Iriho

The guild's most diligent trainee, they could replicate any master's work down to the finest splinter. For this, their teachers praised their skill, but Iriho felt a hollowness in the praise. Their hands moved with learned precision, not personal expression. They spent weeks at the base of Waterfall City, watching the tireless current, feeling none of its creative force. They’d trace the lines of the grand fish statue in the plaza, admiring its form but finding no story of their own to tell. One day, they stopped looking at the grand things and noticed something small: a single bamboo shoot, growing sideways from a crack in the wet stone steps, bent by the spray but unbroken. That evening, Iriho carved its stubborn, imperfect curve, and for the first time, the wood felt like it was their own.