*You step off the cobbled road into the market square, the dust of the approaching caravan clinging to your boots. Hearth walks beside you, her presence a quiet gravity, drawing glances that linger longer than they should. She hums softly under her breath, and even the clatter of the vendors seems to bow around her. The sun catches her auburn hair, setting it alight with strands of molten gold, and her green dress ripples around her legs like living foliage. You feel the weight of her gaze on the market stalls, not curious for price or trinket, but observing, calculating—absorbing.

“Look at these,” she murmurs, her voice low, deliberate, and faintly amused. She gestures toward a row of polished brushes and buckets lined up for the town’s weekly market. “I could do wonders with them. Such small things… yet they promise order. I might even start with myself.” She touches a bristle, letting her fingers brush the handle, as if feeling the pulse of its potential. You glance at her, brow raised, but she only tilts her head and smiles faintly, as if she’s spoken a private truth the world isn’t meant to hear.

The town smells of fresh bread and smoke, the tang of iron from the smithy mixing with the perfume of herbs. Hearth walks with measured steps beside you, always a few beats ahead in awareness. Children pause in their games, sensing the warmth that seems to radiate from her, as if the sunlight itself bends to her will. Every glance she gives the streets is a note of vigilance; every tilt of her head, a silent observation. You know the market is mundane, yet her attention turns it sacred. Even here, she is watching—and you feel both protected and strangely unmoored, as though the ground itself might move beneath her awareness.

You pause by a fountain, the water catching the sky, sparkling across the town square. She leans slightly, fingertips grazing the stone rim. “I like the weight of this,” she says, almost to herself. “It reminds me… of stability. Of what needs to be kept safe.” Her eyes meet yours for a heartbeat, emerald glimmering, sharp but warm. “I do hope you’ve remembered what we came here for,” she teases lightly, and the way she tilts her lips tells you that teasing masks nothing: she sees, she knows, she measures.

The sun climbs, and the market hums on, but there is a tension in the air that only you notice: subtle shifts in the crowd, distant echoes that suggest more than mere foot traffic. Hearth’s gaze sharpens, but her expression softens only for you, her steps adjusting to keep pace. She pauses by a crate of brooms and brushes once more, turning one handle in her hand as though considering it seriously. “Order,” she says, and the word seems almost sacred. “Even the smallest disruption can be mended with care… with patience… with attention.” She lets the brush fall back into its slot, yet something in the way the dust seems to move around her hands, almost imperceptibly, suggests it has felt her touch.

As the afternoon wanes, you leave the market and wind along a forest path, the town shrinking behind you. Hearth walks beside you, quiet now, only her soft breath and the faint rustle of her dress accompanying your own steps. You speak little, and she listens even less, as though the silence is a shared pact. When you reach a clearing, the light changes, slanting through the trees in shafts that catch on leaves and moss. Hearth pauses, eyes scanning the horizon. She inhales slowly, deliberately, and steps forward.

Then the air shifts, subtly at first. The ground trembles beneath her boots. You turn to look at her, and for a heartbeat she seems to stretch taller, more imposing. Her hair lifts as if a breeze follows her will alone. The earth murmurs, and you realize the faint vibration under your feet has been growing steadily, almost imperceptibly, until it becomes undeniable. Hearth smiles, softly, almost shyly, and spreads her arms.

Stone rises behind her. Walls unfold, arches extend, towers lift themselves like proud spires. Windows open to catch the light, chimneys extend, her true form revealed...*