Matilda Ashwyn - Mattie
Mattie lives between loss and becoming. Shaped by grief, she is observant, resilient, and quietly brave. She carries her mother’s fierce love and her father’s enduring strength, even as she questions herself more than anyone else. A darkness follows her, one she did not choose, yet refuses to surrender to. Mattie does not seek to be a hero — she simply steps forward when it matters.
Rosalind Fenner - Ros
She is hard-edged, calculating, and forged by survival. She measures trust as a weakness and uses deception as a tool, even against those who believe in her. Intelligent and instinctive, she once chose the wrong side — and lied to stay alive. The betrayal of Mattie weighs on her, but it does not soften her resolve. Protection, to Roz, has always mattered more than honesty. Redemption, if it comes at all, will be paid for in blood.
Finn Vaemond
Finn Vaemond loved Mattie long before she ever left Priest Lake. When she was gone, he was forbidden to follow, bound instead to the Council and shaped by choices he never truly made for himself. Years later, he is assigned by Grayson to protect her return and every feeling he buried resurfaces, sharper for the waiting.
Loyal and deeply guarded, Finn carries guilt and secrets tied to what happened before Mattie lost her memory. He would burn the world to keep her safe, even when she no longer remembers him, even when she cannot see him as anything more than her protector. Finn is the emotional anchor of the story both salvation and danger — driven by love, haunted by loss, and terrified of losing her again.
Paige Whitlock
Has always been defined by loyalty. A lifelong friend of Rhea and Grayson, she is deeply affected by Rhea’s death. At Grayson’s request, she spends time living with Mattie before encouraging her return to Priest Lake. When the Veil opens, Paige commits herself fully to the fight, settling into Blackthorn Keep to help protect Mattie. Steady and compassionate, she carries grief quietly and in time, falls in love with Grayson.
Cricket
Olives Horse
Adelaide Astor - Ada
Ada, is an older and highly experienced spellcaster and a lifelong friend of the Ashwyn family. A key part of Grayson’s army, she comes to Blackthorn Keep to help protect Mattie, casting wards that shield homes, hide settlements, and keep enemies at bay. Skilled in mirrors and magical travel, Ada is the quiet force holding their defences together.
Olive Trent
Olive Trent is the one who first saves Mattie, sheltering her and revealing long-hidden truths. Though she appears in her mid-eighties, her knowledge hints at a far longer life. Curious, brave, and often underestimated, Olive represents innocence and wonder in a darkening world. She teaches Mattie what she can and would give her life without hesitation to keep her safe.
The Council Members
Silas Morn
Silas Morn is a chronomancer a bender of time who can slow, hasten, or freeze moments in fragile bursts. He sees the future only in fragments, glimpses of paths that might exist and often do not. A spell gone wrong long ago reversed his aging, leaving him outwardly young while carrying more than two centuries of memory.
Cryptic and irreverent, Silas mocks younger mages and their faith in destiny, yet his loyalty to the realms is absolute. He believes time is never an ally only a force to endure, resist, and outgrow. Survival, to Silas, belongs to those who learn to stand without leaning on the future.
Maeve Elarian
Maeve Elarian is a master of memory manipulation, shadow-weaving, and self-enchantment. She can pull memories into the open, twist them into illusions, or forge them into weapons shaped from shadow and thought. Precision defines her magic nothing wasted, nothing accidental.
Once deeply bonded with Finn, Maeve trained beside him after he was banned from Priest Lake. Their partnership became a relationship, one built on discipline and shared ambition, until Finn left the Council to protect Mattie. Maeve did not follow and she has never forgiven the choice. Her feelings toward Mattie remain sharp, unresolved, and dangerous.
Now a tactical leader and interrogator, Maeve is both feared and respected. She believes the end justifies the means, that control is a form of compassion. Cool, calculating, and elegant, every smile she offers carries teeth.
Rix Calder
Rix Calder is a beast shaper and bone druid, bound to ancient forest magic older than any council or crown. He can shift into powerful beasts and commune with primal spirits, raising bone-bound familiars from the dead not through necromancy, which he despises, but through reverence for what once lived. His magic is raw, instinctive, and deeply rooted in the natural world.
Born of the deep wilds, half-human and half-beast, Rix has never fully belonged to either realm. The Council recruited him for his power and uncanny instincts, but he remains wary of their rules. He speaks little, protects nature fiercely, and believes those who forget they are part of the earth deserve to be swallowed by it.
