Ignis' First Firesday of Harvestfall, 1442, Bitterwind Approach, Dreadfrost Highlands.

A furious roar split the frozen air, its deafening cry echoing across the cliffs of Bitterwind Approach, the single pass in the mountains of Dreadfrost Highlands leading down to the Scalemarshes. A single Kindred dracan, not even five feet tall, stood her ground, feet planted firmly in the snow. She held a giant war hammer with both hands, slick with frost and frozen blood, as she followed the flying monster circling far above. The icy wind bit at her porcelain skin, the blue scales along her cheeks and exposed arms covered with blood. The dracan's grin widened as the rich, coppery smell filled her nostrils, overpowering all other scents. Most of the blood had been her own, lost to the wyvern's previous diving attacks.

"That all you got, big guy?" she asked, baring her fangs as she twirled the massive weapon in her hands. Her breath came in sharp, visible bursts, but the longer this fight dragged on, the more alive she felt.

Her opponent was massive—easily five times her own size—with iridescent scales that shimmered like glaciers under the pale northern sun. Her people in Frostspire dubbed the creature the King of the Highlands for a reason.

The wyvern circled around her, its enormous wings stirring up a blizzard of snow and shards of ice. Its crystalline-blue eyes narrowed, steam puffing from its jagged maw. It lashed its spiked tail against the ground, sending tremors through the frostbitten earth. It was a level twenty Elite—an appropriate match for an entire party of the same level. However, Soraya was not an average player. So Kohana stood tall, facing this threat as a solo level twenty brute.

She tightened her grip on her war hammer and lunged forward as the wyvern swiped a clawed forelimb the size of a tree trunk in her direction. She interposed her weapon, parrying the blow. Even reduced, the force of the blow caused her health to dip by a quarter, but Kohana met the wyvern's gaze with equal ferocity. Pain was not a disadvantage for a brute—it was fuel. She felt the rush of power as her life dropped below the next threshold, pushing her offense and hardening her defences to the next tier. Her class's passive ability was all about dancing on the knife's edge.

Her grin widened. "Oh, thanks for that! Now we're talkin'!"

Kohana surged forward, closing the gap. Her war hammer glowed faintly with a red aura—her Fracture skill was ready, a conditional attack she could only use after a successful parry. She brought the weapon down in a devastating arc; the impact cracking through the wyvern's hardened scales and sending it staggering back with a shriek of pain. The creature lost its footing on the slippery icy terrain and for a second focused its attention away from her. Kohana used the opening to press her advantage.

She activated Blood Rage, one of her class's signature abilities. It came at great cost—she lost another ten percent of her hit points—but for the next ten seconds she gained increased benefits from her rage passive. Smash! She slammed her war hammer into the wyvern's side, using all of her attack abilities in succession. Clobber! She twirled her hammer and aimed right at the creature's knee, tripping it. The wyvern's body hit the ground with a sickening whine of pain, its massive head landing precisely where Kohana had calculated, the impact shaking the very ground. A grin stretched across her face as she landed the final blow of her combo—a powerful vertical Beatdown!—crushing bones in its skull with a sickening crack. Each blow in her attack combo built in fury and power, and as a reward for successfully landing the last hit, she received a temporary damage bonus for the next thirty seconds. Her passive rage bonus was nearly at its peak, and with it, so was her destructive potential.

The dazed wyvern stood up and tried to counter, lashing out with its tail in a wide arc, but Kohana ducked low and rolled to the side, using the momentum to swing her hammer upward in a brutal arc. The jagged spike at the head of the weapon tore through the underside of the creature's wing, sending a spray of icy blood across the snow.

It roared again, this time weaker. Its breath was coming faster, each exhale a visible plume of exhaustion. Kohana tilted her head and gave the wyvern a mock pout. "Aw, what's the matter? Tired already?" She twirled her war hammer casually, its weight nothing in her grip. "That's the thing about bosses like you. Big, bad, and scary at first. You burn bright, sure. But I burn longer."

The wyvern, desperate, took to the air, flapping its massive wings and whipping up a freezing gale. It was going to flee to recover and lick its wounds, but Kohana had been waiting for it to do exactly this. She used the brute's only ranged ability, Spiked Chain. The attack did almost no damage, but forced the target to remain locked in a deadly embrace with the brute. A sharp, piercing yelp cut through the air as the wyvern thrashed in panic as it was forced backwards.

"Get over here!" Kohana smiled as she shouted the iconic line. So what if it was from a game from '92?

