Thorin's First Thundersday of Harvestfall, 1442, Kaelyn's room, City of Luminara.

Kaelyn sat on the edge of the narrow bed in her rented room.

The morning sun crept in through the shuttered window, gilding the air with a dusty glow. Outside, the city was already awake—vendors shouting, boots clattering on stone, a distant bell marking the hour.

She needed to get to the alchemist guild—but after yesterday's broadcast, her face had gone out to millions. Any one of them could be here, watching.

She stared down at the bundle of folded cloth in her lap.

Time to go incognito.

She unfolded the tunic first—undyed, shapeless, a generic artisan's cut. It slipped over her head with no effort, its rough weave a deliberate contrast to her usual wardrobe. Nothing about it clung or curved. It did not need to be flattering. It needed to be forgettable.

Next came the split coat—charcoal grey, long, and split at the sides to allow movement. She fastened the clasps with practised fingers, then paused, holding the cloth mask between her hands.

She stared at it for a long moment. This would erase her smile, her laugh—her voice, if she kept quiet. She tied it behind her head anyway, firm and high across the bridge of her nose.

The goggles were last. She wore them like an accessory, high on her forehead.

Then she gathered her hair. Her fingers worked automatically, braiding it back tight. She looped it, pinned it under the collar, and checked her reflection in the small, tarnished mirror hung on the wall.

Not Kaelyn from the dungeon run videos. Not the girl who smiled on camera, hands glowing with healing magic and light.

Just a crafter. Just a player.

She stepped out into the hallway, down the stairs, and into the heart of Luminara's upper terrace. The sunlight was sharper here, bouncing off the cobblestones and painted awnings. A pair of adventurers brushed past her without a second glance. A homini woman juggled lemons at her stall while shouting prices in two languages.

No lingering stares. No fingers pointing. Just the hum of city life.

Kaelyn kept walking, slipping through the flow of foot traffic like a ghost through silk. She passed a bakery, catching the delectable aroma of fresh bread. She ducked her head and turned down the alley that led toward the guild workshop.

The moment the door clicked shut behind her, she let out a slow breath.

Still no recognition.

Good.

She sat at the glass-topped workstation, then reached for the tools she had purchased yesterday—glass rods, beakers, pipettes, multiple vials.

It was time to make something beautiful.

She tugged her safety goggles down from her forehead. With a flick, she flipped up the tinted lenses so she could still see clearly in the soft, glowlamp-lit alcove of the guild's shared workshop.

With a gloved hand, she slid a corked vial closer—a tiny bottle no bigger than her thumb, filled with an inky, midnight-blue liquid that shimmered faintly in the light. Isatis tinctoria, also known as woad.

Uncorking it with a faint pop, she inserted a clean drip pipette and gently squeezed the rubber end to draw in the thick tincture. Her other hand steadied a small beaker filled with a clear substance. Mordant. A solution that, as the name implied, helped the dye bind to fabric and stay put.

Carefully, Kaelyn held the pipette over the beaker and counted each drop under her breath. "One… two… three."

As each drop struck the surface, the dye unfurled like silk in water—tendrils of deep blue curling and twining downward in delicate spirals. For a moment, it looked like a wisp of ink caught mid-dance, suspended in glass. Kaelyn stirred the content of the beaker gently with a short glass rod, the colour gradually expanding to fill the beaker, meandering and blooming until it settled into something very close to the hue of Nayru's hair.

Kaelyn tilted her head, watching with quiet satisfaction. For a moment, she forgot herself entirely. "Okay," she murmured. "That's actually… really pretty."

Like a little ocean in glass…

With Vaelith's natural silver hair, Kaelyn was confident the dye would take beautifully—its shimmer would only enhance the goddess's ethereal look.

According to the item description, this temporary dye would last up to a day. It would hold through sweat, dancing, maybe even rain—but could be washed out easily with warm water, a specially crafted citrus-scented oil shampoo, and a few minutes of patience. Making the hair dye remover would come later.

