I find myself standing on the top of a cliff, frozen, staring into the vast horizon before me.

It's a digital horizon, actually, but you know that. I've got no fear because it's not like I'm gonna fall and die, or anything of the sort. I sigh deeply but with satisfaction. The epilogue was the end of this story, and to be honest, I regret admitting it's over. Thus, the digital cliff before me.

You, my wonderful, dear readers, have followed me so far. I hope you have enjoyed reading this story. You have been kind enough to bear with me until the end despite my mistakes, my typos, my ramblings, my insomnia, my issues. Damn, the list is long!

I never had much faith in this story, to be honest. My two main aims have always been: having fun writing and depicting a fictional universe with ethical dilemmas which echo into the real world. Is this novel pure entertainment? Maybe. I intended to create a trigger for debate, not just a novel, though.

I'm not sure whether I'll create a sequel. For the time being, I'll devote my time to editing this story because it still needs some polishing.

Publishing this thing for real? I don't know yet. Honestly, the real world is full of piranhas, and I'm just a goldfish, very much like Daphne.

To celebrate the completion of the book, I'm gonna give you some fun facts.

- The original protagonist was Valentina, Daphne's grandmother, and one of my sources of inspiration for her is –I'm so ashamed to share this, OMG– the main character in Coyote Ugly.

- I've spent years Kono/K inside my head (ever since I was an eleven-year-old). I was planning the outline of the story one day when suddenly they knocked on the inside of my brain and demanded to be featured in it. Weird. It felt like I had no control of my own fucking brain.

- Apollo is based on Dr Sebastian Caine, from Hollow Man.

- Rost is based on Rost, Nora outcast and former Death-Seeker, from Horizon: Zero Dawn.

- The tree at the end of the book is an old concept I designed for a drawing competition when I was in high school: the Tree of Metamorphosis. Its roots clutched all evil, wrong-doing, weapons, and negative concepts in the world; while its crown supported the precious, coveted fruits of peace and good. The tree was meant to eat from all that is wrong in the world, digest or transform it in its trunk, and then provide the fruits of that effort, which is all that is good in this world. Deeper meaning: we, humans, are that tree. Each and every single one of us. And we need to acknowledge the evil in us and make an effort to seek a way to transform that into something good.
Rehabilitation and change are possible.
I won the contest. The prize was to paint it on my high school's wall. Despite my good intentions and winning the competition, the original drawing was CENSORED. All evil was deleted from the design so that only positive concepts (like solidarity, generosity, peace, etc.) could be the only sources of all that is good.
Conclusion: they fucking killed my tree. And I hated it. This fictional tree is my comeback (more than simply revenge – I don't believe in revenge).

Thanks a lot to all of you for reading this story and commenting on it. I couldn't have done this without you, my dear sugar cubes! 😉

XOXO

MS