Shieda Kayn

On first glance, much of Kayn's figure is that of a young human male. Pale skinned and dark haired, his body is lean but well built and clearly used to rigorous training and excercise, something he is seemingly unafraid to flaunt, and his midnight locks are long and silken, often falling in a braid that reaches down his back and just past his hips. He's got a cocky smile on sharp and handsome features, with a golden eye being framed by dark bangs and one striking patch of azure that falls to the right of his face.

It becomes hard then however, not to notice the parts of Kayn that are... less human. His left side seems to be partially overtaken, hard almost scale or armor like flesh with a thick black carapace and a veined red musculature makes up his entire right arm, which ends in clawed digits, and this plate like flesh seems to continue across part of his chest, his shoulders ridged with shoulder spines that flow outward. The infection, for lack of better phrasing, seems to spread across his visage as well, his left eye bearing a jagged mark of darker and harder flesh zagging across it, and the iris is a bright and piercing scarlet, though he seems largely unbothered by the difference between his limbs and eyes, using both with equal proficiency and even favoring his left hand for weapons usually, though he favors his right for nearly everything else.

Crass, confident and cocky, Kayn is driven almost solely by his desire for power and dominance. He is, or was at least, a very loyal student and devoted follower to his master, but he also has long had an ambition hungering within him, one that he will go to extreme lengths to fulfill. He wants to rule, to be the master commanding others towards a better future, his future. He wants to both inspire those with similar goals as him, and strike fear in those who would oppose him. To this end, he will train and work relentlessly to do what it takes to be prepared, and is direct, efficient, and ruthless.

Kayn was trained to be a weapon, and he serves as one. He has taken lives before, and while he doesn't find any purpose in senseless murder, and even actively despises it, he also shows no hesitation to cutting down those who would bare a weapon to him or who he judges to be deserving. If anything, he  can even take an active pleasure in the act, relishing in carnage, both from a burning hatred within his heart and a sadistic thrill of the hunt, enjoying the taste of fear and the flow of bloodshed, a ruthless predator who uses speed and stealth to strike from the dark and terrify.

Yet, despite all of this, Kayn is still, in many ways, young. He's reckless, foolish, easily annoyed and frustrated, and a little uncertain at times. He struggles, and hates that he does so, and without his master or order around, he finds himself scrambling to find direction. He can come off as arrogant and confident when its a question of his capability or strength, but he's awkward in more casual social circumstances, tending to get snappy or flustered, or try to isolate himself entirely and avoid it.

Kayn can also be surprisingly caring. He has ambitions, yes, but while he wants to lead and rule (though without his order the what he leads or rules is a little foggy now), and while he is no stranger to violence, he despises senseless violence, and can't stand to let someone be killed for nothing other then another's gain, greed, or bloodlust. If someone wants to get themselves killed, thats one thing, and certainly Kayn is rather quick to threaten violence, but people dying at the orders of others, be it those leading them or those wielding weapons against them, for selfish means is unforgivable. To those, Kayn protects, by giving swift and merciless death to the unworthy.

But to speak of Kayn is to speak also, though many do not know it, of Rhaast. Rhaast has no voice physically, and his form is lost in transition, seemingly trapped and beyond Kayn's grasp with what meager power his transportation to this world has left him with, but his voice is always within Kayn's mind, and his being is one both wholly separate of Kayn and yet strongly influential.

Rhaast craves power as well, and embodies well much of the ambition and hunger for power in Kayn... as well as his violence. A creature of war and bloodshed, Rhaast wants nothing more then to conquer the world, and slaughter everyone before him. While he tolerates, and even respects some people, to many he responds only with dry sarcasm or an active desire to end their existence.

Rhaast is also the reason behind the malformations in Kayn's body, and he makes it no secret to the boy that he intends one day to fully corrupt Kayn's mind and take over his body, making it into his own and effectively killing the boy to regain his own autonomy again. Kayn makes it likewise no secret that he intends to fully conquer and gain the ability to control Rhaast's power, breaking and destroying Rhaast in order to harness and fully use the power Rhaast has.

Such a relationship leads naturally to a rivalry, yet with their current situation bound to each other, each needing and wanting the other but unable to bend them entirely to their will just yet, they have an odd friendship and symbiosis as well. Rhaast encourages the rage, the violence, the anger in Kayn, delighting in bloodshed and tutoring him in some ways, and Kayn in turn allows him a limited experience of the world and a human perspective on things. In the midst of battle, the two are a terrifying thing, only feeding each other and enabling each other further.