Satisfied with her first batch of hair dye, she set the beaker aside. She noticed the system now recognised it as "ocean-light blue" hair dye. She reached and brought forward another beaker, this one also filled with the transparent binding solution.

Then she reached for a second corked bottle.

Rubia tinctorum—madder concentrate.

A thick, crimson-red, and clinging to the glass like blood.

Two drops of woad, one of madder, and the right dilution would yield a rich shade of moonlit lavender—Princess Hilda's signature hair colour.

She could feel Ryan mentally cringe at the thought as she carefully counted the two drops of woad.

Moonlit lavender? You've gotta be kidding.

Kaelyn smiled under her mask.

Nope. Real name. Look it up, chico—'moonlit lavender.' Fate, I'm telling you.

I still don't get why you want to dress us up as Hilda, when you know we could pull off Zelda without going through the trouble of dyeing our hair.

Kaelyn's expression faltered, just a little. She could tell Ryan was far from enthused at the idea of cosplaying the mirror of Hyrule's royalty, Lorule's melancholic princess.

Leoric's already going as a masculine version of the princess with Sheik, chico. If we go as Zelda, it'll feel redundant.

Kaelyn set the lavender mixture aside to steep, then turned her attention to the next hair product—bleach.

She reached under the workstation and pulled out two glass jars. She filled each with a pale, pearlescent paste. The base formula was the same: a buffered peroxide blend stabilised with alchemical salts to lift pigment gently without frying the hair. Next, she had to get the concentration right.

Kaelyn added water slowly, stirring until the consistency felt right. She then pulled her stirring glass rod out and examined the residue. Smooth, creamy, no separation. She nodded, satisfied. This one would be for Leoric. His hair was a rich, earthy brown—nothing too stubborn—but it still needed two full tones of lift to get close to Sheik's golden-blonde.

She plucked a tag from a stack beside her and penned the recommended posology in surprisingly legible penmanship. "For Leoric. Simple Lift. Apply twice."

She wrapped the tag around the jar's neck, then turned to the second. This one needed more kick.

Elyssia's hair—like all Wind sylvani—was bright and highly saturated. Hers was a borderline-unnatural green, the kind that looked more like living chlorophyll than any natural pigment. Kaelyn actually wondered if Elyssia's hair colour would yield to regular hair bleach. But this was not chemistry. It was alchemy. Part chemistry, part magical. She adjusted the second jar's mix, adding a precise swirl of quicksilver tincture and a pinch of powdered sunstone—volatile ingredients, but potent.

The liquid hissed faintly as it reacted, shifting to a slightly iridescent sheen. Kaelyn nodded, satisfied. If this did not get Elyssia's hair to match Fierce Deity Link's silver-white, nothing would.

She labelled this one, too—though with a little more flair. "For Elyssia. MAX Lift. Divine Judgement."

Divine Judgement? Really? That sounds more like a sword than a hair product.

Oh, please, she thought back. You're lucky I didn't go with "Holy Smite" or "Blessed Peroxide."

Actually, "Blessed Peroxide" would have been perfect.

Kaelyn grinned. She tucked both jars of bleach into a rack inside a padded box. She then transferred the dye from beakers to sealed jars and joined the others into another rack inside the box. The whole kit would fit snugly in her satchel. She closed the lid of the box to prevent sun light exposure from tampering with her concoctions.

Between the Nayru blue, Hilda lavender, Sheik blonde, and Fierce Deity silver, their little cosplay squad was about to look like they had stepped straight out of a sacred realm.

You know… we thought of that shampoo to revert our hair—and Vaelith's—but what about Leoric and Elyssia? That bleach isn't going to vanish overnight, is it?

Kaelyn rapped her finger against the crafting table. He had a point. The alchemical bleach worked by stripping melanin—the natural pigment—from the hair. Unlike her temporary dye, it wouldn't wash out. It was a change, not a disguise.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Healing spells? Maybe. Hair was technically dead cells, but some classes used nature or time magic rather than holy light. Druids could grow things. Chronomancers could reverse time. She would have to ask around.

Or maybe she could work on a longer-lasting dye herself—something to mask the bleached tones without needing wigs or caps. Before offering any of this to her friends, though, she would make sure they understood exactly what they were agreeing to. Style came with consequences.

