TL;DR: Adriel used to be human. was an orphan, raised as a priestess. Got excommunicated for fucken. Had Blair as a result of said fucken. Willingly got turned into this thing so she could try and stop some idiot from ending the world.

Adriel doesn't know who her real parents were, only that she was abandoned infant and taken into a commune of priestesses. They raised her strictly and harshly, emphasising faith and diligence above all else, and training her in scripture and the arts of healing. She showed promise as a mage from a very young age—in fact, her hair grew in blue right from infancy, marking her as the extra-special anime protag she was. She had all kinds of psychic visions, though was able to make little sense of them at such a young age. They were quite disturbing to her, but her guardians assured her that it was a good thing, and that she’d only need to temper these abilities through hard work for them to stop being scary and start being useful.

Adriel dreamed of fire. She dreamed of pestilence. She dreamed of darkness.

Adriel was still allowed contact with the outside world, provided she adhered to a strict curfew and tended to all her expected duties—maintaining the gardens, attending prayers and keeping pace with her rigorous studies. She even had friends around her age from outside of the sisterhood. It became quickly apparent she had a rebellious streak, and was often punished for going AWOL or talking back her superiors. Still, she avoided doing anything that’d get her kicked out. She had a smart mouth, but also a smart brain that told her if she wanted to keep having support and a place to sleep, she’d better suck it up and continue her duties. Really, the whole priestess thing was a pretty sweet gig. Even so, part of her was restless. Her caretakers found her annoyingly spirited.

Fast forward a few years. Adriel was old enough to be narrowly considered a woman, and had been ordained as a fully-fledged priestess. She was to live out the rest of her life in the abbey, contemplating scripture, healing the wounded, raising more girls to do the same. This would have been a much easier life than the one she ended up with.

The divine still called to her in her sleep. It whispered to her in the crackle of cooking fires. It showed its shadows in the flickers of candleflames.

It was a lot to deal with! Thankfully, she’d met a nice boy. He was a mercenary of some sort, who’d been injured badly in whatever violence his latest job had entailed and had come to the priestesses for healing, as people tended to do. He was handsome enough, with pretty eyes and a raffish smirk and Adriel had a lot of stress to deal with, okay? She had been assigned to tend to his wounds, but apparently she tended to a bit more than just that.

Evidently, the sisterhood really were not joking around when it came to the whole oath of celibacy thing; getting knocked up was apostacy at its finest, so they spared no time in ditching her onto the streets. The father-to-be had long since recovered and left to go live his life, he likely was none the wiser.

Adriel has no idea how she ended up surviving. Maybe the divine really was looking out for her. Probably, it was just a combination of wits and good luck. She remained in the same city she’d grown up in as she carried her child to term, begging, stealing, selling some expertise. Her long, blue hair marked her as a powerful mage, which was a good selling point, at least. She knew the power of belief, what it could do for the injured or dying; what it could do for the living. People would believe anything if they thought you were an authority on it. She ended up managing to build a shockingly solid income on selling snake oil and bullshitting fortunes. She and her new son Jairus never stayed in one place for too long.

This kid was important to her. She’d find a way to keep the two of them alive, and to raise him into a clever-but-dutiful young man. He would be as devout as she was.

But only a few days after Jairus’s 10th birthday, the divine had other plans.

IT’S HERE, it told her.

That couldn’t be right, Adriel asserted, you told me this wouldn’t happen for a few more years.

THERE’S BEEN A CHANGE OF PLANS, it said. YOU’RE OUT OF TIME.

Ah.

Sorry kid, she told Jairus, mommy’s gotta go do something important, don’t worry, I’ll be right back.

Adriel was not right back. She would never be back, at least, not in the same way.

Divine fire beckoned her, and she accepted its agonizing embrace.

Adriel has been literally and emotionally consumed by her duty. She retains little of her former humanity; her body and mind have been permanently altered by divine fire.

Her skin has been melted and changed into something else entirely. Her face is patterned with dozens of eyes, as hard and unfeeling as glass. If you knew her as a human, you mercifully probably wouldn’t recognise her.

All of her seems fixated on a single goal: finding the one who would set the wheels of the apocalypse in motion, and killing him. She’s been on this mission for almost a decade now, and appears to think of nothing else.

Still, she’s not without emotion. She retains all memory of her time as a human, and she's not as unattatched as she might have you think. She's frustrated by her lack of progress, and sometimes laments her decisions.

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so many

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