Hey, people! To cut to the chase, this is exactly what the title says it is—a notice to tell you that I'm not going to be continuing A Seven-Year Dream. Sometime in the next couple weeks I'll be posting a synopsis of sorts of how the rest of the plot would have unfolded, so look forward to that if you can't stand being left hanging, but unfortunately this is otherwise where it ends. 

For those interested, I'll briefly explain why.

The idea for A Seven-Year Dream began because I’d been reading so many other stories with the “protagonist returns to the past and uses their knowledge/power to change the future” premise and thought it would be interesting to take a look at how such a story would play out if the protagonist possessed no special abilities, incredible talents, etc. with which to personally affect change. What if they genuinely couldn't achieve anything on their own, and had no choice but to reveal the truth and rely on others? How would they convince anyone of the seemingly-impossible fact that they've gone back in time? How would they work their way up from convincing one friend that they're not crazy to gaining the trust of societal leaders and influencing entire populations? What information should they share with the public? At what time? And what should they keep hidden to avoid widespread panic? With these sorts of questions at its core, the narrative was originally intended to focus almost entirely on the big picture so that the plot could progress quickly without getting bogged down in the details... but obviously things didn't exactly go according to plan.

The first chapter is more or less what I wanted it to be—a basic introduction to the main character and his immediate environment, with plenty of small hints towards questions that the story would answer later down the line—and I think the introduction to Lirelle in chapter two was a fun scene, but past that? Well, I got carried away developing ideas for Silt's character, relationships, and past, Lirelle's objectives, and how the mystery of why Silt alone kept his memories of the future would tie into the overarching plot, and by the time I realized I'd lost track of what I wanted to focus on I'd already gotten myself invested in a far more complex narrative than planned. Still, I wanted to tell the story I'd come up with through to the end, so I kept going... but at this point I have to admit that I'm honestly not interested enough to commit to such a large-scale project, so I'm just gonna wrap it up quickly and move on to something else.

Many thanks to those who have been following along with the story! Not exactly a satisfying ending, I know, but I still learned a lot from the experience and I appreciate the support that helped me stick with it this far—I'll (hopefully) see you soon with that aforementioned synopsis.

- Ion