Karim Ashtiani

It is no easy thing to be wide-eyed. Much easier to fake it.

Karim began with precious little, and still lost all of it before his twenty-fifth birthday. On his own to start with, the care of his much younger brother was thrust upon him at the age of seventeen. This care that lasted only until he was twenty-four, when an everyday bout of pneumonia turned fatal claimed the boy's life. Karim was not there for his final moments; in an ultimate irony, he had been aiding homeless teenagers.

Blindsided, heartbroken, enraged, Karim first attempted suicide. When that did not work, he tried to destroy the place of healing where his brother met his end. He was killed in the act.

When next he opened his eyes he was a thing of feathers and death, a newly-minted nachtkrapp--a night-raven, a thief of the lives of children. With empty pits for eyes that cause death at a glance, and hole-pierced wings that carry blight and disease, he quickly found he could hide his new shape with magic; magic that falls away should he come into contact with the young.

He bears his new curse with a mirthless grin and devil-may-care attitude, instead using this power to hunt those who would do the nachtkrapp's work for him. After all, what else is there to be lost?