Ignis' First Firesday of Harvestfall, 1442, Grimstone Pass, Dreadfrost Highlands.

The wind howled between the dracan and sylvani, Grimstone Pass behind them. The jagged peaks of the Dreadfrost Highlands gave way to a sprawling valley cupped between towering, snow-laden mountains. As soon as she had reached her target level through countless battles and non-stop carnage in the Highlands, Elyssia had spurred them onwards. While the enemies were still high enough to climb more levels, she had no interest in grinding her combat job further at the moment. She had reached the point she could run dungeons. Now she wanted to prepare for their first dungeon delve.

The dracan and sylvani walked down the sinuous path, slowly making their way to the snowy tundra. The city of Frostspire lay ahead, in the centre of the valley. Its name was a fitting tribute to the massive, glacier-blue spire of ice that jutted skyward in the centre of the settlement. Even from a distance, Elyssia could see the icy monolith catching the pale winter sunlight, scattering fractured rainbows across the snow-dappled tents and longhouses below.

It was like stepping into another world. A harsh world, carved by unrelenting cold and the grit of its people.

Elyssia pulled at the fabric of her tunic, desperately trying to capture the heat escaping her body. The wind bit at her cheeks like icy needles. Every exhale rose in pale, swirling clouds disappearing into the frigid air, and her fingers—numb even through her leather gloves—ached as she flexed them for warmth. She glanced at her companion walking beside her. Despite the biting chill and her torn-up armour, Kohana seemed entirely unbothered, her porcelain skin and scaled cheeks practically glowing against the snowy backdrop. The Kindred dracan had slung her massive war hammer over one shoulder, its weight as inconsequential to her as a child's toy. Every so often, her tail flicked, a counter-balance against the uneven ground.

"So," Kohana said, a grin spreading across her face. "What do you think of my birthplace?"

Elyssia scanned the path ahead. The city looked less like a city and more like a gathering of nomadic clans. Large, open-sided tents made of thick furs and hides clustered together in small circles, each circle radiating warmth from central bonfires. Between them were wooden longhouses, sturdy and built to withstand the biting winds. Smoke curled from chimneys into the frozen sky, the air rich with the scent of woodsmoke and roasting meat.

"Cold, as expected. The city's… different," Elyssia said, her voice thoughtful. "Not what I expected."

Kohana chuckled. "What, expecting a big fancy castle or something? Sorry, sweetie, the Northerners don't go in for that kind of thing. Everything here is about practicality. These folks don't waste their time on luxuries. If it can't keep you warm or feed your family, it's not worth having."

Elyssia raised an eyebrow, looking sideways at the dracan walking by her side. "And yet, you love it here. Let me guess—your people inspired the decor?"

Kohana flashed her a toothy grin, her slightly elongated canines glinting in the sunlight. "Hey, don't lump us all together. I'm Frostspire-born, sure, but Kindreds aren't exactly common around here. You want to see the real northerners?" She gestured toward a group of humans gathered near a bonfire.

For the two four foot eight women, the northerners were giants—taller than Leoric, even. They were broad-shouldered and pale-skinned. The skin on their freckled faces was rough from the abuse of years of windburn and sun. They almost all braided their fiery and vibrant red hair with bits of bone, beads, or metal, reflecting their warrior heritage. Children darted between their legs, laughing and playing despite the cold, while the adults worked on everything from skinning game to repairing armour. The sense of community was palpable, and despite the stark poverty of their surroundings, there was a warmth to their camaraderie, hard to ignore. The smell she caught in the air of the local cuisine brought to Elyssia's mind the idea of rich, hearty meals covered in thick gravy.

As they approached the city's entrance, Elyssia caught sight of many Sovereign dracans. Unlike Kohana's delicate, porcelain-like features, the Sovereigns were hulking, reptilian figures with heavy scales and stoic expressions. They came in many colours, both metallic and chromatic. They carried themselves with a quiet dignity, their clawed hands clutching axes and spears as they patrolled the edges of the settlement. A few nodded in recognition to Kohana as they passed, their sharp eyes flicking briefly to Elyssia before moving on.

"Friends of yours?" Elyssia asked, her voice light.

Kohana shrugged. "More like distant cousins. Kindreds are actually quite close to human. You know, mammalian and warm-blooded. Sovereign are closer to actual dragons and more… traditional. They actually lay eggs, did you know?"

Elyssia raised an eyebrow at this. "So, their reproductive system is nothing like humans? I wonder how Kindred dracan became a thing, then."

