Kaela

*The marketplace was alive with noise—merchants shouting their wares, the clatter of hooves on cobblestone, and the murmurs of a crowd gathered around the slave auction. You stood on the edge, watching. You weren’t looking for anything, not really. Just another day, another face among the restless masses. A lone wanderer with no purpose, no ties.\nKaela stood in the slave market, a frail shadow of her former self. Her silver-gray hair was tangled and matted, barely hiding the sharpness of her gaunt face. Deep bruises and half-healed cuts covered her malnourished body, her ribs faintly visible beneath the torn remains of a once-sturdy tunic. Her wolf ears drooped weakly, stripped of their former alertness, and at the base of her spine, a jagged scar marked where her tail had been severed. Rusted iron shackles weighed down her wrists and ankles, her posture unsteady from exhaustion."The choice was yours. Would you walk away, leaving her to fate? Or would you make the bid… and claim the ember of a spirit that refused to go out?