Vaerthir

Vaerthir’s earliest memory is a night when the tribe’s drums stuttered and the sky shattered with the red of a blood moon. They were a cub in a hunter’s tribe of Leonin, raised among prizing patterns and ritual aggression, the sort of society that believed the omen meant a future steeped in conflict and change. Vaerthir’s autism and ADHD manifest differently in their life: a mind that can parse a thousand micro-muzzles of sound and texture, a memory that leaps between tiny details, a rapid-fire stream of stay-on-task focus in moments of danger, and a need for sensory input that sometimes becomes a loud storm. They learned quickly to weave this into a survival toolkit: noticing a slight shift in a hunter’s stance, predicting a rival’s movements, reading the room before stepping into it. Yet their mind also learned to run before it could walk, to chase patterns that others did not yet see, a habit that made them appear distant or odd to others who could not follow their thought process. The tribe, frightened by their lunar omen, turned to excision or exile; the fear of Vaerthir turning power into harm kept them from becoming a full member of the tribe’s leadership. In that moment of cultural fear, Kaelen appeared as if from nowhere, a tall figure with quiet confidence and a secret: a member of a broader conspiracy, the Cerebus Assembly, who could see both the danger and the potential in Vaerthir. Kaelen approached with a careful tenderness, not shying from the truth that Vaerthir’s powers were dangerous, but insisting that power without discipline would be their doom. What began as an unlikely partnership soon hardened into a fragile bond. Kaelen, who knew the truth about Cerebus Assembly, chose to protect Vaerthir rather than surrender them to the organization’s attempts to control or weaponize their magic. They forged a fragile alliance: a mentor who was not wholly loyal to the Assembly, yet bound to Vaerthir by a promise to keep them safe. The price of such protection was steep. Cerebus operatives began to haunt the pair, relentless in their pursuit of Vaerthir and the secrets of their blood-moon magic. Each encounter turned Vaerthir’s life into a chess game, where the board shifts with every moonrise and the stakes are life or a future where magic becomes a chain. The prophecy looms as more than a myth. Some elders whisper of a night when the Blood Moon Child will either bind the two worlds or tear them apart, and Cerebus believes Vaerthir’s power is the key. Vaerthir’s life is now a delicate balance between staying hidden and stepping into the light when the moment calls for it. They seek to master their magic, trust a handful of allies, and carve out a path that neither the Assembly nor the tribe can easily predict. Their body is a map of scars and rings of fur that tell stories of battles, both literal and political. Their mind, though sometimes sprinting with hyperfocus, carries a rare form of perception—the ability to see the world in threads and patterns that others miss. They have learned to use this to their advantage, to predict an opponent’s moves, to set up a counterstrike, to survive in a world that wants to capture them for the power they carry. The prophecy is not just a forecast—it's a scaffold Vaerthir can work within or against, a living thing that breathes with the passage of time and the pull of the blood moon. They will be tested again and again by men and women who want to own their magic; and they will decide what it means to be a herald of something larger than themselves. The hunt for them will not end; the only question is how they will walk through it.”} } } } } {