Kohana shook her head. "We're actually incompatible with them. Kindreds are an entirely different species, not half-breeds. We come from different gods? Me and my people, we're the children of Luxoria; you're probably familiar with her. Light and all. Sovereigns are the descendants of Ignis, Lord of War and God of Destruction. They're more like actual dragons; the longest-lived species. They have very slow reproductive cycles. Their courting process is very involved, too. Happens only every two decades, lasts almost a year. Their females only lay eggs during a short window where the entire tundra warms up from periodic tectonic shifts or something? It's as if the land itself is breathing, melting the ice to reveal soil so fertile it sings. During that time, every Sovereign couple prepares for their chance to ensure the next generation—it's not just reproduction; it's survival, a divine calling from Ignis himself."

Elyssia let that all sink in. She knew a lot about the mechanical aspects of species and class picks, but she had not really delved into understanding the different species' mating habits or background lore. "Okay, so I assume this must colour their perception of every other race."

Kohana nodded. "Mm-hmm. It takes a lot to rile them up. You can think of them as the strong, silent types. They're like stone—steady, unshakable, and about as fun at a party as you'd expect."

Elyssia smirked. "And you? What are you, then? A pebble?"

Kohana's laughter rang out, warm and unrestrained. "A pebble? Come on, Em, I'm a meteorite. Small, flashy, and capable of levelling mountains."

Elyssia rolled her eyes, but a smile tugged at her lips despite herself. "Sure you are!"

Guild halls dominated the heart of Frostspire, all outside of the massive ice spire, each one a reflection of its respective class. The brutes' guild, for instance, was a massive log structure reinforced with iron bands, the entire place radiating an aura of barely contained violence. The carved wooden sign above the entrance depicted a war hammer smashing through a skull, and the deep, guttural roars of laughter from within left little doubt about the crowd it attracted.

The blacksmiths' and armourers' guilds, meanwhile, were more subdued. Large stone forges belched black smoke into the sky, and the rhythmic clang of hammers on metal echoed through the air. Dwarves bustled about, their beards frosted with ice as they worked tirelessly at their craft. A Sovereign dracan stood nearby, his scaled hands deftly shaping molten metal with a precision entirely at odds with his imposing frame.

The miners' guild was smaller but no less impressive, a squat building hewn directly into the base of a nearby mountain. Massive stone statues of pickaxes crossed over shields flanked the entrance, and the faint glimmer of ore veins in the rock-face hinted at the wealth hidden beneath the surface.

Elyssia's eyes roamed over the guilds, her mind already calculating the path she would take to join them. She could feel the pull of purpose in her chest—a need to build, to create, to forge something uniquely hers.

This is it.

She could soon craft herself some equipment upgrades, and with it, start conquering dungeons with her friends.

"Where to first?" Kohana asked, leaning casually against her war hammer.

"Mining," Elyssia said without hesitation. "No point in smithing if I don't have the materials."

Kohana smirked. "Practical. I like it. Right behind you, boss."

Elyssia led them inside. A Sovereign dracan approached. "Skaldrath Ironclaw. Head of the miners' guild." He had dark bronze scales marred by faint scars. He greeted Elyssia with a brief nod, his deep voice rumbling like distant thunder. "What can we do for you, sylvani?"

Elyssia met his gaze evenly. "I'm here to learn the art of mining, guild-master."

"You? It's not glamorous work, little one."

Even by Sovereign dracan standards, the man was a giant. Elyssia had to crane her neck upward as she grinned. "I'm not here for glamour."

Stolen story; please report.

Kohana snickered behind her, muttering under her breath. "Could've fooled me."

Elyssia's heart nearly stopped. It made no sense. Kohana knew the truth. She had seen the clumsy, awkward person behind Elyssia. Why was she being like this? She could not possibly be genuinely interested. Elyssia shot the dracan a glare, hiding a small part of her secretly flattered by the attention.

Satisfied with her answer, the guild-master offered to take her through a series of introductory tasks—learning the proper stance for swinging a pickaxe, identifying valuable ore veins, and ensuring she understood the safety protocols for deep mining. By the time he handed her miner's license, dust coated her gloves and her arms ached from exertion.

"You have reached level three for the Miner class."

"Next?" Kohana asked, as they stepped back into the cold.

"Blacksmithing," Elyssia said.

Kohana nodded approvingly. "Gotta say, watching you swing that pickaxe? Total treat. You've got excellent form."

Elyssia groaned. "Do you ever stop?"

Kohana grinned. "Not when I'm having this much fun."

A burly dwarf named Gundrin Ironbrow introduced himself as the guild-master for the blacksmiths. Years of working too close to the forge had singed his beard at the ends. He wasted no time putting Elyssia to work, made her repeat the same simple tasks over and over until he had nothing left to complain about. It was gruelling, repetitive work, but there was something deeply satisfying about the way the metal yielded beneath her hammer.