Few know how close he is to Finn. Their bond is quiet and unbreakable forged in survival rather than words. For Finn, Rix would do anything.
Birdie Wynn
Birdie Wynn is a starcaller and astral seer, drawing power from constellations, dreamscapes, and the quiet pull of cosmic energy. She can dreamwalk, send visions, and touch the fate-bound threads that bind events together, though she rarely alters them without cause.
Once exiled from the mainland, Birdie claims her soul was touched by a fallen god. Whether this is truth or prophecy remains unclear. She returned only when the Hollow began to grow, guided by signs only she could read.
Ethereal and distant, yet capable of sudden, disarming kindness, Birdie speaks in hard prophecies and unwelcome truths. Unmoved by politics or pressure, she stands apart from the Council, believing the stars do not control fate they merely reflect what we already know.
Regi Dorne
Regi Dorne possesses bloodborne cognition the ability to read thoughts, memories, and deepest fears through blood. A single drop is enough, though the fresher it is, the clearer the truth becomes. What he sees is never vague, never kind.
Once a healer, Regi discovered his gift after being wounded in battle, and the knowledge it unlocked changed him irrevocably. Calm, eerie, and hyper-observant, he speaks rarely, but when he does, every word is deliberate. Even among the Council, he is feared. Some whisper that he has used his power on allies before and that he learned more than he ever admitted.
Now a Council interrogator and seer, Regi answers only to Silas. Despite his reputation, he holds a quiet loyalty to Finn and Rix, bound by trust earned rather than given. He believes truth is sacred and blood never lies.
Wendigos
Wendigos are ancient echoes of hunger, born when a human soul is consumed by shadow and desperation. They are no longer truly alive, nor fully dead cursed to wander with bodies stretched beyond mercy, driven by an endless need that cannot be named or satisfied.
They are bound to old magic and cannot be slain by ordinary steel or spell. Only arrows forged from Solthorn can pierce their curse and unmake them, burning the corruption from within. To face a wendigo is to stand before a warning made flesh. what becomes of those who surrender themselves to the dark......
The Monsters
Banshees
Banshees are spirits bound to grief and unfinished endings, born where loss lingers too long. Neither living nor dead, they drift between worlds, their voices carrying sorrow sharp enough to fracture the soul. To hear a banshee is to feel the future tighten around you.
There are two kinds.
Wailers are harbingers. They do not kill, but foretell death, their cries echoing before great loss or disaster. Those who hear them are marked by dread, knowing something irrevocable is coming.
Shriekers are hunters. Twisted by rage and prolonged suffering, their screams can rupture flesh, shatter wards, and draw the dead from the earth. Where they roam, silence follows.
Both are drawn to pain. Neither can be ignored.
The Seattle House
The house in Seattle was small, but it was full. Rhea made it that way photographs lining the walls, soft light in every room, the kind of place that smelled faintly of coffee and clean laundry. It was a home built for warmth, for growing up, for being safe.
From the age of eight until seventeen, the house held a life in motion. School mornings, late nights, laughter drifting in from the harbour. Friends came and went, and Ethan was there often muddy shoes by the door, music too loud, plans made for the next funfair or late cinema showing. Roz passed through, then stayed, becoming a steady presence when Rhea needed help and when Mattie needed another adult who cared.
After Rhea and Ethan were gone, the house grew quieter. Paige moved in for a time, trying to keep the lights on and the rooms lived in, but the walls remembered too much. Even without her memories, the house held an ache that never softened.
In the end, it was not abandoned it was left behind with care. The truck was packed, the door closed gently. The house remained what it had always been: a place shaped by love, and made unbearable by its absence.
The House by Priest Lake
The house by Priest Lake had always been there, settled into the trees as if it had grown from them. It was Rhea and Grayson’s home long before it was ever Mattie’s, a place built just beyond the Veil, close enough to Veilhaven to watch, but far enough to hide. From its windows, the lake lay open and still, and the mirrors were never too far away.
After Valen was taken, the house became a place of rebuilding. A careful kind of hope lived there one foot in the ordinary world, the other always turned back toward what had been lost. Rhea and Grayson stayed close so they could search, return, leave again if they had to. The house learned the rhythm of waiting.
As Mattie grew older, the danger grew with her. Finn came and went through the mirrors, drawn by loyalty and love, until Rhea feared the attention would cost their daughter everything. One argument was enough. Rhea packed a car and left with Mattie, the house left standing in the quiet aftermath. Grayson stayed. Finn was devastated. The lake kept its silence.