Her fingers curled slightly against the workbench. So much had been done to her without permission—without understanding. Even Ryan had not known what they were stepping into. She would never let that happen to someone else. Especially not her newfound friends.

Friends? Are they truly our friends?

The thought had come from a smaller voice. One who often stayed silent and to the side.

Kaelyn wondered about the nature of her relationship with her party members. Perhaps not friends, not yet. She preferred to keep them at an arm's length away, rather than opening up too much. By controlling the distance she kept, she could control their relationship, to a degree. She liked it better this way.

Not friends, then. Camaradas, maybe?

Kaelyn returned to her crafting interface. Finding chestnut brown dye options would be easy. Brown was, after all, the inevitable result of mixing pigments without a plan. That worked in her favour—she could easily help Leoric return to his original shade if he did not want to stay blonde.

Elyssia's vivid green would be trickier. In pigment theory, green was a mix of cyan and yellow—and for something that bright, she would need a lot of yellow. Luckily, yellow was abundant in nature. Chamomile made for a brilliant golden dye and was a staple in both cooking and alchemy.

As for blue? Infamously one of nature's rarest pigments. Sure, she had some here, with her tiny bottle of woad concentrate. But it was far too dark—it would make a darker, deeper green than she intended. She needed something much lighter—something without a hint of black.

She scrolled through recipes until she found just what she needed: cyan dye. Opening the recipe, she prepared for the worst. But the ingredients to make it were surprisingly common. Centaurea cyanus, also known as cornflower. A weed frequently found growing alongside farmer's crops in cornfields.

Kaelyn closed the crafting interface with a resigned sigh. "Alright, time for some flower shopping," she muttered, slipping her gloves into the pocket of her split coat.

She grabbed her satchel and secured the padded box inside. The dyes, bleaches, and mixtures barely clinked, nestled in their rack compartments like vials in an apothecary's travelling shrine. Next, she stowed away the rest of her tools and vials. She gave the lid one last pat, adjusted the strap across her shoulder, and pulled her goggles back up to rest atop her head.

The soft chime of the workshop's exit bell followed her into the open-air market, where the sunlight shone past the city's high walls. Luminara's upper terrace bustled with artisans and vendors, their stalls a patchwork of canvas, burlap, and hand-painted signs. Scents of beeswax, roasted nuts, and herbal oils swirled through the air, mixing with the brassy trill of nearby buskers tuning up.

Kaelyn moved with quiet purpose, ducking between stalls as if she belonged there. Which she did—she may not have been born in this city, but she had since made it her home. She passed a basket-weaver offering intricate reed work and a Wind sylvani perfumer selling oil-blended scents named things like Midsummer Guilt and Pine in Your Heart. She stopped briefly to sample one called Riverwake. For a moment, she did not think of anyone else. She just… liked it.

Her first target—whole chamomile heads—proved trickier than expected. Several stalls had the dried flower buds bundled in cotton sachets for tea, but those would not do. She found the best selection from a middle-aged northerner with a tidy beard and a sign that read "Grown with Patience. Priced with Mercy." She grinned.

"Chamomile heads only, full yellow, no stems," she said, eyeing the jars behind his table.

He raised an eyebrow, impressed. "Making tea or tinctures?"

"Hair dye," she replied, grinning under her mask—something soft and rare—before slipping a few extra coins onto the counter.

He laughed, but in a friendly way, and she ended up with a jar of bright golden buds and a small sample of his calendula blend, just in case she wanted to experiment with oranges later.

Cornflower was even more elusive. Most of what she found were decorative petals—crushed or ground down, with their hue faded and unreliable. She finally found a Pint burrovian player who had plenty in stock—from harvesting in bulk to level up his botanist class, he had explained—selling full blooms for dirt cheap. The petals were still vibrant and whole—exactly what she had hoped for. She bought a double portion, tipped well, and made sure the vendor knew she appreciated proper flower storage.

