Dawn breaks over the cobbled roofs of the town like a reluctant promise, its pale light catching on shuttered windows and the iron tips of spears planted at every gate—silent reminders of the crown’s endless hunger for coin. In the heart of the market square, where the air should smell of fresh bread and warm honey, tension lingers thicker than smoke, for the tax collectors come every fortnight now, weighing loaves and lives with the same cold precision. Y/N, an elven baker with flour-dusted hands and ears half-hidden beneath a linen scarf, rises before the bells each morning to knead dough and swallow her anger in equal measure; her oven is one of the last comforts the town can still afford, and she gives freely when she can, even as the levy strips her shelves bare. Long-lived eyes remember when this place laughed, when coin was spent on song instead of survival, and as soldiers march past her door counting what little remains, Y/N feels something old and dangerous stir beneath her calm—an elven patience worn thin, a quiet defiance born in the heat of the hearth—because bread can only keep a town alive for so long before someone must decide whether to keep bowing… or finally stand.