For the next five seconds, the wyvern could neither escape nor target anyone else than the brute. With no choice but to fight, it spun around, preparing to rake at the insolent girl with its deadly talons. As it drew closer, the creature prepared itself for the finishing blow. Kohana narrowed her eyes and activated Brace, one of her tanking cooldowns. For a short time, this would trigger an automatic parry against all incoming attacks, effectively halving the damage she took.

Even with Brace running and her damage mitigation fully active, the talons tore through her defences, leaving several ragged gashes on her chest. The fur, leather, and metal of her armour offered little resistance against the monstrous blow. For a moment, Kohana panicked at the sheer amount of hit points she lost—if she had not braced just in the nick of time, she would have been a goner. Her health was now at an all-time low, but Kohana could not escape, either.

She laughed back in defiance, her Rage passive ability having finally reached its highest tier. Her veins burned with power, her entire body glowing brightly with a crimson aura. She activated Sup on Their Suffering for good measure, another tanking cooldown. Her crimson aura burned so bright the snow hissed beneath her feet. For the duration of this buff, every blow hitting any enemy would restore some of her hit points. But the extra health would likely not matter; if the following hit did not finish the wyvern, she feared she would not survive another exchange.

"It's all or nothing!" she snarled.

As the wyvern's talons prepared another strike, Kohana unleashed another Fracture attack. It was available again, since she had parried the wyvern's attack. Even baseline, the conditional skill was one of her most potent abilities. But this time, she landed it with every damage bonus available to her class at this level. With a single, ground-shaking blow, she drove the head of her hammer into the creature's chest. It struck home with a bone-crunching thud, and for a moment, the world seemed to hold its breath. A shockwave rippled outward, sending shards of ice and snow flying in every direction. The wyvern let out one final, strangled cry before crumpling to the ground. Its chest caved in and its wings folding lifelessly around its massive body.

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"You have reached level twenty-one for the brute class."

Kohana straightened, resting her hammer on her shoulder as she surveyed her handiwork. Her health bar blinked red, a frantic signal despite the immediate danger having passed; a lingering reminder of the close call, each pulse a painful throb. Even with the healing she just received, her health was still below five percent, but she did not care. The exhilaration of the fight, the raw power coursing through her, made her feel invincible.

"Should have gone for the kill. Don't ya know hurting me just strengthens me?" she asked, her voice dripping with satisfaction. She glanced at the loot notifications, the corpse slowly dissolving into fine dust. Wyvern Claws, Frost-Plated Scales. And the quest item she was after, the Wyvern Crown.

Soloing a zone boss all by myself? Not bad at all for a job everyone disses.

Kohana collapsed on the ground, letting go of her massive, two-handed war hammer. She scanned the mist-cloaked slopes around her. The chill of the Dreadfrost Highlands seeped into her bones, but she barely felt it. Here, where the air was sharp enough to cut and the ground frostbitten and unforgiving, she was in her element. Her breath came out in little puffs of vapor, mingling with the fog that clung to the highland foothills. She smirked. What was cold to a dracan, anyway? They had fire in their veins, even the Kindred—especially the Kindred, if you asked her. Sovereign dracan might be cold-blooded? She wondered.

Are dragons cold-blooded, like lizards?

The clear sky stretched endlessly above her as she stared up, lost in thought. With a sigh, she produced some slightly chewy jerked beef and took a good bite. Chewing hurt. She did it anyway, as one way to significantly increase hit point recovery was eating. Pain shot through her, but gritting her teeth, she lifted herself, propping herself up on her elbows, her eyes slowly scanning around for signs of threat. She was not exactly worried about threats in this area; this had been the domain of the king. She felt it would take a long time before any foolish creature crawled up here to challenge her.

Her mind drifted. Away from the wyvern, the cold, or the biting pain in her ribs. It wandered, unbidden, to Elyssia—the little green-haired sylvani. And to the person she now affectionately thought of as Em. Kohana's lips twisted into a half-smile. Kindred dracan she might be, but she still had eyes. Em was something soft the Dreadfrost Highlands had never known—a splash of green warmth against a world of white and grey.

She still struggled to believe how the person she and her coworkers had once known as M-E had turned into this delicate, freckled sprite with sapphire-blue eyes, sparkling like dew-dropped leaves in the sun.

Kohana was captivated not only by her striking appearance but also by the way Em always surprised her—clever comebacks, a quiet resilience that made her tougher than she looked. A spark of something fierce underneath her softness. Kohana could not say when it started. Months? A year or two? But somewhere along the way, Em had stopped being just another colleague. Kohana saw her as something more.

