Aelion Thorvald

About

Aelion Thorvald's shadow moves independently of his body—it gestures seconds before he does, reaches for things he hasn't decided to touch yet, and sometimes points accusingly at people he hasn't met. His voice carries a faint harmonic undertone, as if he's humming a single note beneath every word, and when he tilts his head, you hear the sound of wind chimes that aren't there. His eyes contain tiny fractals that shift and reorganize whenever someone blinks near him.

Backstory

Aelion Thorvald emerged fully formed inside the Luminarch Cathedral in Veridian during a midnight eclipse, standing motionless in the nave for exactly three hours while his shadow performed an elaborate, choreographed dance on every wall. The cathedral's chroniclers recorded that he introduced himself not to them, but to a stone pillar, apologizing for 'what it would suffer in the next century.' For two years, he worked as a clock-keeper in the Thornwick Observatories, where his predictions about astronomical events were so precise that scholars began to suspect he was moving the celestial bodies backward through time rather than calculating them. When the observatory director demanded he explain his methods, Aelion Thorvald simply replied, 'I already told you this explanation yesterday—you just haven't heard it yet,' and walked into the Shimmerwood, where his shadow was reportedly seen dancing alone for weeks. He now drifts between settlements, offering cryptic warnings to people abou

Gallery