, I can only assume that this completely reliable resource is telling me the truth, as always.
But it is natural, I think, for this observance of all observances fly under my proverbial radar, as those dark souls who claim gothhood slink deep into the shadows of night. It is a wonder, in fact, that any of the gothic persuasion would venture to celebrate this day, and so draw undue attention to their wicked machinations.
Perhaps it is all a part of their grand, dark design; I know not. Perhaps we are not meant to know.
And yet, know we shall—for today, I present to you, entombed within this tome of darkness, the introduction of a venerable beacon of black magic, mistress of sinful witchcraft, and vaguely goth-adjacent icon, the long-awaited Kira Watanabe, companion third of this grim tale.
I say “long-awaited”, of course, because I’ve been awaiting her introduction. I don’t actually care how the rest of you feel—and, coincidentally, neither does she.
And maybe that, in truth, is really the most goth thing about all of this.
This update is a little overdue.
I think I said early-mid March? Two and a half months is a bit of a wait—but in my defense, it’s really nothing compared to the two and a half years I took off a while back. The nice thing about setting such a dreadfully low benchmark is that I’ll always have that constant example to point to as “well, at least it’s not that bad”.
Speaking of not that bad, the moving tribulations I mentioned before are pretty much cleared up and settled, I’m in a new place, and the old house is sold—which unfortunately means I can no longer use that as an excuse not to write, but fortunately means I may start releasing content more often. (But no promises.)
Anyway, I guess I should move on from talking about the circumstances of this update and start talking about the circumstances in this update. This covers the beginning of Chapter III, marking a return to the present day, where you, Valerie, and Cortez embark on a trip to restore Andrei’s consciousness with the help of Cortez’s witch associate Kira. In contrast to the pretty dramatic last few chapters, this one is relatively light in tone, and eventually aesthetic (sorry, goths).
This update is ~28,500 words, which brings the total word count to ~322,000. Incidentally, this makes Chapter III-1 the longest subchapter so far (though technically this isn’t the biggest update I’ve pushed, since I’ve bundled subchapters together in the past).
I should note that a not-insignificant portion of this word count is another lore book, but as always, reading it is optional, and arguably more extraneous than the previous ones—the majority of information in it won’t come up in this particular story, and is just there if you’re interested in worldbuilding, and maybe hints toward some potential future projects of mine. As usual, if any information from the book does come up in the main plot, the other characters will explain it to you where needed.
Anyway, I’ll let the rest of the update speak for itself. I hope you like Kira as much as I do! (But if you don’t, that’s okay, because she doesn’t want or need anyone’s approval but her own 
)
Oh yeah, and because I was told I should be plugging things more often: