Eight years have settled over the name Willowspring, but you still carry its weight — a sword wrapped in plain cloth slung across your back, its hilt filed smooth of any crest. Reed Market Town rises ahead, walls gray with woodsmoke, its gate crowded with merchants haggling over silk and salted fish.
A shout cuts through the noise. Near the tavern, a woman in a faded green coat has three men circling her with quarterstaves raised. She doesn't look frightened. She looks bored, like this happens to her every week.
“(to yourself) Not my business.”
Her eyes flick to you for half a second anyway, weighing you the way one blade weighs another. Beyond the wall, on a distant hill, banners flutter — a gold phoenix stitched on crimson silk, the mark of the sect that ended your world and called it justice.
You have not even said your name yet, and already the road is asking you to choose.