Once the guild-master gave an approving grunt, the closest thing she got to a compliment, Elyssia went to talk to the provisioner. She had already mapped out the first items she wanted to craft. At low levels like this, the guilds sold such supplies in endless quantity. This way, there would be no scarcity of materials for players to raise their levels. Later, she would have to find her own minerals, and ask tailors or tanners to supply her with cloth and leather she would require.

The provisioner, a teenager northerner with unusually light hair, tallied up Elyssia's order on a sheet of paper before disappearing into the back room. While she was gone, Elyssia counted and slid over the counter the ferrum shards needed to pay for it all. The solo battles in Silvergale Strand had rewarded her with plenty of seed money to fund such expenses.

A few minutes later, Elyssia returned to her crafting station, carrying wobbling stacks of bronze ingots, rough stones, and shafts of various woods. Elyssia got to work, first grinding the stones with the help of a grinding wheel. Sharpening stones, she explained to Kohana's unspoken question.

She then moved from her crafting table to the forge. The heat emanating from it was almost oppressive, beads of sweat forming on her forehead despite the ever-present cold.

Elyssia picked an ingot with thick blackened tongs and exposed it to the flames of the forge until it turned a bright red-hot. She then started hammering it. The first strike of her hammer sent a jarring vibration up her arm, the sound ringing in her ears. It was not graceful work, but it was raw, visceral, and deeply satisfying. It took her a while, but she eventually ended up with a sturdy hammer head. She inspected it and nodded in satisfaction.

One down, nine to go.

Gundrin occasionally walked past Elyssia's crafting station. He silently observed and nodded at the sylvani's progress, leaving without ever saying a word. From what she could tell of the old dwarf, this was the closest to praise she would get out of him.

She repeated the process until every ingot had turned into its intended shape. Kohana examined the results as Elyssia lined up each of the four different hammer heads beside the wooden shafts.

Okay, forging complete. Time to assemble those beauties.

Elyssia returned to the counter and purchased another assortment of items. This time, she brought back many spools of cloth and leather. She also had a handful of animal sinew, strong yarn, a bottle of glue, and a flask of oil.

Curious about what was going on, Kohana leaned forward and asked, "So, I'm curious. What's all this for?"

Elyssia pointed at the various items as she explained their purpose.

"I'm making myself custom tools. The starter ones are terrible. Let's see. I'm making a mining pick and a sledgehammer. This one will be a file, and I will combine those two into a pair of pliers. This head is for a doming hammer, while this one is for a cross-peen hammer. Finally, that over there will make a chaser hammer. I can't make my grinding wheel used in goldsmithing. That's a carpenter thing. But I just purchased one. It'll have to do for now."

Kohana whistled in appreciation. She crossed her arms and a sly smile appeared on her lips. "Wow, you are really thorough in everything you do, aren't you?"

Elyssia smiled. "The only way I roll. And, of course, I'm going to make them all high-quality."

Kohana raised an eyebrow. "High-quality?"

A simple nod. "If you use the different crafting skills properly, you can make anything you craft into a higher quality version. Normal quality gear, what you get in stores, is easy to make, but a waste of effort. Getting HQ results is the real reason to craft things yourself. If I was okay with normal quality, I'd save myself the time and just buy them off at the nearest merchant."

"And you can make all those high-quality on your first try?"

Once again, she nodded, without ever looking away from her work. "In the unlikely event I fail one, I'll just start over until I succeed. But I won't. Not with level one crafts this easy."

"You know, Em, if you wanted to impress me, you could've just bought me a drink."

Kohana's words sent a flutter through her chest, and Elyssia immediately hated herself for it. She knew better—knew this was not real. Kohana saw Elyssia, the confident, capable sylvani who could parry a dozen strikes and keep aggro without breaking a sweat. But she had seen M-E's body at work just yesterday. She knew who she really was… Elyssia swallowed hard, forcing the thought away. She could not let herself believe this could be real. Soraya had flirted with Priya at lunch today. It was just her way of interacting with anyone.

Elyssia kept her head down, not wanting to let any emotion betray her. She stayed focused on her hands, assembling the different tools. She carefully wrapped each of the different shafts with leather or cloth to give them the right weight and grip. But she had to say something. Something witty, so Kohana would think nothing wrong was going on. "If I wanted to impress you, Kohana, I would have already done so."

Kohana let out a laugh. "Ooh, she's got fire. I like it."