The final leg of her errand brought her to an alchemy stall at the market's edge, shaded by swaying strings of dried herbs. She skimmed past the more volatile reagents and focussed instead on sweet almond oil, lemongrass extract, and sap-derived emulsifier crystals. These would form the base for the citrus-scented dye remover shampoo.

She considered adding rosemary or bergamot—both great for hair—but decided against tinkering too much with the recipe. Not for her first try.

Kaelyn halted mid-step on her way back to the workshop. Just ahead, she recognised Elyssia—and her unmistakable green hair—walking through the crowd. Their gaze met, and the sylvani's eyes immediately sparked with recognition. She jogged up to her.

"Hey, how's the crafting going? You think you'll be done soon?"

Kaelyn shrugged. "You know how it is. You set out to make one thing, then you realise you need to get four more sub-components first, and to do them, you have to hunt for materials in town…"

The sylvani laughed. "Yeah. I know. Sometimes the amount of pre-synths I have to deal with for a single item baffles my mind." She raised both hands and started counting on her fingers as she listed the steps. "Grind down some sharpening stones, cut gemstones, smelt ingots, turn ingots into handfuls of rings, then weave those rings into a bracelet, create a small silver setting, stick the gemstone in it, attach to the bracelet. Eight steps, and that's just for one bracelet. I'm not complaining—this is great for EXP—but outfitting the whole team? That's practically a full-time job."

"Is that why you're here? To clear your mind from all the—no pun intended—grind?"

"Hmm. Yeah, and I needed to buy some electrum ore and ingots from higher-level miners. My goldsmith levels have long eclipsed my ability to supply myself, and I did not want to be the one people were waiting for before the next dungeon run."

"Ah, same really. I just went through the market to get some ingredients for more products I didn't realise we'd need until I started making them. Oh—while I've got you, do you know where the next dungeon is?"

Elyssia nodded. "Mm-hmm. It's in the Myrknar woods. Some kind of abandoned burial ground associated with Umbraholme, I believe. Reports of undead activity at night coming out of their sacred grounds, so something or someone's troubling the dead."

"Undead, huh? I think a bunch of my spells get bonuses against them."

"Priests, clerics and crusaders' paradise, I suppose. All of those classes' light-based powers really shine in there. Pun intended."

Kaelyn snorted a laugh despite herself. "Oh, I meant to ask. Have you made all the arrowheads bello asked you to? I checked my recipe list, and there're a lot of special ones I can make for him once you hand me some."

"Mm-hmm. Want them now? I've made lots. Each ingot yields a handful of them, so it's no effort to create a few stacks."

"A few stacks? Like, you've made several hundred arrowheads?"

Elyssia shrugged. "Yeah, no biggie. They do more damage than his regular arrows. If you ask me, he should only shoot custom ones from now on—the ranger class gets stronger the more time and money you invest in preparation. It's kinda the whole point."

"Santo cielo... I've got a lot on my plate, I guess."

The sylvani swung her bag over her shoulder and opened it. She pulled out two little wooden cases and offered them to Kaelyn. "Ninety-nine per box. Have fun."

Kaelyn accepted them, surprised by their weight. "Gracias," she said, forcing a smile.

Elyssia's eyes lit up. "Oh! One more thing—"

She pulled a long, cloth-wrapped object from her pack.

"I finished crafting the staff I promised you… Silver, reinforced shaft, upgraded power focus. Picked a model that will improve both your healing and damage. Once you've got some holy water, there's an alchemist recipe to consecrate it and upgrade it further."

Kaelyn took it with wide eyes, fingertips brushing reverently over the cloth. "You… really didn't have to."

"I said I would," Elyssia said simply, then smirked. "Besides—undead dungeon, remember? Couldn't let the party's secret weapon enter with an under-levelled weapon, could I?"

The Wind sylvani then pointed behind. "I'm going to go back to the jeweller's. Time for me to go smelt that electrum and make you and Vaelith something special. You've been to Zephyrdale before, right? To unlock your fishing class?"

Kaelyn only nodded for her answer as she struggled to transfer the case of arrowheads into her satchel while holding the staff.

