Adjust your screen. It’s still there.
The fade out is showing up on the ipad now. Still there, but faint.
Apparently, it’s not over: currently is shows a frame with either just black sea, or flat land (kinda difficult to tell them apart).
Yeah - it looks like the fadeout was a way to speed up time and cut to what I’m guessing will be a “several days later…”.
I must say, Randall has me so gripped. I’m just dying to see where this goes.
We’re now (frames 972-973 on aubronwood) seeing Cueball and Megan again, walking on a flat plain, presumably away from the sea, carrying their bags.
As I said above, setting out on a trip is something that happens at the start of a story, not the end. Building the castle was prologue. Now the real story begins.
This is going to take a looooooong time.
I’m going with…
Is it me, or is the terrain starting to slope upward?
Darn you tanstaafl! I was going to post that. Though I’d have mis-attributed it to Einstein. :smack:
Young Einstein that is. 
It’s varied in slope over the course of the walking frames, but I don’t think there’s been any consistent pattern.
I think it’s about to loop. Frame 998. Look like they’re on another beach.
I thought that, too. But they have the bag this time.
Maybe THIS time they’ll make it into the Black Tower…
Ah, yes, the Bag of Eld.
The man in the black hat fled across the beach, and the Cueball followed.
Wait, what? When did that happen?
At the moment, the top part of the ground, or whatever it is they’re walking on has turned lighter, with veins of the lighter color reaching farther down. It’s barely noticeable though.
Frame 1007.
The lower portion stays the same on the subsequent frames (i.e. the black level stays the same and the veins are in the same place) but the lighter upper area (and Megan and Cueball) varies as they cross the terrain and climb. Odd.
And it has gone - from 1007 and on. An error, maybe, corrected back into the past.
Someone needs to start a “chapter 2” type animation, so we don’t have to sit through all the sandcastle stuff if we just want to catch up on the latest.