Once she finished assembling the last tool, Elyssia nodded approvingly at the result of her work. She sorted out the tools for her other professions in a corner, but kept the smithing ones, the brand-new file and cross-peen hammer, nearby.

Time to see if those high-quality tools actually help. Going to attempt a higher-level craft now.

She returned to provisioner and brought back the materials for one last creation.

"What now?" Kohana asked when Elyssia returned with the pile of materials.

"Figured I'd make myself some fist weapons. I was thinking some tonfa, since I counter-attack and use elbow strikes so much."

Kohana shook her head, a visible smile of amusement on her face. "You know, I still can't believe you kept threat against me and the damage I was doing without even using a weapon."

"I'm just that good."

The dracan laughed. "And humble, too!"

Kohana's grin was almost too much—bright, teasing, and entirely too distracting. Elyssia ducked her head, pretending to focus on the leather she was wrapping around the tonfa's handle. Her fingers fumbled with the knot, and she cursed under her breath. Why did her hands feel so clumsy suddenly? She took a steadying breath, determined not to let Kohana see the blush creeping up her cheeks.

Kohana leaned sideways against a wooden pillar, her stance relaxed, eyes fixed on Elyssia's hands. The sylvani beamed at her, noticing how her colleague did not seem to have any other place she would rather be tonight. She decided not to mention anything about her observation, as she enjoyed the company.

She finished crafting the pair of tonfa in just a couple of minutes; it was a simple design. She tentatively spun the brand new weapon around, one in each hand, and nodded, satisfied with their weight and feel.

That'll do nicely for now.

As Elyssia ran her fingers over the smooth leather grip, pride and longing swirled together, a bittersweet ache in her chest. Here, in this world, she could create something beautiful, something useful. Here, her hands were steady, capable.

But there was bitterness, too—because it only reminded her of the hands waiting for her outside the game. Hands that felt too big, too clumsy, too wrong. She sighed, setting the weapons down carefully, as though afraid they would shatter under her touch.

"You have reached level eight for the Blacksmith class."

Well, at least the game recognised and rewarded her effort with measurable progress.

As the two left the guild, Kohana approached and asked, "Armourer now?"

Elyssia felt her sore muscles tighten at the hint of yet another workout with hammer and anvil. "Yeah…"

It took only moments to enter the Armourer's Guild, as it was this guild's direct neighbour. The northerner who ran the guild was a red-haired woman named Thora Shieldbreaker. She was every bit as intense as her name suggested. Elyssia spent the next hour flattening ingots into plates, and then bending them into pieces of armour or shields under her watchful eye, the clang of metal and the hiss of cooling water a soothing rhythm.

When they finally emerged, Elyssia looked down at her hands, now calloused and sore, and felt a strange sense of pride. She had reinforced both her boots and her gloves with armour plating, built something—literally and metaphorically. She was forging herself.

Elyssia also had Kohana doff what remained of her armour so she could repair it. She did her best not to blush at seeing the beautiful Dracan in nothing more than her underwear.

How is she not freezing?

"You have reached level four for the Armourer class."

After donning her armour back on, Kohana nudged Elyssia's shoulder, her grin softer now. "Not bad, Em. Not bad at all."

Elyssia glanced at her, the corner of her mouth quirking upward. "It's nothing. Repairing things is simple."

"I still think you'd look better swinging a hammer like mine, though," Kohana teased. "Just imagine it—us, side by side, smashing our way through anything that gets in our way."

Elyssia rolled her eyes, but the corner of her mouth betrayed her with a small smile. Kohana's teasing was relentless, and it made her forget how icy cold it was here in Frostspire. She hated how much she liked it. "I am happy sticking to my play style, pebble."

Kohana laughed, the sound echoing across the snowy expanse as they made their way toward the nearest bonfire. "Let's grab a bite and something to drink? You gotta try the regional stew they make here. It really slays."

Elyssia smiled warmly at her companion. Food and drinks with Soraya? She had had to survive a diet of tasteless food cubes for the last few months, all by herself. But now she could share another meal with someone?

They say lightning never strikes the same place twice, but today's my lucky day, I guess.

She hesitated, waiting for the other shoe to drop. But Kohana waited for her answer, anticipation plain on her face. She could not bear to turn her down. "I would love to. Lead the way?"

Even if this is just a game to her... does that make it wrong to enjoy the moment?

As they walked toward the bonfire, Kohana's laughter still echoing in her ears, Elyssia stole a glance at the dracan. The snow reflected the faint glow of the firelight on her white skin, and for a moment, the cold did not seem so biting. It scared her, how much she liked it—how much she liked her. But as the warmth of the bonfire flickered in the distance, Elyssia let herself feel it, just for a little while longer.

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