"Then you'll have some extra time to prepare. When I'm done here, I'll need Vaelith to taxi me to my hometown, and then I'll hoof it to Zephyrdale on my own. When I arrive there, Vaelith can take you there. Then we'll make our way to the dungeon together. Vaelith and Leoric can simply head out from Umbraholme when we get closer."

"Sounds like you've got this all planned out."

"Just trying to be efficient, is all," she answered, blushing slightly.

Kaelyn hesitated, then glanced toward a quiet alley. "Before you go… would you mind if we asked you something? It's a little personal."

The blush faded from Elyssia's cheeks as she examined Kaelyn's face seriously, as if trying to discern how serious this was. She tilted her head toward away from the crowds, and they walked there in silence.

Once they were a good distance alone, Elyssia leant against a wall, arms crossed over her chest. "Alright, ask away. Can't promise I'll have an answer until I hear the question."

"Earlier you said this—what's happening to you, to us—in the real world was like a dream come true. So… we were curious. How did you know?"

"Know? You mean who I was?"

Kaelyn nodded.

"I… Honestly, I don't really think I'm the norm. There are so many testimonies online of people who knew since they were five. Even more of people who transition around or even before puberty. I wasn't so lucky. I figured it out much later. But, in hindsight, I can now tell something was very wrong all along. My life wasn't great. I folded to all demands. I was very conflict-averse. There really wasn't anything I truly loved or wanted to do, except maybe escape in games. Years went by, and I felt like I was a passenger in my own life, just watching the events through a black-and-white monitor and muffled sounds."

Kaelyn did not interrupt. She just listened, a knot growing slowly in her chest. It was too familiar—not the specifics, but the grey-scale way Elyssia described life. Muted. Observed, not lived.

"Oh—and I can't stress this next part enough," Elyssia said. "Not everyone gets to be loud and proud. Sometimes it's more important to feel safe first. For me, I didn't even know how different I was until the day it all clicked. And even once I figured it out, I couldn't act on it, not really. It would destroy my life and my family. Heck, it nearly did."

Kaelyn felt her stomach twist. Ryan, too, had gone quiet—their silence curling in on itself. Far too much echoed with Ryan's life prior to the game's release.

But things are different for us… right?

What we have—it's not a trans thing. Is it?

Kaelyn did not have an answer to reassure him. It all sounded and felt far too familiar. Like it was a truth she knew all too well. Even if it did not match her past at the monastery. Yet, she felt something inside her, drawing in, retreating, as if Elyssia's words had hit something still sore.

Elyssia frowned, apparently noticing Kaelyn's internal turmoil. She gently placed one hand on her shoulder. "Hey, many of those things are symptoms of depression, not gender dysphoria. It doesn't mean anything even if you relate to everything I said. Gender's messy, but so is life in general, especially in this new era where the real world is becoming more and more inhospitable."

Kaelyn nodded slowly. "We'll… think about it. Thanks, Elyssia."

The sylvani smiled sympathetically. "Don't hesitate to poke me or Vaelith if you have any questions. We may not have all the answers, but we'll do what we can to help."

"…Hmm. Yeah. Will do."

Elyssia nodded, gave Kaelyn's shoulder another good pat, and then headed back to the market. "If we don't speak until then, I'll message you when I reach Zephyrdale." She waved without turning back. "See you later, Kaelyn."

Kaelyn raised a hand in farewell but said nothing, watching Elyssia effortlessly slip back into the flow of the market. She lingered in the alley, feeling small, almost invisible, surrounded by distant footsteps and fading music, the weight of Elyssia's words settling in her chest.

Then she exhaled and turned back toward the alchemist's guild. She had work to do. Kind work.

When she returned to her workstation, she took one long, deep inhale and leant her still-wrapped staff against the wall. She would look at it later. When her hands were no longer shaking so much.

Set her bag down with a gentle thump and rolled up her sleeves. The padded box remained sealed and sound. The fresh ingredients nestled around it like treasure.

Nobody should have to go through what I did.

Now, it was time to make some consent-based cosmetics.

… And don't forget all the arrowheads!

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