Author's Note (Read after reading the whole volume)

God dag, alle sammen.

I am Reprobate, the writer of Bleak Midwinter.

I think every writer has a moment where something just... hits them. A character, a story, a scene that refuses to leave their head.

I started writing BMW – Horizon's Edge because I couldn't stop thinking about Arthur from The Beginning After The End. I loved his composure. His stoicism. The burden he carried under all that power. The high pedestal he was put on. That love gave birth to my own Arthur — but as BMW grew, something else took hold of me.

I found Lord of the Mysteries. And everything changed.

I've never loved a story as religiously, as spiritually, as that one. It made me realize that stories don't just entertain, they whisper to the reader themselves. They ask questions you're not supposed to have answers to. That's what I want BMW to become — a myth wrapped in flesh, clothed in horror, laced with tragedy, politics, and theology.

Volume 1 isn't fast. I won't lie to you. It's a slow burn — more like a spark waiting for dry wood. And I've had a crippling anxiety over it, questioning myself a thousand times while writing it: Is this even interesting? Will anyone care enough to stick around for Volume 2, when the real story starts? The volume where I actually incorporate the fanatical love I have for LoTM?

That voice never really shuts up, but I keep going anyway.

The hardest part wasn't the plot. It was building a power system that actually made sense (it's even harder for me because it is my first EVER attempt at writing an original concept)

I wanted Arcane Arts to feel different — not just "this person can shoot fire" or "summon ice dragons." I wanted them to be conceptual. Tied to things like electromagnetism, motion, perception, decay. The problem is, that stuff is complicated — and while I was a physics major in college, I deviated into chartered accountancy later. Which basically means I know just enough science to know about stuff, but not enough to make writing it easy.

So, every time I tried to ground these powers in something believable, I had to research like crazy. Then I had to filter it through how a civilization — one that doesn't use our modern terms — would understand it.

Like, ancient Olvasens obviously didn't know what the electromagnetic spectrum was, but they could still manipulate lightning and metal. So how do you explain that?

How do you make Finn's three-axis control mean something to a reader, but also show how it would've evolved in interpretation over generations?

Honestly, it was a nightmare. But I'm proud of it.

Volume 2 is where everything starts to shift — Eden and Earth finally react to each other. Things get way more political. Secrets come out. The gods don't stay quiet. It's no longer about legacy alone — it becomes a story about control, belief, and what power does when it has to choose between order and truth.

If you've made it this far — thank you.

Sincerely, writing is lonely sometimes. You're building a world brick by brick and hoping someone out there wants to walk its streets. The fact that you're reading this means something. You've seen the cracks in the surface. You've stepped into the shimmer.

And the shimmer will not forget you.

The best (and worst) parts are still ahead.

— [Reprobate]