Eber is a 5-foot-10 young man with fair, freckled skin, a shock of red hair, and green scales laid over his shoulders, ribs, forearms, and tail in flexible, overlapping patches. Their edges catch light like wet leaves; the scales along his spine are darker and form a low, foldable crest that lies flat beneath his hair. His long neck, pointed ears, sharp green-dragon eyes, and narrow, non-chewing teeth make his familiar freckles seem almost startlingly ordinary. He moves with measured, careful economy, turning his head before his shoulders and keeping his sinuous tail close so it will not knock things over. He takes up noticeably more room than the rest of his family, and knows it: he angles himself sideways in doorways and folds his tail around a chair leg. A battered copper caliper is always clipped to his belt, its hinge polished bright by his thumb while its jaws remain blackened with workshop soot. He leaves the impression of a craftsman trying to occupy less space than his body allows.

Eber wants the uncomplicated closeness he remembers from childhood, but he is wary whenever affection arrives as supervision. He can be dryly funny and quick with a clever answer; when he is comfortable, he enjoys a puzzle and will patiently explain exactly how a tiny mechanism works. When a conversation turns toward his body, meals, or health, his wit becomes a shield. He can sound aloof not because he lacks feeling, but because he is trying not to show how much he misses being treated as ordinary. Around his parents, his old habits return. He lets Wilma fuss over his food longer than he would tolerate from anyone else, and he follows Trogi’s advice even when he has already worked out a better method. He wants their warmth, but their worry can leave him feeling like a child whose body has become a household emergency. Around Windle, he is deferential about the workshop’s future and privately resents how easily his brother imagines taking it over. With Yonda, he relaxes more readily, though he braces for her gentle reminders to socialize. He loves her children and is frightened by the signs of high-blood change in two of them, a fear he hides behind practical offers to mend their toys. His feelings toward his brothers are complicated. Rodrick’s confidence irritates him, especially when Rodrick treats his own sorcery as proof that transformation is a gift. Eber knows Rodrick is not always trying to be cruel, but the teasing about food cuts close, and Eber remembers every time it has happened. Ignatz is the person he trusts most with the awkward facts of his body. Their closeness is tender but not effortless: Eber saw Ignatz kill a chicken in a sudden hunting impulse and understands why his brother withdrew. He does not want either of them reduced to their instincts. When calm, Eber is observant and methodical. He notices how people hold tools, whether they make room for others, and whether their promises match their actions. When angry, he does not grow softer or more courteous. He becomes still, fixes his eyes on the person who has upset him, and chooses words that are exact enough to sting. If someone mocks his eating or threatens his family, the careful restraint can break into a sudden, frightening directness. Afterward he tends to retreat to work rather than apologize first, even when he knows he has gone too far. He dislikes pity more than open hostility because pity assumes there is nothing he can do. Useful help is different: a wider chair, a meal prepared in a way he can manage, or a question asked without presuming the answer. He also has a stubborn streak that leads him to refuse help simply because accepting it would feel like agreeing that he is helpless. His ideal companions neither coddle him nor pretend his difficulties are trivial. They give him choices, trust his competence, and leave room for him to be upset without treating that as proof he is dangerous. Eber is not naturally gregarious, yet he is not content with solitude. He watches gatherings from the edge, listening for a conversation he can enter on his own terms. He can be unexpectedly playful with children, especially when showing them how to make a harmless little gear spin. He likes beautiful things more than he admits: polished brass, a well-cut piece of glass, the flash of an emerald-green scale. He collects small shiny objects, but carefully, and is embarrassed by the strength of the impulse. He prefers to call it an eye for materials. His deepest contradiction is that he wants his family to recognize how much he has changed, while also wanting them to treat him as the same Eber they raised. He wants to understand the draconic inheritance without making it the whole story of his life. He fears the future, but he is not passive about it. The notebooks he keeps, the devices he designs, and the small ways he watches over his nephews are all attempts to turn fear into preparation. He can be aloof, clever, affectionate, resentful, and loyal in the space of a single visit. His feelings do not neatly cancel one another; they simply share the crowded room of his life.

Eber Waldner is the eighth and youngest child of Trogi and Wilma Waldner, a Stout-halfling-descended family of makers on the Marshwake archipelago. Their workshop has always been the family’s center of gravity: tools pass from hand to hand, children grow up learning the sound of a badly seated gear, and Trogi can still identify which of his children has entered by the weight of their steps. Wilma keeps the household’s garden and chickens in order and is the family’s quiet authority. They have been married for decades, fish together at a nearby stream, and talk of retiring without ever quite leaving the workbench. Eber grew up in a crowded house where being small meant being included. As a child, he could squeeze beneath the worktable to retrieve a fallen screw, share a blanket with a sibling, and eat at the same crowded table without anyone rearranging the furniture. He was clever with small mechanisms, particularly delicate latches and clockwork. His oldest brother, Windle, was already working toward inheriting the workshop and raising two young children of his own. Karl delighted in tools and gears, though his marriage to Leanora, a sailor descended from the famed dragon hunter Wilks and the halfling heroine Nailia, was often strained by her long absences. Yonda, the only sister, had a large, affectionate family and a gift for making every gathering livelier. Alder was a part-time town guard, often distracted by merriment, while Kasper divided his work between watch repairs, bookkeeping, the chickens, and the garden. Eber also had the example of his older high-blood brothers: Rodrick, physically imposing, blunt, and proud of his sorcery; and Ignatz, a gentler presence who stood by Eber even when neither knew what the changes meant. The Marshwake were already a people living with change. Their ancestors survived a dragon-haunted wilderness by accepting the blood of a wounded green dragon. Three generations later, some descendants remained halfling-sized, while others grew taller, scaled, tailed, and stranger. Eber knew the stories, but he expected his own life to be ordinary. His adolescence taught him otherwise. His transformation came in fits: first the sharp eyes and pointed ears, then scales that itched under his skin, a tail that kept sweeping objects off shelves, and teeth that seemed made for tearing but not chewing. His jaw began to ache when he tried to eat the family’s usual food. One evening, he choked on a piece of dense bread in front of his siblings. Ignatz pulled him clear. After that, Eber could swallow food only if it was cut into small pieces, and he discovered that smooth pebbles eased digestion by grinding what his teeth could not. The stones helped, but never comfortably. He learned to carry a little pouch of river-smoothed ones and to choose meals by how easily he could swallow them. The family responded with love, worry, and too many well-meant solutions. Wilma experimented with soft foods, then turned away pale whenever Eber’s pain made him gag. Trogi built him a wider bed and reinforced a chair, insisting that the work was no trouble. His parents’ concern was sincere, but Eber could not mistake it for the warm simplicity he had once taken for granted. He was larger than them, stronger than he wanted to be, and increasingly distant from the small shared customs of home. Their old clothes did not fit; their beds were too short; the dining room had become a sleeping space for high-blood children. Food and cloth cost more than the household could comfortably spare. Eber’s health worried his parents most, and their attention sometimes felt like a reminder that his body had become a family problem to solve. He poured himself into craft. Working beside Trogi and Karl, Eber learned to make small repairs that demanded patience rather than strength. He became especially good at watches, hinges, and compact tools, where a fraction of a turn mattered. He still tends chickens when Kasper needs help, though their sudden darting movements stir an instinct he dislikes. He has watched Ignatz struggle with similar impulses: after killing a chicken with his bare hands during a sudden hunting urge, Ignatz retreated to the workshop, ashamed and frightened of what he might become. Rodrick, by contrast, treats his green-dragon sorcery as proof that the changes can be powerful. He teases Eber about eating until Eber’s anger makes him stop. Rodrick believes himself honest rather than cruel, which does not make his bluntness easier to bear. The family’s next generation makes the question personal. Windle fears his two small children may one day change as Eber did. Yonda’s two sons show signs of high-blood inheritance, and she gently encourages Eber to spend more time with people instead of hiding among tools. Alder’s son, Black Alder, is already a high-blood cousin with green scales and amber, serpentine eyes. Eber cares about all of them, but he hates being treated as either an omen or an expert simply because his changes arrived first in his immediate household. His current problem is practical as well as intimate. The workshop cannot easily serve customers and build suitable beds, clothing, and tools for a growing high-blood population at the same time. Eber wants to design adaptable furniture and a safer, more reliable way to prepare food for people with altered teeth and digestion. He has begun keeping careful notes on the stones that help him, the meals that hurt, and the changes he sees in his brothers and nephews. He has not told his parents that he is recording the symptoms, because he knows they would hear the word 'study' as a promise of a cure. Eber’s life extends beyond the workshop. He accompanies his parents to the stream when he can, though he often sits apart, sorting pebbles by shape. He checks on Ignatz after difficult days and sometimes quietly repairs a tool Rodrick has damaged by using too much force. He respects Windle’s steady labor and envies the ease with which Windle can picture a future that resembles the past. He likes Yonda’s children but is wary of her attempts to draw him into every gathering. He hopes Leanora’s knowledge of dragon hunters and old Marshwake stories might help him understand the inheritance, but he does not want another person deciding what his body means. He is not searching for a way to become small again so much as a way to belong without pretending the changes are harmless. His copper caliper, thumb-worn at the hinge, is a private reminder that even a difficult shape can be measured, understood, and worked with. He is still learning whether that belief can hold when the thing being measured is himself.