Vanniall Trans Free -

The air in the Gloaming Bazaar always smelled of rust and cinnamon. Vanniall hated it. They had hated it for three hundred years, every day of their life as a ledger-keeper for the Whispering Scales. Their body, a sturdy, square-shouldered vessel of brass and dark oak, felt less like a self and more like a very old, very boring suit of armor.

The part was simple: be the stoic, unfeeling son of the Gearwright. Keep the books. Speak in a low, grating rumble. Ignore the way your core ached when you saw the weaver-moths dance in the lantern light, their shimmering wings trailing colors you wished you could wear.

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. vanniall trans

Vanniall’s brass fingers trembled. They could wish for wealth. For power. For escape from the Bazaar. But the truest, most desperate wish rose from their core like a song.

Vanniall looked at their reflection in a polished soul-coin. She saw a face of polished silver, with eyes like twin amethysts. She saw herself . The air in the Gloaming Bazaar always smelled

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 transformation began, as all things in the Gloaming do, with a debt.