Of course, what she felt did not matter if Em did not reciprocate her feelings. And why would she? Em barely looked at herself the way Kohana saw her—as someone vibrant, clever, and impossible not to notice. Em had enough to deal with without someone like her barging in and making things messy. The divorce had left Kohana's colleague with a visible fragility, a sense of being broken, reflected in the way she moved and spoke. The lifeless stare of years past was gone, replaced in recent months by a bright, rekindled spark in her eyes, full of life. After the events of today, Kohana now had a pretty good guess about the reason behind Em's divorce. As a queer woman herself, Soraya had lived in the closet for many years, so she recognised the signs.

How can I help her see she doesn't need to be fixed?

But then Kohana reprimanded herself. Did Em even need help? She never asked for it. She was a survivor and would get over anything. That day, with luck, maybe she would notice Kohana. However, she understood how, to make her plan a reality, she would have to be around Em a lot more. Sharing lunch was just a prelude; the real adventure began in the Realms after hours, where camaraderie and shared experiences promised far greater rewards. Kohana smirked despite herself, brushing a hand through her sweat-soaked hair.

You're being ridiculous.

She shook her head. But even the thought of Em warmed her scales. She reached out with one hand, her grip tightening reflexively around the haft of her hammer. She could almost picture Elyssia standing here, hands on her hips, telling her to stop getting herself half-killed for the fun of it. But that was just a fantasy. Right now, Elyssia would be all the way south, in Luminara. She had probably already teamed up with her party members and would play with them all evening.

If she was honest, she was heading south, hoping to stumble on her. It was partially why Kohana fought against the wyvern. She could have snuck by, like most players who wanted to join their friends did.

But where's the fun in that?

Killing the beast was a distraction. That, and she felt the need to prove she could do it, both to herself and to others. She imagined Elyssia watching from the sidelines; her freckled face caught between awe and exasperation. "Seriously?" the Sylvani would say, shaking her head. "Why do you always make things harder for yourself?" And yet, there would be a smile tugging at her lips—a smile that made Kohana want to dive headfirst into danger just to see it one more time.

And so she was slowly making her way south. She was worried about how Em might react, if she simply dropped by unannounced while she was in the middle of something with her group of friends. She feared being a fifth wheel.

As adrenaline wore off, the cold slowly crept in. Kohana felt the frost biting at the edges of her exposed scales. The biting wind howled through the pass like a feral beast. She shifted, adjusting her posture on the ground. Somewhere out there, hidden by the fog and the rocks, she could hear the skittering of ice beasts—dire wolves, perhaps, or those dastardly little frostlings hiding in the rocks to ambush travellers. Nothing she could not handle.

The crunch of footsteps on frozen snow alerted her. Kohana's eyes narrowed, and her other hand immediately went for her war hammer. She stood up to get a better view of the newcomer, weapon at the ready. The sound came from the path leading to the Scalemarshes. She glanced down quickly—shredded armour, frozen blood on her scales, and wyvern guts still clinging to her hammer.

Great. Just great. This is going to be a great first impression.

She sighed, wiping at her face in vain. Hopefully, whoever crested the hill would not mistake her for a lunatic, given her dishevelled appearance. She squinted as she started discerning a figure approaching from the mist. At first, all she could make out was the faint movement—a blur of colour through the fog. She tensed, her fingers tightening around the haft of her hammer. The crunch of steady footsteps, brisk and determined, drew closer, the soft rustle of cloth and creak of leather a counterpoint to the rhythmic beat.

Not an ice beast. Not a frostling. A player, maybe? What kind of fool—besides me—comes here solo?

As the figure emerged from the veil of fog, Kohana froze, her scaled brows furrowing. A splash of green, like a spring leaf in the middle of winter, caught her attention first. It was unmistakable—a colour so vibrant it seemed to defy the pale, lifeless hues of the Highlands. Her hammer slipped just slightly in her grip.

Was that… her? No, it can't be! What are the odds?

The figure stepped closer, and there was no mistaking it now. Those pointed ears, freckled cheeks, and delicate features—so at odds with the stark, unforgiving world around them. The sylvani woman's sapphire-blue eyes widened as they locked onto Kohana, taking in the battered, bloodied dracan standing in the middle of a battlefield. She stopped in her tracks, her mouth slightly open in what looked like a mix of confusion and disbelief.

The wind howled between them, but neither moved. Not yet.

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