This story came to me in pandemic lockdown, different pieces of the idea falling into place one after another. The first part came to me while I was thinking about a clip from a live-play RPG show, in which the players were put in the scenario of having to make a significant sacrifice in order to break a curse - something that would make them miserable forever if they gave it up - but the one of the players managed to trick their way out of the situation so that no one needed to give up anything. My brain took the idea and ran with it - what if they hadn’t been able to take a third option? What if one character took on the burden of sacrifice in order to prevent the other characters from needing to suffer? What if the group chose suffering together - finding a way forward together - over suffering apart? I wrote out the scene, with new characters who came to be out of my needs for that scene - someone in need, someone sad and self-sacrificing, someone strong and loving, someone sweet and powerful, someone trying very hard to lead - and afterwards, I couldn’t stop thinking about them. My five heroes. What brought them to that point, and what would they do next to recover and move forward? After that, I kept putting different things into it that I felt strongly about and needed to express. My Judaism and desire for Jewish fantasy stories. My stress from the pandemic. My queerness and desire for positive portrayal of aromantic relationships. Soon enough, I was drawing a map to make sure the journey made sense… and in November 2020, I hammered out the first 60,000 words of the first draft, and kept going from there.