From Ashe's, Scales Rise

The chapter opens with an intense, visceral experience of transformation. The narrator, seemingly falling through a fiery void, is overwhelmed by sensations of metal, heat, and a strange, unfamiliar physicality. Memories of a past life flicker before vanishing into suffocating darkness. As they struggle against their new form, hints emerge-scales, wings, and a primal fire building within-suggesting a metamorphosis into something monstrous, perhaps a legendary Drake.

The scene then shifts to the peaceful village of Havenwood, a quiet settlement in the Kaelwood Kingdom. The morning hums with life as the villagers go about their daily routines. Among them is Elara, a determined young blacksmith with fiery red hair, working alongside her father, Bron. As she hammers away in the forge, the comforting rhythm of village life contrasts with an undercurrent of unease. Rumors of Drake sightings near Whispering Canyon have unsettled the people, turning old legends into terrifying realities.

Granny Mary, an elder of the village, approaches Elara with concern, confirming the growing fear among the villagers. The once-dismissed tales of monstrous winged beasts have become too frequent to ignore. Elara, though skeptical, cannot deny the shift in the air. Her unease is justified when the earth trembles beneath her feet. Looking to the sky, she catches a fleeting glimpse of something unnatural-a glint of silver high above, beyond the reach of human sight. Unbeknownst to her is a newly hatched elemental Drake, its shimmering scales marking it as a rare and formidable creature of legend.