POWER DESCRIPTIONS

What do your powers do? How controlled are they? How do they affect your character and the people around them. Please be rather specific if you can.

APPEARANCE

Yana is a modest height of 5'6" (168cm), and weighs abut 130lbs (59kgs). His complexion is rather pale, though not exactly sickly, and his build isn't terribly athletic. He has bright blue eyes and long dark hair, with long sweeping bangs that hang in and around his face. Normally he ties the rest of his hair into a ponytail to sling over his shoulder as well. On good days his hair looks orderly and put together, but occasionally if he doesn't treat it stray locks stick up everywhere.

His wardrobe isn't extensive, and he prefers being as inconspicuous possible with his outfits. Nothing too fancy, even if he enjoys wearing jewelry. He prefers lighter colored clothing that looks like he got it from the clearance aisle. He probably did.

PERSONALITY

Striving to do the right thing and fending off suspicions against him from the day he was born, Yana has a very strong sense of justice and morality. He wants to do the right thing, he wants to help people, he wants to be someone people like. But his passion for righteousness is often plagued by a debilitating anxiety when something does go wrong. Inequality and unfairness in the world seems too cruel to him, and his own incidental mistakes and misjudgments also weigh on him heavily. So much so, that he sometimes resents caring too much, or caring at all. As indifferent as he tries to project himself, it's often less genuine than he'd like people to think.

Hardly wearing his heart on his sleeve, being amicable to people is at least Yana's default. He's more reactive than proactive; if someone picks a fight with him he'll fight back, but in general he'd rather be polite and courteous. He has a lingering fear of hurting people he gets close to, and naturally keeps parts of himself private and separate from the public eye.

On the other hand though, he does have a childish fascination with pop culture. He lived in a small town, and spend the latter years of his life pretty cut off from other people, so he's behind on the times so to speak. Vernacular and slang are like another language, and even if he tries to school his excitement it usually ends up coming out anyways because he's eager to indulge in a world he doesn't know. It helps with his escapism.

Lastly, Yana enjoys being needed. He likes having people thank him, and doing errands and favors just to experience people relying on him. Not that he's willing to be some kind of servant, but lending his time to others is a impulse that's hard to shake because it's a simple and easy way for him to achieve gratification. Yana feels more validated when people specifically count on him even if it's for a little while.

BIOGRAPHY

The shadows didn't appear until his thirteenth birthday, when he flinched away from his grandfather's hug.

Before then, Yana lived uneventfully in a traditional, superstitious family. Amongst a history of fair hair, his jet black locks had initially been received with suspicion, but years of mild life dulled the edges of his relatives' glares. Harm had come to no one, his mother argued, so it didn't mean her son was inevitably cursed. It was probably an old gene reappearing, simple genetic chance. For thirteen years, his relatives begrudgingly believed her.

People still stared, but Yana never felt ostracized. He lived an average life for a Russian boy, and at most he had to endure lingering looks at family gatherings that held less malice than they did curiosity. His parents surrounded him with love and affection, and he doted on his only little sister constantly. He loved her more than he loved himself, and though her fragile health prevented her from leaving the house often, he still insisted on staying by her side. It wasn't perfect, but for thirteen years, it was a life he could smile in.

And then his grandfather showed up at Yana's thirteenth birthday shrouded in a weird darkness. The closer he got, the sicker Yana felt until he had to back away. He felt nauseous and light headed at the same time, and although people flocked around him, asking if he was okay, Yana replied with a fatal question: "What's wrong with dedushka?"

What was the darkness around him? Why did his shadow look weird? As if the darkness pervaded the room, the atmosphere went sour. No one liked bad omens, and a child spouting claims of invisible darkness could never be good.

The uneasiness loosened thanks to Yana's mother's intervention and easing, but even Yana could see the exhaustion in her after their guests left. He told her he was joking, it wasn't real, and the tired smile she gave him told him more than her words ever could. "It was a very poor joke, Yana."

The next day, his grandfather died.

His house became alight with calls and visits, all saying the same thing: Alyona, your son is cursed. It was the hair, it had to be. They knew he was evil from birth. Even if he didn't cause the death, this was surely the touch of the devil. Send him away, unless you want your family to suffer more.

From then on, his home life changed. His father wasn't cruel, but he was distant, and his mother was warm but it was reluctant. The proof that had been missing for thirteen years finally cropped up, and no one seemed to know how to handle it. Yana truly did feel cursed.

Only his sister didn't change. She believed in his kindness, and the night after his birthday when he holed himself in his room, she visited him and said it was her turn to keep him company. It was no exaggeration to say she saved his life.

From then on, the shadows appeared regularly. Around people he knew, around people he didn't, and although it felt like bile rose in his throat every time he saw it, Yana kept his composure at all times. He wasn't going to give anyone more reason to hate him. He wasn't going to talk about the shadows anymore. He wasn't going to acknowledge that he'd seen the victim of a sudden car crash on the news earlier that day. They'd had a shadow.

It became clear he could see when people were about to die, but Yana never investigated further whether he could save them. He wasn't going to mess with fate. Most of the time all he saw were strangers anyways—he didn't have a god complex to satisfy.

He was fourteen when the shadow came for his sister. He couldn't understand; her condition hadn't been bad recently, there was no virus going around, what could possibly kill her? The rest of the day, invisible assassins began appearing. Maybe she'd get food poisoning—he stopped her from eating—maybe the glass of her window would shatter and impale her—he moved her bed out of the way—maybe she'd get too cold—he piled on blankets—maybe someone infected with something would come in contact with her—he locked them both in her room. All day he safeguarded her against any imaginable threat, and even if she didn't understand she didn't raise objections either.

He'd figured out that the people who were within a day of dying for a shadow. If he could protect his sister for a day, she'd be safe.

Sometime during the night, Yana fell asleep. When he woke up, he felt sinking relief. It's been a day, his sister was safe, no one and nothing harmful came into her room.

He went to rouse her from her bed, and then her hand fell limp over the side.

The rest of the day was a blur. His parents broke in and found her dead and him unstable, shaking. He didn't mean to kill her he was trying to save her! She had a shadow! He would never hurt her. Not on purpose.

But it was the malnutrition and overheating that worsened her condition. He was seeing her imminent death at his own hands. He'd been the threat.

Stories traveled fast in his town. The Mihaylov boy killed his sister. He was cursed. He kept shouting about a shadow. The only way to deal with a bad omen was to get rid of it. Short of giving him away, his parents decided to keep him in his room. Meals were left outside his door, and he could only come and get it after his father or mother announced they were walking away. Misfortune upon anyone who saw him was the new misconception.

But even if his parents didn't ban him from leaving the house, Yana wouldn't have wanted to. He was never very poetic, but all the light in the world couldn't make his life bright again. He'd smothered his own happiness.

He was told through the door to pack his things for boarding school without warning. They were sending him away—the solution to a bad omen was getting rid of it. Instead of an orphanage though, at least it was just boarding school.

Yana enrolled in Aurora Academy with little hope. He learned he wasn't a freak, a monster, or cursed. He could see death, plain and simple. Courses here could help him, apparently. While his first year was rough, Yana too scared or too snappy to make friends, by his second his demeanor changed. Here, people didn't shut him out. Here, people didn't know what he'd done. Here, he could hide away from reality.

---

Yana's danger intuition sometimes overlaps with his death sense, so he hasn't been able to distinguish the two. He gets a bad feeling about certain things or before certain events, and it's a vague premonition something bad will happen. Most times he dismisses it as him being sickened by the shadows he sees around people.

> VANITAS NO CARTE; VANITAS <