Katechon ArcThe story
Athas is a dying desert world under a blood-red sun. Kalak, a thousand-year-old sorcerer-king, announces the Games of Ascension: in ten days every soul in Tyr will attend. The slave Sadira has learned what the new ziggurat is for. It will drain the life from everyone in the arena and turn Kalak into a dragon. With the gladiators Rikus and Neeva, the senator Agis and an ancient heartwood spear, they set out to kill a god.
Chapters
- The Ten Days
- The Mouth of the Tower
- The Heartwood Spear
- A Plan in Three Parts
- The High Templar's Price
- The Hunter Closes In
- Three Against a God
- Those Who Still Stand
- The King Is Dead, Long Live the King
How it was made with Katechon Arc
- Turned a long visual bible into a project style brief: no blue sky, crimson only for blood, the sun and the king, two moons at night, no metal except relics.
- Planned nine episodes from the screenplay and authored one script unit per shot of a 427-shot production list, so each unit carries its own shot description as source text.
- Rendered all 427 shots in one day: episode 1 on Seedance 2.0, the rest on Seedance 2.0 Mini to cut cost, with failed provider jobs retried automatically.
- Added chapter cards, day-counter supers, the king's voice and a ritual chant in a post pass, then published with captions.
Production facts
| The Fall of Kalak | |
|---|---|
| Project type | Drama project, reference-video mode, 16:9 |
| Structure | 9 episodes, 427 shots, 13 characters, 21 locations |
| Video models | Seedance 2.0 for episode 1 (53 clips), Seedance 2.0 Mini for episodes 2–9 (374 clips), all at 720p |
| Image model | Seedream 5.0 Lite for character, location and prop sheets |
| Video spend | About $113 at provider cost: $61 for episode 1 on Seedance 2.0, $52 for episodes 2–9 on Mini |
| Runtime | 42:11 (1280x720, 24 fps, English captions) |
What we learned
- Moving episodes 2–9 from Seedance 2.0 to Mini cut their video cost by roughly a factor of eight. The whole film on Mini would have cost about $60.
- Speech-to-text misspells invented names. The first caption track had six name errors; check proper nouns before upload.
Watch
The Fall of Kalak (42:11) is free to watch on YouTube on the Katechon Studio channel, published 2026-10-05. Also: Extended trailer (8:21). It was made by the Katechon team with Katechon Arc; editing, music and finishing were done outside Katechon Arc where noted.
More films made with Arc
Make one like it: start from the AI short drama workflow or see how Arc works.