Devlin Ballinger

- Faded (no powers) - Male - Age: 17 Positive Traits: - Book-smart - Hard worker - Logical Negative Traits: - naive/too trusting - doesn't have much common sense - not great at navigating social situations * Backstory: honestly, I took a lot of inspiration from Rapunzel. There was a prophecy that was possibly made about him that went along the lines of "A Fade born to the royal family of Athecor will be a harbinger to the downfall of the king's line". Cheery, right? Only issue is, kids get their powers at around age 5. Devlin is an early bloomer and settles into being Faded at 4 years old. He's given his Mage name (which is Devlin; I haven't decided what his name at birth was yet), named after the first victim of the prophecy. His parents, who are skeptical at best about the prophecy's validity, but are getting an absolute ton of pressure from advisors and other politically important persons to listen to it, decide to go for the middle ground and fake his death. So he's whisked off to some re-purposed ruins in a remote part of a massive forest (that actually takes up a good chunk of land in Athecor, kind of like the pine barrens in New Jersey), between the territories owned by Viscount Delaney and Viscountess Oriel. They keep Devlin pretty dang sheltered, but he's sent books and stuff by his parents-who also keep tabs on him to make sure his caretakers haven't killed him. In the meantime, he was fed a lot of misinformation that he couldn't check because he only had access to the information Delaney and Oriel gave him (which was even more heavily censored than when it arrived to them). He was allowed to go outside a bit, but again, giant forest. They wouldn't let him go too far. The plan was to bring him back at a member of the family after the king and queen had decided they were safe from the prophecy, but that didn't really happen. At seventeen, the night before he was going to be able to visit the surrounding towns he had read about for the first time (despite his resemblance to his older brother and his mother, aka the reason they didn't allow him to go before), Delaney pushes him out of his bedroom window. I can't say anything else because he's the main character of a story I'm working on, and I'm not even sure how his story ends yet.