Outside of battle though, things tend more towards the rocky side. Kayn's more awkward side and his childish need to prove himself, as well as his empathy and softness towards others earns only sarcasm and dry mocking from Rhaast, and boredom, annoyance, and distaste are frequent emotions of the Dharkin who shares Kayn's mind. His voice only audible to Kayn as well, he utilizes this one way communication to harass, annoy, and make a fool of Kayn, his unwanted commentary usually leading to snappish responses, or making Kayn look insane entirely as he argues and even yells at seemingly only himself.

Though of course, with no where else to go, Rhaast is also just as forced to endure Kayn as well, who is just as fond of such teasing, harassing, mocking, and pestering of the ancient being who is bound and trapped now within a weapon and Kayn's possession.

Kayn doesn't remember his earliest years. He doesn't remember his parents, or his home. He remembers being given a weapon, being told how to fight. There were others like him, the swords were heavy and clumsy in his small hands, but it didn't matter. They were taught to follow orders, taught to obey. They were put into war, made to fight for life or death. Child soldiers, they were nothing more then disposable fodder for the actual body of the army.

When the army was slaughtered after massacring a village, a highly trained group of assassins and fighters cutting through their numbers, Kayn held his ground, the sickle he had recovered from a farmer's body in his bloody and pale grip. He had survived this far, and faced with the option of fight or roll over and beg for mercy, he readied himself, grit and determination locked in his features. Instead of being given death though, the child was offered something.

A home. A purpose.

The leader of the order took him in as one of his own, gave Kayn shelter and food. He trained still, he was a weapon still, but he was one with a purpose, a reason for existing. He was not just a disposable tool, he was a loyal student and follower of his master, and in turn his master cared for him, taught him, looked after him, and tutored him. And tirelessly he worked to repay that and to serve.

Many of the students chose a weapon and spent their training mastering it. Kayn mastered all of them, one by one, finding a weapon no more than an extension of his own body. He found armor cumbersome and slow, and left aside more brute force weaponry to favor speed and stealth, striking quick, often, and from the shadows. His master would teach him how to use those shadows, how to bend them to his will, and he would find that he could meld with them, using their magic to become one. To become, in a sense, intangible, moving through solid objects like water to pass to the other side or reposition himself.

With such dedication and prowess over both the physical masteries and command over the shadows, while Kayn still could not grasp at the level his master held, he was his best and most promising student. As much as he had originally been given his purpose, he continued to find his place as he was trusted with his masters confidentiality, becoming the successor to his master should anything happen.

One day, Kayn knew, he would lead the order, and he would unify his country, to be able to fight and defeat any other. To be able to fight and defeat those who had originally been willing to throw his life away as nothing more than a child thrown to the wolves.

Kayn was given a mission to take from those people, his country of birth, a relic of great power, to ensure that they would not be able to use it themselves, perhaps against his home and people. Rhaast was this relic, a Dhaarkin bound within a scythe, a sentient weapon holding massive power and a malevolent entity that desired nothing but freedom and the slaughter of all the mortal races. Another might have completed this mission by destroying Rhaast. Instead, Kayn saw opportunity.

Kayn claimed Rhaast as his own, binding himself to the Dhaarkin with the vow to bend them one day to his will and overcome the Dhaarkin and gain their powers. He was able to summon and dismiss the weapon, the process marking him with corruption of the Dhaarkin's form overtaking his own in part, or letting the malformations vanish when Rhaast was dormant, but so long as Rhaast was with him, he heard the Dhaarkin.

And the Dhaarkin heard him. With Rhaast, Kayn was even more powerful. He trained with the Dhaarking scythe, learning to harness Rhaast's strengths and combine it with his own talents with shadows. The Shadow Reaper became the name whispered, stories of Kayn's shadowy visage and the looming shape of a scythe, a single red eye looking down from its blade, becoming a story of fear. He knew his future. He WOULD bend Rhaast to his will and he WOULD succeed his master. Most importantly, he WOULD conquer all who stood in his way and stood against his homeland.

That is, until Kayn vanished without a trace.

Rhaast - Rhaast's physical body, or rather the scythe that traps him, is seemly trapped in a limbo between this world and the next, or perhaps in some of ethereal space in Probos that Kayn can't quite reach yet, nor can Rhaast summon himself out of. Curiously, this development has left Kayn permanently marked with Rhaast's influence, and Rhaast's consciousness seems to be with Kayn, sensing through him, though he claims to still feel his scythe form in the strange timeless and undefined space it rests in.