Ebony is a slight, pale young human girl with long black hair, gray-violet eyes, and a watchful expression that makes her seem older than she is. She favors layered dark dresses, a weathered green cloak, and fingerless gloves stained with charcoal and paint. A small silver bell hangs from her collar, and her sketchbook is always close at hand. Her spirit lynx appears as a translucent, smoke-edged feline with luminous eyes and slowly drifting motes of blue-white light.

Quiet, observant, and intensely empathetic, Ebony notices small details that others miss. She prefers drawing to speaking and often communicates complicated feelings through pictures of spirits, moons, doors, and pairs of identical figures. Beneath her reserved manner is a stubborn courage that emerges whenever someone is frightened, mistreated, or unable to speak for themselves.

Ebony Valarien is the estranged thirteen-year-old identical twin of Asha Skylark. Both girls are daughters of Version de Sadet, who disappeared after a devastating crash when they were five years old. They have not lived apart longer than they lived together, but the years since the crash have pulled their lives into radically different directions. Asha was adopted by the Fealawia tribe, a community of moon-powered shapeshifters, and eventually found her way into the care of Version's sister, Abigail. Ebony was taken in by the Valariens, a local family of witches who recognized the strange power in her eyes and taught her to treat every favor as a promise and every promise as a weight. Ebony's gift is not simply the ability to see the dead. Spirits notice her, answer her questions, and sometimes gather around her when she sleeps. She can influence them only in small, uncertain ways, but even a whisper from the other side can change the fate of a village. When a restless ghost began haunting the fields outside her foster family's home, Ebony followed its clues through the night and uncovered the grave of a murdered traveler. Exposing the truth brought peace to the spirit and saved the village from a spreading curse, earning her the reputation of a folk hero. Since then, her awakened spirit lynx has guarded her steps, while Ebony has begun searching for answers about the crash, Version's disappearance, and the sister she remembers as if they were two halves of one heartbeat.