(Above is the moodboard I made for this story. Link to the WIP introduction post on my Tumblr is in the external link.)
Welcome to this year's April Camp NaNo story! Hopefully I'll be able to complete this one, unlike the last time I did Camp NaNo... Anyway, here's a little bit of background.
Once upon a time I wrote a story called Cross. Once upon a more recent time I wrote another story called A Girl, a Murder and Twelve Dreadful Children featuring one of that first story's characters. Not long ago I had an idea for yet another story also featuring some of those characters. That plot bunny grew and evolved into this. I've no idea what this is yet, because it's still growing and evolving too. Should be interesting to find out, though.
It's inspired in fairly equal parts by The Lord of the Rings, Mo Dao Zu Shi/The Untamed, Star Wars, and my fondness for fairy tales. Other inspirations include historical/fantasy Cdramas in general, occasional influences from Takarazuka, a little bit of the Kdrama Goblin, and possibly some Charles Dickens. Basically it's most of the tropes I love and none of the ones I hate. You won't find any love triangles here, but you will find dysfunctional families, arranged marriages, dragons, multiple asexual characters, and an astonishing number of zombies.
Some of the writing style, especially in the prologue, is an experiment in writing with a different style than usual. Please let me know if it works or if it's awful!