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  Time in the village dragged like thick resin, yet the changes were as relentless as the turning seasons. Three Imperial soldiers, once a foreign blight, had taken root in the landscape. They patrolled the dust-choked streets, brought cracked blades to Karbun for repair, and silently drank ale in the corner of the local tavern. They knew of Violetta—they saw the fox ears that twitched at the slightest noise and the tail hidden beneath her cloak. But as common soldiers, not fanatics of the Order of Light, they treated her with a mix of indifference and blatant condescension.

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  Yet the most profound changes—the ones that forced Violetta into hiding—were happening within. For the twenty-year-old man locked inside this vessel, it was the ultimate trial. More grueling than magic, hunger, or combat. Every day brought new sensations, as if the body were rebuilding itself according to an invisible blueprint, ignoring his internal resistance.

  This body did not behave like a human one; it knew no hesitation or biological chaos. It lived by a clinical, overly ordered algorithm.

  “I knew my body would change, becoming female,” he thought, feeling a wave of dissonance as he looked at his reflection in a rainwater puddle. “But... why is it becoming so... perfect?”

  Her already pale skin had taken on a porcelain smoothness, like silk that had never known a scar. Her hair, now reaching her waist, wasn't merely white—it reflected light so vividly it looked like fresh-fallen snow dusted with diamond powder.

  But the proportions were the strangest part. This wasn't random growth. Her waist narrowed as if cinched by an invisible corset, while her hips rounded into a shape his male mind could only describe as "too flawless." Her gait became graceful, the body learning an elegance he hadn't asked for. And then, the breasts. Small, firm, but undeniably there. They caused waves of discomfort every time fabric brushed against her skin.

  His mind tried to panic and detach. He knew what female breasts were—he’d seen them on screens and in books in his old world—but feeling them become an inseparable part of himself felt fundamentally... wrong. Every curve seemed not a biological accident, but the work of a sculptor obsessed with perfection. It was harmonious. Exquisite. And entirely alien.

  Violetta changed. She became cautious, learning to hide her tail beneath long skirts and her ears under deep, herb-scented hoods. But now she wasn't just hiding her non-human traits from the gossiping villagers. She was hiding herself from this perfect body that lived by its own inscrutable laws.

  At night, lying on her straw pallet, she would touch her skin and wonder: “Am I... still me? And if not... then who am I?”

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  Her mastery grew. In Karbun’s forge, she no longer tried to match the dwarf’s raw strength. Instead, she focused on what she did best: unnatural precision and minute detail. Under his gaze, she created silver earrings shaped like lightwings that shimmered as if in flight, and brooches that mimicked frost on glass.

  “You could be the richest woman in the Empire, little fox,” Karbun would grunt. “But remember: to the world, this is just 'amazing work.' No one must know how you do it. Your magic is a secret that can save or kill.”

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  With Lukia, she began to practice in earnest. Her healing gift grew certain, her mana threads obedient as guided streams. She helped deliver babies in huts filled with screams and the scent of iron; she treated deep axe wounds and brewed complex decoctions.

  Once, she saved an Imperial soldier. He’d encountered a maddened fiend in the woods. When they brought him to Lukia, his shoulder was shredded, and he was delirious with a black, rotting venom. For hours, Violetta wove her mana, extracting the filth and mending the flesh. The soldier survived, his wound closing without a scar. He never thanked her aloud, but he stopped looking down at her. Sometimes, he would even nod as he passed, a flicker of respect in his eyes.

  But not all blights yielded to magic. A new threat arrived not from the woods, but with the refugees from the East. It was the "Black Wasting." The first to fall was a gaunt man with sunken eyes. His body was eclipsed by pulsing black blotches; he coughed blood until his lungs tore apart. He burned out in three days.

  The healing magic was powerless—the disease eroded the body faster than they could restore it. The mana threads simply dissolved in the miasma. The soldiers, terrified, burned the body far outside the village, the black smoke carrying the stench of charred meat.

  The shadow deepened. The forest became a thicket of snapping bones. Shadows lurked in the brush, waiting for a turned back. When a group of youths—including Bohdan, now a tall, stubborn young man—went to hunt a marauding boar, Violetta felt a premonition.

  She followed them unseen. It happened just as she feared. The boar was a titan with yellow tusks. It scattered the boys like kittens and cornered Bohdan in a ravine. As the beast charged for the kill, Violetta didn't hesitate. She didn't speak.

  She raised her hand. A long, thin needle of metal formed from the air, shimmering and keen. With a faint hiss, it streaked through the branches and took the boar through the eye, piercing the skull. The massive carcass crashed a foot from Bohdan.

  Violetta vanished before the others arrived. They found only the dead beast and a shaken Bohdan. As they hauled the carcass away, Bohdan noticed a glint in a tree trunk. It was a metal needle that had passed entirely through the boar’s head. He pried it out and wordlessly slipped it into his pocket, his gaze drifting toward the rustling forest. He said nothing, but he understood.

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  Rumors grew darker. Corpse-eaters circled the village constantly. Travelers claimed the Empire was failing to hold the East. They spoke of the One-Blood Pass being cut off by a gargantuan wall built day and night upon the bones of thousands.

  One morning, a messenger arrived on a foundering horse. He delivered the order to the three soldiers: “By Imperial decree! All forces withdraw to the New Wall!” The soldiers packed in silence and rode away without a word. The village was left naked under a cold wind.

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  A week before her fourteenth birthday, Violetta sat beneath the old oak. Autumn clung to the world, refusing to yield to winter. A heavy mist lay over the village like a shroud.

  “Winter is afraid to come,” the villagers whispered. “An ill omen.”

  A suffocating silence reigned, broken only by the anxious barking of dogs and the distant rustle of leathery wings. Todyr and Karbun tried to organize a night watch with the few men left. Lukia, clinging to normalcy, prepared ingredients for a birthday cake.

  Violetta watched the forest. She could feel the purple crystal hidden in the abandoned wagons—it was pulsing harder than ever, like a heart in a panic. It was calling her.

  A cold, greasy fog began to roll out of the ravines, smelling of damp rot and distant sorrow. Two girls who had gone for firewood had not returned.

  She didn't know exactly what was coming, but her entire being felt the approach of something monstrous. Her tail twitched, her ears pricked, and the mana in her chest ignited, ready for the coming storm.