Hello there, I hope everyone’s doing well.
My friends and many that have been following my journey even before I launched this website in mid-2017 know that over the past years I’ve been working towards writing a my very own fiction universe, which I’ve been referring to as The Vaifen Saga, or as “Project Isthal” within my own personal file backups.
I started building this from zero almost a decade ago, slowly coming up with character names (hardest part), settings, location, and lore during the worst years of my life: The mid-2015 collapse of socialism in Venezuela.
I worked on an off on writing the first entry of this saga, which I ultimately titled Sword of Vaifen, and finished an initial, very rough draft in late 2018, with the intention of publishing it sometime in 2019 once I had managed to leave Venezuela.
Now, that was easier said than done, considering all that happened. Be that as it may, I kept improving upon it here and there while stranded over there, adding more to the story and setting as time went on.
I took a pause between 2020 and 2021 to work on something different that sadly, did not materialize. The remnants of that I posted on this website as Record of a Venezuelan Pariah.
Then, after all that and other personal failures left me demoralized, I spent much of 2022 working towards obtaining Italian citizenship, and 2023 trying to get out of the country while dealing with some serious family stuff.
I arrived in Italy with my brother on January 2024, and after we finally sorted some things out and found a place to stay, I started working on reviewing Sword’s draft and adding more to it, something I finished doing on the last days of 2024.
The first half of 2025 saw me trying to get feedback on the novel for the first time, but a lot of people outright ignored me, or became too busy or entangled with urgent matters. I finally got some feedback halfway through 2025, and while reception on the plot was great, an editor told me that, long story short, it was simply too lengthy to be published (over 192k words).
Someone suggested that I could take those 192k words and split Sword into three different titles, but I personally did not like this idea because Sword is already the first part of a planned trilogy.
After some sulking and soul searching, I decided to rewrite the whole thing, and that, my friend, is what I was doing between August 10, 2025, and February 21, 2025.
Behold, Sword of Vaifen 2.0.
This new version is 107,788 words long, or 43.95% shorter than the original, and I’m talking about unedited manuscript numbers here.
The new and finally final (for real this time) version of the draft has the same story, main characters, settings, and ending, but I believe it is vastly superior, as I was way more inexperienced when I wrote the first iteration.
It also hits the messages of fighting to protect others and their smiles and Bastiel Isthal’s journey towards becoming a hero much more. Additionally, and even though it is shorter, the rest of the main cast is more fleshed out, has more time to shine.
It also has over twice the number of chapters. Here’s the chapter list from the original version:
And here’s a comparison with the new 2.0 version:
Again, same story, just better structured and paced. If you’re interested in a full breakdown of what ended up being what and how shorter the 2.0 versions of the chapters are in comparison to the original, here you go:
There were some sacrifices, though. I had to cut some world-building, exposition dumps, and a couple side characters. Most importantly, the story is now entirely told from the perspective of Bastiel Isthal, no more sudden jumps into the thoughts of other characters, another piece of advice I was given. There are only three exceptions to this, three non-Bastiel centric chapters that survived the cuts — with their due trimming, of course.
Most of the major changes are present in the introductory chapters, which were the earliest parts of this story that I wrote back in 2016-2017. Here is where the rewrites were the most significant, as the story now begins much differently, but it was necessary to keep things in line with the new faster tempo of the plot. Other characters are introduced much earlier, and even if I cut a lot of things, I was also able to weave new stuff that not just adds to the story, but it helped fill pacing gaps.
As I explained in a recent announcement, I’ve been doing some under the hood revamps to this website, and that includes Vaifen Saga related stuff as well.
As of right now, I have finished updating the general outline of this whole project. If you wanna know more about my plans for this whole passion project of mine, please check it out here at your earliest convenience.
As for Sword’s website, I’ll be bringing its contents up to date over the next few days. The basic premise is the same, just some lore entries that aren’t 100% accurate anymore but it’s nothing major.
Current Status of Things
Alright, after I finished Sword 2.0’s draft, I took a week off to wind down and deal with some irl stuff. Days later, I started reaching out to people for feedback on this new version. I started first with the small group of friends that did in fact finish the original, longer version; then I reached out to others that, while they did not finish it, gave me some valuable information. I still got a few more to reach out to, depending on their current availability.
If you’re willing to read the unedited draft for feedback, please let me know via email, twitter or discord, whichever works best for you.
Similarly, if you’re an author and are reading these lines, I’d very much greatly appreciate any input, information, or insight that you’re willing to share with me.
Once I get some feedback, I’ll start moving towards reaching out to people to get the draft edited, don’t forget that English isn’t my native language, and now my brain’s kinda fried from me jamming Italian into the mix.
Remaining Obstacles Ahead
I still plan to self-publish, that has always been the main goal ever since I started writing it, and I don’t see why that should still not be the goal.
That said, I live in a small town in northern Italy, and by small, I really mean small. I barely speak Italian still, so I am in no position to fulfil a crowdfunding campaign on my own. I don’t have the logistics nor the contacts to do any of that here. To do any campaign in my current living conditions would be an act of self-sabotage on my part, I’d just be setting myself up for failure. That is one of the main reasons I’ve been working more since late 2025, to save up money to cover editing costs, cover art, and whatnot.
That and, well, taxes do eat a lot of my income, but that’s what you get for being a legal citizen of Italy and/or European, I guess.
Once I get feedback on the new draft, I’ll start to seriously evaluate my options and ballpark some real publishing cost estimates.
Sins
In the meantime, I’ve been working towards outlining the sequel book, Sins of Vaifen. I had written a first version of the prologue before I had to go back to the drawing board with Sword and rewrite the draft. Like Sword 1.0, Sins had a lenthly prologue that I’ll be keeping but rewriting to be shorter to have more “wordcount budget” later on.
That said, I know how I wanna start this one and how I wanna end it, just need to finalize the in-between details.
I know I’ve taken so long to succeed at this, and I kept failing at achieving this goal of mine so many times between 2019 and 2024, but I am a man that kept trying over and over again for six years to get out of Venezuela, and a man that had no qualms wiping to the same World of Warcraft raid boss for over 350 times before me and my old WoW guild killed Mythic Aggramar in 2028.
I’ll keep trying until I win.https://www.ckaleb.com/vaifensaga/
I’ll wrap this up by once again asking you to please give a look at my plans for The Vaifen Saga and this general outline of Sword and some of its characters. If you find any of it interesting and are willing to read the unedited 2.0 version of Sword, please get in touch with me.
All the best,
-Kal
