Before posting, I already had several alternate covers to choose between, cycled through a few for a day or two later on, but none of these stuck for long.

  This is the one that originally won out, the classic original 'Maelstrom' cover posted with the first chapter, and the one that I still use on my finalized-chapters doc.

  It stuck around for pretty much all of January, as I focused on getting chapters out and building a backlog. Maelstrom was just a tiny underground story at that point, less than a hundred followers after the first month.

  February came with the contest winner announcement and a deluge of new viewers. Suddenly, there was the pressure of needing to be an eye-catching icon on Rising. This one stuck for a while, in various incarnations.

  This one is another favourite, the one I use on my in-progress chapters doc.

  The constant ups and downs of that Rising run led to a lot of stress which led to a lot of making new covers as an easy creative release. There were... a lot of new covers created in February. Not all of them were ever used, and several only lasted hours or days before being cycled to something new, but I do love collecting pretty shinies.

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  Flipped through a few after that, but with the chaos of Rising over, IRL stuff taking precedence, and ReSystem starting to need chapters again as well, the rate of new-covers died down a bit.

  But I'd noticed that people were not quite understanding that this was a story about Jair and Ran, not just Jair, so I started shifting toward duo covers vs showcasing him alone.

  I've also been toying with a few other solo variations that may end up in the rotation someday, or may not.

  This one was originally intended as an icon for patreon, but I liked it enough it ended up being a cover in its own right.

  It was requested I include one with the green, so how could I turn down a challenge like that? xD

  Plus there are probably thirty partially-finished ones from the archives that I could polish up at some point, but for now, that's the journey of the Maelstrom cover art. :D