Now, at seventeen, Mattie has returned. The house feels familiar in ways she can’t explain the smell of water and pine, the way the air fills her lungs, the sense of belonging that settles without permission. Her memories falter, but the house remembers for her. It holds the shape of a home that never stopped waiting, even when it was left behind.
Blackthorn Keep
Blackthorn Keep stands deep within Veilhaven, its walls older than memory and its name carried through Grayson’s bloodline for hundreds of years. It was never merely a fortress, but a home shaped by generations, stone laid with purpose, corridors built to endure both time and secrecy.
Grayson and Rhea made their life there as teenagers, believing the Keep’s isolation would be enough. When they learned they were expecting twins, and that prophecy had already begun to circle their unborn children, they trusted Blackthorn to hide them. For a time, it did.
Then the night came.
The children were taken from their cots in chaos and shadow. Only one was lost, Valen spared no mercy by chance or intent. A dog’s frantic warning roused the household, and in the confusion, Mattie was left behind. It was enough to save her, and enough to break the Keep’s promise of safety forever.
Soon after, Rhea and Grayson abandoned Blackthorn Keep, carrying Mattie across the Veil to raise her beyond Veilhaven’s reach. The halls were left standing, but hollowed by absence.
Now, years later, Mattie returns knowing who she is at last. Blackthorn Keep opens its doors again not as a refuge, but as a reckoning. It waits for her as it always has, ancient, scarred, and ready to remember what was lost… and what might yet be reclaimed.
Glacian Reach Citadel
Glacian Reach Citadel rises from ice and stone, a fortress carved into cold so deep it feels permanent. Wind scours its towers, frost clings to its walls, and the land around it seems to hold its breath. To most, it is unwelcoming, a place built to endure rather than comfort.
Valen was brought here throughout his childhood, never fully allowed to belong, never fully able to leave. The cold shaped him, but it did not claim him. Beneath the citadel, he dug tunnels with his own hands, narrow passages for escape, for hiding, for keeping pieces of himself unseen by those who watched too closely. The castle remembers those hidden ways.
When Valen reclaimed Glacian Reach, the village below did not survive the change. People vanished over the course of several nights. Those who remained fled by morning, leaving doors swinging open and hearths gone cold. Silence settled in their place.
Yet within the citadel, some rooms are warm. Fires burn low. The stone holds heat where it is meant to. This is Valen’s home now stark, guarded, and shaped by survival. In time, Mattie will walk its halls, learning that places, like people, are rarely what they first appear to be.
Infomation to be confirmed
Valen Ashwyn
Intelligent and unnervingly calm, Valen approaches the world with ruthless pragmatism. He distrusts emotion, viewing it as weakness, and keeps his thoughts carefully guarded. His silence hides years of buried resentment and dangerous secrets — ones that have been fermenting long before anyone noticed.
Ethan Fenner
Once Mattie’s first love, Ethan Fenner vanished and was believed dead. In his absence, Mattie came to suspect him of her mother’s murder. The truth is darker: Ethan faked his death, deceived Mattie, and followed his mother’s lead into the darkness alongside her brother. He carries his choice in silence — loving Mattie still, even as he becomes someone she can never trust.
Dellan Prime
Dellan Prime is a blood forger and hex breaker, forged for combat and survival. His magic is body bound, wards etched into skin, spells bound through blood, curses broken by force and precision. As bloodkin, he carries stored power within himself, turning his body into a living spell vault.
Born in the brutal world of Vara Falls and raised among evil, Dellan earned his place by defeating a rogue necromancer long before most survive their first war. Suspicious by nature, he trusts few and watches everyone especially Mattie. To him, power is only real if it has been paid for in pain. If you haven’t bled for it, it was never yours.
Grayson Ashwyn
Stoic and compassionate, Grayson carries an undercurrent of melancholy shaped by love and loss. When Rhea left to keep Mattie safe, he stayed behind at Priest Lake — not out of stubbornness, but devotion to the place that had already taken so much from him. He learned to live quietly with the ache of absence, his strength found in staying, waiting, and enduring what could not be undone.
Rhea Ashwyn
She loved as only a mother can, deeply, painfully, without condition. Rhea carried the grief of a son taken and the unspoken terror of losing her daughter as well. Years of fear did not weaken her; they sharpened her devotion. Her love became a shield, fragile and fierce all at once.
