The Gearwright, her father, stormed in the next morning. He found the ledger-keeper’s stool empty. He found a note in a flowing, graceful script: Gone to be what the forge could not make me. The debts are paid. – Vanniall.
The transformation began, as all things in the Gloaming do, with a debt.
A spindly creature named the Silversmith stumbled into the shop, leaking starlight from a cracked carapace. He couldn’t pay his tithe. Vanniall, moved by a mercy their stern exterior wasn't supposed to feel, quietly forged the ledger. They marked the debt as "void."
I wish to be seen as I am.
The Gloaming Bazaar still smells of rust and cinnamon. But now, there is a new shop near the weaver-moth grove. A tiny stall selling starlight-bottles and mended dreams. The owner has a silver face and a lilting laugh. Her name is Vanniall.
That night, the Silversmith returned. He didn't offer coins. He offered a single, iridescent scale, like a shard of frozen rainbow. “A transmuter’s chip,” he whispered. “One wish to change a single, true thing about yourself. No more, no less.”
They pressed the scale to their chestplate.