I am 35 winters old, though most people think I’ve lived far longer when they see me. My skin carries that dark pink hue of the abyss, and one of my horns… it never fully survived whatever touched me as a child. It rotted, cracked, and broke halfway, curling forward like it still remembers pain. The other still grows, twisted from front to back, wrapped in old bandages I never bother to change. People assume I am cursed, and maybe they are right, but I learned early that what festers can also heal.

I did not become a cleric to be loved. I became one because I could pull people back from the edge when no one else could. My magic does not glow warm or gentle, it seeps out like poison, sharp and suffocating, and I can see the fear in their eyes even as their wounds close. They thank me, but they step back after. I’ve accepted that. If my presence feels like rot, then so be it. I will still heal them, even if they never stop seeing me as something that should not.