A lean young human with ash-pale skin that never quite warms, gray flecks that sometimes seem to drift beneath the surface of his hands, and dark hair kept tied back from his face. He wears a travel-worn cloak, thick leather gloves at all times, and a chain of mismatched charms and funerary tokens at his throat. His eyes look tired, but alert, as if he is always listening for footsteps behind him.

Soft-spoken, vigilant, and strangely courteous, he treats every stranger as though they might be the only person who will remember he was ever kind. He has a dry sense of humor that appears only when he is exhausted or certain no one will be hurt by it.

At thirteen, he wandered too far into the woods and found a ruined house, collapsed and half-swallowed by roots and moss. In its basement, beneath splintered beams and old prayer marks, sat a sealed clay jar. He broke it open with a boy's curiosity and a stranger's bad luck. Gray ash and soot burst into his face, climbed into his lungs, and settled into his blood like a vow spoken in a dead language. That night, when his mother bent to kiss his forehead, necrotic energy leapt from him without warning and stopped her heart in an instant. His father never saw a child after that, only a curse wearing one. He was driven from home before dawn, sent into the wild with the warning that he should never return. Since then he has lived as a roadside ghost, taking work where it can be found and moving on before anyone grows too comfortable. He wears thick leather gloves to spare others from his touch, yet every so often the curse answers his fear with a pulse of cold hunger. Now, at nineteen, he hunts for any scrap of lore, any saint, devil, hedge-witch, or buried relic that might explain how to break the pact or strip the ash from his bones.