The missing child of the Mendozas

Vihaan wasn’t always living in Dolmends. In fact she had no plans on living there because of how much it clashed with her magic abilities. Originally from a high-placed family in Stredhe, the little Anastasia was taken in by a group of cultists who were looking for young potential magic users. They saw her as a key to their activities, thus she was given to them by her parents with the idea that doing so will make things better.

…Unfortunately, that was not how the story goes. It is rumored that the Mendoza family is actively looking to find their lost daughter and that they’re completely unsure as to how she went missing in the first place. Anastasia was also around 5 years old when she went missing from Stredhe.

Priestess of highest importance

For the major part of her life, Anastasia was living in an area very unknown to most in Osculithe. At a young age, Anastasia had intensive training so that she could become a priestess. The cult she was stuck in needed lightning magic users in order to resurrect a god lost in time, one that was supposedly stronger than any Theòs. And, they needed as many priestesses of thunder as they could find to reach their ultimate goal: bring endless joy to the people of Aephiria.

…That was also not how the story goes. In reality, the cult was looking to change the rules of the world they were living in. With them being shunned for being a cult, they wanted to make it so they can have more control over regions of Aephiria. And, to get that, they were more than willing to sacrifice people they deemed useless to the world by forcing them to learn one of the most dangerous types of magic to resurrect a god that might not even exist.

Finding out the truth

It took Anastasia all her teenage years & part of her adulthood to realize that something was off in the cult she was in. By the age of 24, she was a high priestess that was supposedly the most important one. But, when one of her fellow priestess started questioning her role, Anastasia also started questioning her role. If she was the most important priestess, then why does every priestesses have that title as well?

This caused her to investigate. Using her “most important priestess” prestige, Anastasia explored a forbidden section of the cult’s library. There, she found the books she used when she was learning lightning magic, as well as many books about the rumors of Aephiria’s creation and some books about other types of forbidden knowledge. Shocked to find nothing about the god she was supposed to resurrect with other priestesses, Anastasia panicked and tried finding any sources that talked about said god. Nothing that could be trusted.

And then, it clicked. The cult was built on lies. Nothing about her life in it was true. Why would her parents suddenly give her up considering how much they cherished her? Why did she give up her life for a god that never existed in the first place? Many questions were in her mind, which eventually made her lose faith in the cult that raised her for most of her life.

Insubordination is punished by death

Fully knowing she was to be sacrificed for the revival of this non-existent god, Anastasia had to do everything she could to escape…unfortunately there was a problem: she had no idea how to leave nor did she know where to go once she escaped. Not only that, she had seen the people who tried to escape get punished. Those punishments were very, very painful and since she wasn’t particularly physically tough, Anastasia could easily lose her life to them.

Thus, she continued exploring areas that not many members could go to by using her status as the main reason, which eventually raised suspicions all around the cult. Thinking Anastasia was out there trying to sabotage the cult’s secret goals, the cult leaders decided she was to be sacrificed to the gods through electrocution.

Escape from an elaborate trap

On the day she was to be sacrificed, the cult had received a very unexpected visitor: a prince who wanted the cult’s knowledge. Being completely unsure as to how someone like him even found out about the cult’s location, a lot of members tried taking down the intruder, only for them to lose their life to said prince. Those who did not fight him were spared, especially if they gave him access to the forbidden section of their library.

Seeing this as an opportunity to escape, Anastasia tried helping this man as much as she could, even pledging allegiance to him to avoid staying in the group that only brought misery to her life. Getting him the books he needed and helping him take down the same people she once hung out with, she finally felt a sense of purpose. To serve her savior until the end of time.

An important mission: Knowledge gathering

It didn’t take long for the prince to notice how much potential Anastasia had. Her ability to foresee the consequences of people’s actions, as well as her lightning magic could only be useful for him. Her knowledge of the old myths & the occult were also very valuable. Not to mention, she had a rare blood type, which happened to be one of the prince’s favorite blood types to drink from.

To get to his objective of using Aephiria’s lost knowledge to rule over the world, the prince gave Anastasia a very important job: to explore the regions of Aephiria and bring him all the knowledge she could get her hands in, no matter the means. Fully knowing how cheap the cult she was previously in was, Anastasia used a lot of deceiving techniques to get the books she was looking for.

One of her first pretend jobs was as an assistant-librarian in the Equinox Library in Dolmends by the name of Vihaan. There, she found out about the forbidden books and used one of them to try and allow the escape of a reputable criminal, sealed in one of them. Shortly after that incident, many of the books had gone missing as well as Vihaan herself…

Since then, no one knows where she is. And yet, she is probably behind you, taking notes on what to use against you…

• Vihaan is a name in Sanskrit that means Dawn.
• Her blood type is AB-, which is supposed to be the rarest blood type amongst the most common ones. It is also a major reason why Procyon keeps her around.
• She despises snakes, which is a major reasons she hates Xanthos. However, she is completely unaware that Procyon's Harbinger of Ruin also partly turns him into one.
• Vihaan is surprisingly not very picky with food even if she could only eat certain food during her time at the cult.
• She found out she was a lesbian during her stay at the cult. Vihaan noticed that she had a preference for women when she tried thinking about what kind of people she wanted to spend her life with.