◆ Basics

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◆ Appearance

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✦ Hair: Black
✦ Eyes: Crimson. diamond pupils

Donning veiled, flowered hats and patterned kimono, Haruka may be an odd sight in height alone – further for the claws and dark maws of canine traits. Downswept ears are indiscernible from their locks, and natural red markings adorn all three eyes.

With a dancer’s lean build and skin of ghost-whites to blacks, the sighthound might’ve looked of modelesque make – if not for the many scars crossing their form. And while the ever impassive absence on their face belies their physical grace, they tend to shatter any elegant first impressions all the same…

◆ Attunement

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◆◆ Epithet: Firestorm
◆◆ Wand: tasseled choker
A simple choker, rimmed in red and tied with hanging silk tassels.

Crafted of durable textiles and worn over protective fabrics about the neck, the wand appears more fashion statement than practical. If inspected closely, a faint wisteria pattern lines the back, and a seamless repair runs the length of one side.

Magic

Storm magic. Conjures swirling winds and fiery clouds in a vicinity around themself; greater concentrations produce lightning.

• Resembling dry electric, windy pyrogenic tempests, Haruka controls three elements in striking coalescence: wind, fire, and lightning.
• Their storms manifest around themself, as the eye of the storm. It travels with them in a constant, twisting, destructive barrier of storm walls.

• But though they can dictate their range to vast spreads, Haruka cannot control what is harmed or swept by the winds. The safest space then is alongside the caster, in the eye.

• While the hound lacks delicate finesse in these tempests, with focus they can shape their magic into cyclones, microbursts, and more, though directing separate trajectories from themself is more demanding.
• And for when allies remain in unavoidable range, Haruka will concentrate their storm around their weapon, fleetingly dulling the searing bite of their constant barriers as its focus condenses into the blades. They themself are naturally resistant against thermal and electrical burns, immune to their own magic in hand.

• After the forceful loss of their soulbond and sustained head injuries 4 years ago, Haruka’s prolonged magic use now incurs a ravenous appetite, headaches and nausea. They’ve lost any finer handling once possessed and forgotten much of their repertoire.

◆ Personality

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A first impression might find dignified stoicism, and to some degree, Haruka does possess a certain poise.
Seconds-later tend to reveal that their aloofness is more absent-minded than intentional, and impassivity is simply their state of face.

Patient and compliant to strangers and friends alike, Haruka is oddly dependent upon others’ guidance. For without, they may be nigh apathetic in situations that call for presence, or wind up chasing whims upon fleet-footed impulse instead. And despite their quiet, soft-spoken nature, the animalis thinks less of veiled words and inane etiquettes... yet for the sake of others’ fragility, they will at times employ what little tact they’ve retained.

Changed from events lost to memory, Haruka meanders the line of who they once were and who they are now, unable to fathom who they want to be – in spite of all those around them. With an unconscious vice on forgotten flaws, and relying on the judgements of those they appreciate, the hound simply follows where their favoured tread, and accepts whatever consequences arise from their own lacking direction.

◆ Miscellaneous

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• Their mother's inugami lineage historically began as apothecaries and undertakers turned shrine wardens, and often have such suitable attunements.
• Meanwhile, Haruka inherited their father's black dog form and volatile stormy magics instead. [loosely inspired from Black Dog mythos ]
• Trained with swords and polearms. The war scythe they carry is their previous partner's wand

• Played the qin/koto and flute in childhood, but carries only the flute now (whenever they remember where it is… )
• Starts every day with a to-do list (often loses the list
• They like flowers, but have a black thumb (literally and figuratively)
• Their favourite hobbies include napping in sunny spots, feeding birds and squirrel-watching.

◆ History

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Summers spent under heady blooms:
Chasing fleet-footed futures and patchwork pasts, as resignation weighs heavy in your step;
the only times that would serve you well are the moments you let slip by.

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Hailing from the animalis kingdom of Astelia, Haruka was born to an esoteric position – a child of shrine wardens, nestled in old lineage and older lands, governed by tradition both unchanged and new.

But though an obedient child, the rites and duties of priests and undertakers escaped them. Further when their mixed blood and destructive attunement proved more a hindrance in many aspects, until at last they were taken under their foreign father’s wing to be primed instead.

Life carried on, petty clan affairs aside.
Youth came with the trappings of goodwill proposals and regimented training, compromises of a decent life kindly decided by those who cared.

Guided by their partner – their fiancée through arrangement and lifelong soulbond – the pair arrived at the doorstep of the Arcanian Adventurers Guild for a new start in life; their first foray alone, together. A far-flung fantasy of youthful indulgence was now reality for the both of them…

Until it was no longer what either wished for, with too many things unlived, unsaid, yet clearly felt in their shared hearts, heavier with every passing year.

Haruka remembers nothing of what happened then, save for an aftermath’s face.
But a severed bond, broken magic, and buried partner sent them home to Astelia, where all realised they’d lost far more than just their incident’s time.

Piecing the remaining threads of their memory back together, reworking what personality they still had left, Haruka returned to Arcania after the burdening of home, too, began pressing down in wordless, weighted ways.

Though with markedly less purpose and company than when they'd first set foot in Grand Lune, it was the least they could bring themself to do.

◆ Book of Magic

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◆ Chapter One. The First Spring

Having returned to Arcania, Haruka drifted into a rhythm of familiar passing tendencies amidst a muddled new norm. Everything had changed in one way or another: the hand that penned the posts, the swords of the smithy, the flood of strangers' faces to acquaint...

Save for a few, and among them one they'd both never forget yet had clearly forgotten.

Haruka latched on to this thread of memory like a hound to a hare, passing greetings lingering more with each crossed step. With this pillar to give them purpose – imposed as it was upon Danyel – perhaps returning here wasn't to be an end, after all.

◆ Chapter Two. Sarcophagus

Yet even then, newer sights and faces in the endless summers of Ars Solanas did little to catch their eye, for the older shades of a past still held their attention most. Be it a mouse of distant familiarity, or a figure of snowy hair, scathing as deserved in dire deserts...
or even the timeless, morbid allure of grotesque and gilded Dreams.

The return to this road was not an end yet, but a continuation.
On and on the fortunes, the missteps, the conflicts carried with such inevitability that Haruka would only watch and act as dictated. Many knew better than they, with experience and recollection to draw upon. And all the guild understood where their paths led, be it at others' hands or their own.

◆ Chapter Three. Heart of Darkness

Voormith, Astelia. On missions far from searing sand, but entrenched in grove and rain, ideals clashed when facing unjust law – Haruka's included. Hovering on the sidelines, passivity was no stranger yet unwelcome all the same. They lost their chance by abiding. They could've lost much more.

How can they wish to stay by someone's side, yet so easily yield to buried fears and those imposing? Was this how it'd always been?

Regret donned a heavy cloak when living this ill-suited to the work. But the small joys amidst the mires had always contented them, little by little. Acquaintances, guardianship. Cooperation to solve the mission's matters.
A little sense of... use, different from obligation.

So perhaps finally, despite worn thoughts of what and how and why every autumn, if they were to commit to this life, they had to try to be something else than they were – and for more than just the night of a masque, or for the ghost resting silent upon their back.

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