The twenty-two buds of Aetheris

Kitana

Kurovale · Defiant, volatile

The loudest person alive. The Silt took her little brother and dragged him under, and now she carries a Light down into the dark every night to reach him before there is nothing left.

Kai

Ashkara · Restrained

Silence is his weapon, and the dark beneath the world is the one place he is not afraid. His terror is that he belongs there.

Astra

Luminara · Wise

Keeper of the Names, six hundred years old. Every soul she holds in her book is a name the dark cannot fully take.

Raven

Noctyrr · Controlled dark

She believes the taken can be brought back, and she walks the world beneath to prove it. Every descent takes a little more of her, and she goes back down.

Sage

Luminara · Contemplative

The archivist who mapped where the Silt is winning — then drew the only safe roads through the dark below. He has never held a sword.

Echo

Luminara Prime · Radiant

Empress-Consul, and the nerve of the whole alliance. The most isolated person alive — and isolation is exactly what the dark waits for.

Kael

The Outlands · Intense

His contract to guard the Empress ran out, and he stayed. When the dark comes up through the floor, he is what stands between it and the crown — on a kept word, nothing more.

Draeve

The Red Tide · Intense

The last living man of a drowned realm. His people are strung in the vines beneath the waves, alive, and for forty years he has gone down after them, cutting them loose one at a time.

Rune

Skeldrun · Contained

She holds the passes, and Skeldrun taught her one lesson above all others: you never fall back. She is trying to unlearn it before it kills her.

Atlas

Skeldrun · Steady

The wall beside the wall — Rune's shield-brother, wherever she goes. This war does not let the dead stay dead, and the thing he cannot say aloud is what he will do when a friend stands back up on the wrong side.

Agni

Emberreach · Fast, unsparing

She outran the dark once and lost her whole city doing it — she is the last of Emberreach. Now she runs Lights to the next frontier, and she has never once been late since.

Naya

Emberreach · Warm, unflinching

The witness. She reached the first fallen village while the washing was still on the line, and she was the one who thought to write down the names. She asks the question everyone else is avoiding, apologises, and asks it again.

Lyra

Luminara Prime · Soft voice, hard boundaries

She got nine cultures that had hated each other for ten thousand years to stand in one line. She never goes down into the dark, and she carries the worst knowledge of anyone who doesn't — exactly how long they have.

Mei

Luminara · Quiet authority

The festivals, the songs, the things worth keeping. Despair is what feeds the King, so Mei makes the world worth defending — where she has been, the Lights burn longer.

Riven

Luminara · Practical

Greets you with "what's broken?" and means it. He builds the hand-Lights people carry down into the dark, and he does not descend himself — he builds the thing that gets them home.

Helix

Luminara · Clipped, exact

She reads the pattern of the Hollowing itself — where it spreads next, which Light fails soonest. Her fear is not being wrong. It is being right, saying so, and being ignored until the ground opens.

Sable

Noctyrr · Pleasant, unreadable

The best spy in the war. She brings back the intelligence that saves cities, from the edges of the world beneath where nobody else can go. The dark is already in her, and she has told no one.

Zig

The Outlands · Relentless

Came up with nothing but timing and audacity. In a world this dark, the man who can still make a room laugh is not comic relief — laughter is the enemy of despair, and despair is what feeds the King.

Orin

Aetheris Academy · Gentle, exact

The Silt shows first in children, before any grown eye can catch it — so the gentlest man in the world was made the watch-post. He has had to do the unthinkable more than once, alone, and he keeps watching.

Ryōzen

The Vigil · Almost silent

The Vigil's oldest. He has walked the world beneath longer than anyone alive and stayed himself, which is the proof that it can be endured. He goes down after the ones who do not come back, including his own.

Morthral

Umbraxis · Blunt as stone

Warchief of the beast-folk who have lived in the deep stone since before the surface had names. The surface sealed the Hollow King beneath his people's feet and left them beside the grave. He despises the surface; he hates the King more.

Malach

Noctyrr · Cold, certain

One of Noctyrr's mightiest, meant to be a bulwark against the dark. He looked at Noctharion and did not see an enemy — he saw the winning side. He was never hollowed. He chose.

All 22 of them. Out of Kurovale, Ashkara, Luminara, Luminara Prime, Noctyrr, Skeldrun, Emberreach, Umbraxis, the Red Tide and the Outlands. Every one has a written voice signature, an internal conflict and a resonance — and speaks them in thirty-two languages. Fifteen come with Standard; the last seven are Heyabud+.

Every bud is somebody.

Or build one nobody else has.