Candis is something of a social chameleon, someone who can wear a thousand faces and find a friend in any room. But there are precious few people who have met his real self.

He's very attentive and caring to the people he loves, sometimes to a self-sacrificing degree. Being useful to others means you cannot be discarded, after all. He is impulsive and prone to mood swings, experiencing wild flights of overconfidence followed by dizzying emotional lows.

Candis always romanticizes his own life, even when things are at their worst. Because of this, he manages to maintain a detached perspective, and lives in a fulfilling way, despite ignoring all warning signs he encounters.

As the eldest son of a fading noble house, Candis bore the responsibility of revitalizing his family's name from the day he was born. His precursors burned away their reputation (and fortune) over the course of generations, and left nothing behind but disgrace and ignominy.

He has a particularly fraught relationship with his mother, the head of the Eldran family.

Any resistance to her demands would be met with punishment, so Candis learned to never complain. She'd berate him for looking sullen and tired, so he learned to always wear an effortless smile. Most of all, his mother disciplined him harshly for failure, so he learned failure was not an option. Candis is defined by his drive to perform whatever is expected of him, even when it may seem impossible. Candis takes the pressure in stride, striving far beyond his means, working himself half to death to at last meet her expectations.

Regardless of his efforts, he never earned her love.

Then...

As a last attempt to make something of himself, Candis steals the last of his family's treasures, and uses them to pay his way into the Cantharos College of Magic, a feat managed by personally impressing the headmaster.

Despite knowing his family would be enraged by his "betrayal", Candis pushed on with determination. Everything he had done, and everything he would do, would all be worth it if he could restore the honor of his name. If he could become someone powerful, respected, even feared.

Despite being looked down on at first by many of the other students, Candis's charming demeanor won him many friends and admirers, with time. But only one person he met there was able to break Candis's shell. His very first real friend, Keiton, a mysterious and often quiet elemental(?) who nevertheless stood up in his defense, back when Candis was relentlessly bullied for his disgraceful lineage and lack of magical understanding.

And...

Eventually Candis began to understand that he had a special insight that no one he'd met could match. Perhaps it could be called a honed spacial awareness, an instinct for how the particles of the world interlink, and how they can be unfolded by your hand.

Regardless, the more he nurtured his talent, the more certain he became that he was on the trail of something that would change the world forever. Teleportation. He's been pushing the boundaries of his abilities ever since, working with a fevered obsession.

His advancements do not go unnoticed.

But the attention he eventually receives is not what he bargained for.