Don’t call it a comeback, we’ve been (working hard) here for years.
Since Subsumption arrived in 2020, the universe surrounding it hasn’t just grown — it’s mutated into something we didn’t see coming, and it’s been awesome. While you haven’t heard or seen much, we’ve been busy developing the larger story, writing new manuscripts, and finding all the important connections between them. (“We” from here on out means me, Lindsay Egginton, and a crew of editorial bots plus human alpha readers — that turns my ideas into something you can read). Now it’s time to catch you up and give you something new to look forward to.
First, a term nobody’s heard yet: the Universae Arcana.
That’s the name for a fictional universe “subsuming” (pun intended) two interconnected series:
1. The Sitaria Series, written by Lindsay Egginton (who a careful reader will recognize as the editorial force behind the Subsumption Series)
2. The Subsumption Series, where this all started
The original releases — Coverted, Disclosure, and Subsumption — told the bigger story from the Federation’s side of events. The story cluster we’re working on now leans harder into the Confederation’s perspective, which can feel like a different kind of story even though it’s the exact same universe underneath (just an FYI, I have no intention of ever writing fiction in another universe).
We also owe you an update on an older promise. You may remember the roadmap in the back of Subsumption itself, pointing toward Guardians, Echoes, and Astra. Like any battle plan, it didn’t survive contact with the enemy — in this case, our own curiosity. While working on Guardians I was sucked into telling the continuation of Velia and Virgil’s story from Coverted, centered on their Krypteia training. And during that ideation, we stumbled onto a character who wasn’t supposed to be the main event: Dante Stasio.
Turns out Dante is pretty, pretty, pretty important. Following him took us into writing Apotheosis, and from there into writing two nested novellas, Seven Scars and 6F Sentient Street. All three are still inside the Subsumption Series universe — the Guardians arc hasn’t gone anywhere; it’s just waiting its turn a few positions down the queue now.
This is the universe map in its current form, and behind it sits something we don’t talk about enough: an extensive Lore Codex — the history, factions, characters, rules, and realms that keep this whole thing from collapsing in on itself. But this hasn’t been about world-building for its own sake; it was done to ensure these stories were entertaining while delivering intertextual symbolism and moral instruction — specifically about choice under manipulation, complicity, and divided loyalty, especially among family — that these characters can’t escape.
The last year has been focused on putting those ideas into action through actual drafted prose. That’s what gets us up at 4 a.m. — an obsession, and one that’s taking a shape we’re insanely proud of: the novel Apotheosis, and two nested novellas, Seven Scars and 6F Sentient Street. “Nested” means exactly what it sounds like: both novellas are built to be read after Apotheosis, in that order — Seven Scars, then 6F Sentient Street — though Apotheosis (like both novellas) stands complete on its own if that’s as far as you want to go. All three are set in 1991 — decades before the events of Disclosure and Subsumption, but landing right in the same era (and involving some of the same characters) as Coverted.
Let’s introduce you to each story and where it stands in the production cycle:
Apotheosis
Dante Stasio survives his mother’s cruelty by hiding beneath a gas station, piecing together conspiracies, and listening to the prophecies of a talking Teddy Ruxpin. But when strangers offer him answers about his father and the impossible power stirring inside this gifted, dangerous kid, Dante begins to suspect the people offering him freedom have already decided what he’ll become.
A complete zero draft of the eighteen-chapter novel exists, and we’re rebuilding it word by word, one chapter at a time. As of October 2026, six of the eighteen chapters have been rewritten, with Chapter 7 underway. It takes about three weeks to turn the exploratory Zero Draft version of a chapter into a polished First Draft. From there it goes to the editor — which, surprise, isn’t Lindsay anymore (she’s too busy writing her own side of the universe). Instead, we’re using a swarm of editorial bots with human oversight, running about a week per chapter to complete all edits. Chapter 1 of Apotheosis has already been through the entire production cycle (including the editing) and is live on Substack — go read it and judge for yourself: Chapter 1: Convenience Betrays.
Seven Scars
Behind the guarded doors of a military black site, psychiatrist Patricia Alexander guides Dante through seven court-ordered sessions to uncover the truth behind his scars. But as his memories reveal a terrifying design behind his suffering, the gaps in her own past raise a darker question: what has she already helped them do to this boy? (Patricia, if the name rings a bell, had a small but real part in Coverted — worth a reread once you finish this one.)
This novella has a complete first draft, putting it further along in the production cycle than Apotheosis, and is queued for its own editing pass once Apotheosis is done — see the timeline below.
6F Sentient Street
Combat medic Victoria Green has less than an hour to rescue seven siblings from a collapsing brownstone they refuse to believe is a prison. But when their mother arrives promising salvation, Victoria must expose what that promise will cost — even if saving her family means becoming its enemy.
This nested novella also has a complete first draft and is in queue behind Apotheosis and Seven Scars for editing.
We said it above and we’ll say it again here: no plan survives contact with the reader, or the manuscript, or reality. But we’ve held a steady schedule for more than a year now and we’re confident about the path we are blazing toward this target: Apotheosis officially releases on Tuesday, February 8, 2028, in print, ebook, and audiobook — and this time, distributed across multiple retailers, not just parked on Amazon. 2027 is the runway: finishing the rewrite, the full editing pass, beta-reader feedback, and audiobook production.
In an upcoming blog post we’ll detail how our strategy (the schedule we’ve developed over the last year and the resulting production cycle) changed from the previous stories, because this time is different and we’re laying the track in front of the train as we move: Apotheosis, Seven Scars, and 6F Sentient Street will all be serialized on Substack, chapter by chapter, monthly, ahead of their formal release. The February 2028 date is a target specifically for Apotheosis — Seven Scars and 6F Sentient Street follow their own serialization and release timelines behind it, which we’ll lay out in another upcoming post (but which you can see a preview of by expanding the timeline in the visual roadmap below). This means you don’t have to wait for 2028 to start reading in the Subsumption Series again — you can start now, in the broader Universae Arcana, and get a new chapter every month until the whole triplet releases. That’s the plan, anyway.
TLDR: the original release plan changed. The story universe expanded and got stranger than the one we started with back in 2020. But we’re on our way to the next release, and you don’t have to wait — Chapter 1 is live and a new chapter lands on Substack every month until Apotheosis, Seven Scars, and 6F Sentient Street are all released. Tell a friend. And reread the old stories, especially Coverted — because it connects to Dante and the three stories now orbiting him.
Thank you for supporting us. Hearing from you over the years, sometimes while we were secretly working on the bigger universe and lore and it seemed like nothing was happening, has sustained the hard work to reach this point. We’re excited to share these fresh stories with you.
Sempre Avanti.
