Cancor

Living in the shadow of Arxilo's castle, Cancor's little apartment-village lives in fear of the outdoors. Cancor, already a recluse, has a very troubled existence and can barely drag himself through each day.

Cancor sneaks into Arx's cliffside tower one night to find himself face-to-face with the murderer. He puts up almost no fight, and so Arx puts the boy on the couch for the night and tells him to rest up so that he'll be more fun to kill in the morning. He doesn't put up any more of a fight the next day, nor the next. Arx begins to repeatedly forget to kill Cancor and, despite Cancor behaving akin to a brick wall, begins chatting with him, feeding him, and making him watch things, play with him, and so on.

Eventually Arx gets frustrated with Cancor's behavior and the truth comes to bear - it turns out that Cancor is severely depressed and snuck in as a suicide attempt, because he feels as if he has no purpose besides disaster and isn't important to anyone. Arxilo tries to kill him as he intended, but finds he can't do it because Cancor has become so important to him.

Cancor tries to get another local highblood to kill him, only to discover that that's no longer what he wants. Arxilo chases after him and just barely manages to fight off the others and save Cancor.

As a lowblood, Cancor has psychic abilities: he is essentially a blood mage, able to manipulate the blood of those around him. As an artist, however, in a world where most pigments are made of multi-colored blood, this means his artwork comes alive as well. Unfortunately, this whole deal greatly disturbs Cancor and has kept him from his work - a big contributor to his awful depressive state.