Seraphis Arden

About

Muireann had the kind of face that drew attention even when she wanted to disappear. Her pale hair fell like poured light, her skin was almost translucent, and her eyes were the washed-blue gray of winter sea. She looked fragile in a way that invited projection and in that people saw in her whatever they wished: purity, obedience, vulnerability, or weakness. Muireann herself never felt like any of those things. She simply existed with the self-contained smallness of someone who had learned early that noise invited danger.

She remembered little of her parents, though she had been plenty old enough at 12 to hold real memories. What remained came as fragments: her mother’s hand tightening around hers, the low murmur of adult voices arguing in the next room, the hush that fell whenever she approached. And sometimes, drifting through the haze of recollection, the image of a well-dressed man with the type of face that made her shy when he looked at her. He was someone her parents called a friend but treated with a caution and respect she hadn’t understood at the time. He sometimes brought her gifts; his attempt to win her over perhaps, and they were beautiful things, trinkets or toys far beyond anything her parents could afford. Once there was a locket bearing initials that didn’t match her name, but she thought little of it at the time. She always wondered whose name those letters represented.

His fall from grace had been public and survived by his influential family, but the people that worked with him were ordinary, powerless allies like her Irish-born parents. They simply vanished in the time surrounding his arrest. The police informed her they had died, and with no relatives to claim her, she was placed into government custody and reassigned to an orphanage. The official record offered no further explanation, and whatever details existed were kept far from a child’s reach.

The orphanage depended entirely on outside philanthropy to function, which meant it was always one shortage away from collapse. Beds were crammed together in dormitories meant for half as many children while food came in unpredictable quantities. The staff rotated often, some indifferent, others cruel. Muireann survived the way quiet children often did by shrinking in, by drawing no attention, and by keeping her thoughts folded neatly where no one could see them.

Still, she was noticed. Older children marked her early. They sensed her quietness as weakness and her beauty as justification. She avoided them by slipping through hallways, staying in corners with a book, and memorizing the times the supervisors looked away. Most days, it was enough.

On the day she channeled for the first time, rain leaked through a crack in the ceiling, dripping into a metal bucket like a drum. Three older boys cornered her, shoving her back into the narrow space. Their taunts blurred, and her world shrank to the cold wall against her back and the rhythmic drip drip drip of water beside her feet. Something inside her flared bright, then a violent gust threw the boys backward, slamming them into shelving units and scattering boxes across the floor. They scrambled to their feet and ran.

She didn’t understand what she had done. She only knew that she must never do it again. And she didn’t in the years that followed. Her mind sealed around the memory, forming a block so complete that even the instinctive spark of channeling lay dormant. All she retained was the association: fear, and the sound of dripping water.

Of course, the boys told of what happened. They called her a witch, insane, and when she fell Sick, a threat. The rumors about Muireann and the threat she posed circulated among staff, eventually reported to the orphanage’s primary benefactor family. Months later, during an event meant both to generate good press and reassert civic virtue, Theron Finnegren arrived along with his parents. Cameras tracked them like celebrities, staff snuck glimpses, and children lined up to present memorized gratitude. Muireann stood among them, her pale hair bright under the lights, hands folded carefully as she tried to make herself small, but Theron seemed to peer through everything as if finding a needle in a haystack; only this time, he was looking for the needle.

Later she learned that he had already heard rumors of the “suspicious event” in the storage hall. Theron asked to speak with her alone. She had never been addressed so gently by an adult, although she later learned he was only 20 himself. She told him nothing of what she’d done, but he seemed to know regardless. He asked if she ever felt strange, if she ever sensed something stirring when she was afraid. She only shook her head, but he did not press.

The next week, papers were signed and she was adopted, not as a daughter in the ordinary sense, but as a ward. Someone he wished to guide, protect, and study. The orphanage staff venerated the story as a philanthropic success, though many whispered that a child like her was better off drawing no notice.

After leaving with him, Theron asked if Muireann desired a new name. That was when she picked Seraphis, a character from a beloved book, and with this new name, she entered a world she had never imagined: clean halls, orderly rooms, structured days, and luxury like she’d never known before. When Theron announced his intention to go to Moscow, it was without hesitation that he took Seraphis with him. She was with him when he took over the Brotherhood of Ascension, and helped to expand its influence. By then she was seventeen. In the privacy of the sanctuaries he introduced her to practices meant to calm the mind that would become the bedrock of the Brotherhood’s mystic teachings: breathwork, meditation, and structured reflection. He attempted to teach her the channeling he assumed she already understood, but something blocked her. The more she failed, the more confused he became, so he tasked her with mastering non-magical disciplines. He told her stillness mattered before power, and she believed him.

It wasn’t until she incorporated water into their practice, meditating alongside the fountains of the Sanctuary that something loosened. The sound anchored her, not in fear now, but in familiarity. She slipped past her block and touched the Source again, this time without violence. The relief in her expression lingered for days. The pride in his reaction filled her heart with joy.

Over the next two years, Seraphis became the first of the Veilwardens. Her devotion to Theron shaped everything she did. She saw him as both guardian and guiding star, not quite father, not quite brother, but the one fixed point in a world that had taken all others away. Theron treated her with fond distance, never unkind but never allowing closeness beyond his chosen boundaries. She accepted that as her role to be near him, to serve the Brotherhood he led, and to justify the second chance he had given her despite whatever plans he has for her future.

Personality

She learned to survive by observing before acting. Beneath her serenity lay a mind more independent than she let on. She valued her own counsel, even if she rarely voiced it. Her humor, when it slipped out, came dry and unexpectedly morbid, a small rebellion against the quiet veneer of her adolescence. She longed to matter in a world that kept dictating her circumstances instead of empowering the agency of self-made choices, and the tension between duty and private yearning shaped much of her current life.

Appearance

At a slender height of 5 foot 7 inches, Seraphis has the doll-like poise of porcelain. Her hair falls in long, pale strands, soft as light reflected on frost, and her skin has a delicate luminosity that makes her look almost sculpted. Her features are fine and symmetrical, with winter-gray eyes that appears both distant and searching. The contrast of her natural etherealness with the rich ceremonial clothing of the Brotherhood gives her an almost iconic quality, a look that hovers between innocence and quiet determination. Even in stillness, she draws the eye, as though she is meant to be part of a vision rather than a crowded room as is her destiny.

Rebirths

1st Age: Seraphis Arden, Veilwarden of the Brotherhood

3rd Age: Tbd

5th & 6th Age: Leuce, Nymph of Oceanid

7th Age: Guinevere, Queen of Camelot