Gothic Fantasy Butterfai

The Hollow Vale was a place her family only spoke of in whispers, as though saying its name too loudly would invite the fog into their home. She grew up in a small stone house on the edge of a crooked field, her parents and brothers telling her never to wander past the deadwood fence. They said the Vale was a wound in the world, a place where the dead lingered too long and the living forgot how to breathe. She listened. She obeyed. Until the sixteenth night.

That night, the fog rose before the sun even set. It pressed against the windows, curling in pale tendrils along the sill, carrying the scent of wet stone and something older—iron and roses left too long in the dark. She felt it watching her. Not from outside, but from within. When her parents latched the doors, she was already hearing the hum. It was faint, a tremor at the edge of her hearing, but each pulse crawled down her spine until her hands itched to follow it.

She left without shoes, the cold earth swallowing her footsteps. The fog wrapped around her ankles, not pushing her back but guiding her forward. The field was gone; in its place, a winding path of damp cobblestones emerged from the mist. Each stone was slick with water that reflected nothing of the world around it. She did not think of turning back. Her heart should have been racing, yet it beat slow and heavy, as though matching the rhythm of the hum.

The path ended at the bones of a cathedral. Its spire was broken, its doors rotted away, yet the place breathed as though it were not entirely dead. Inside, the air was colder. A pool lay in the center, a perfect circle of black water so still it might have been glass. She stepped closer and saw herself in it—yet the reflection did not move with her. It stood still while she leaned forward, its eyes brighter, sharper, not the soft human shade she knew.

When she reached out, the surface of the water broke without sound. Her reflection stepped out, dripping shadow like ink, and smiled without warmth. It pressed its hand against her chest, and the world shattered in a soundless crack. She fell to her knees, breath ripped from her lungs, as something inside her split clean in two. The reflection walked past her into the mist and dissolved.

She rose slowly, her skin pale as candle smoke, her hair heavy with strands of darkness that caught a silver sheen. Her eyes glowed faintly, lit from within by shadowlight. Behind her, the black pool closed again, leaving only a ripple that faded to stillness. She was no longer the girl who had left the house. She was something else—the first Gothic Fantasy Butterfai. The Vale had claimed her, and she belonged to it now.

Her presence was quiet yet absolute. She moved like fog over stone, her steps unhurried, her gaze unflinching. Beauty clung to her in strange ways—sharp angles softened by the ghost of light, elegance in the way she stood perfectly still, listening to things no one else could hear. She carried an air of inevitability, as though she was not walking toward you, but toward the moment you could not avoid.

Her Flings, rising like black-lace crowns from her head, shimmered at the tips with flecks of obsidian light. They quivered when lies were near, their glow dimming in the presence of corruption and swelling when truth was uncovered. They could sweep through a haunted place and comb its darkness into shape, or cross in a deliberate knot to seal something dangerous away. Her wings spread wide, lace-veined with midnight and edged in silver that caught the faintest light. They did not stir the air when she flew, but they carried whispers from one side of the Vale to the other. With them, she could draw memories from stone, silence a restless spirit, or mark a soul so it could never hide from her again.

She lived on the seam between two selves—the human she had been and the Butterfai she had become. The human part remembered warmth, laughter, the smell of bread baking in her mother’s oven. The Butterfai part saw those memories as threads already frayed, destined to snap. She could still feel sorrow, but it was tempered, measured against the weight of what she knew about endings. This duality gave her power; she could speak to the living in a voice that carried comfort, while the dead heard in it the gravity of release.

Her human memories reminded her that beauty could exist without tragedy, that kindness could bloom without cost. Her Butterfai instincts told her that such things were rare and often doomed. Together, these truths made her both dangerous and merciful. She could choose to lead a lost soul home, or leave it wandering until it learned its own way. Her powers thrived in that balance—her Flings weaving wards that could heal or bind, her wings carrying her between moments without the world noticing she had moved at all.

The first time she encountered another Butterfai, it was Annabel Reyn. The Hollow Vale had been quaking for days, storms of shadow sweeping through ruins and tossing restless spirits into the living world. She followed the disturbances to a clearing where Annabel stood, her own powers pressing the chaos back into order. Annabel’s eyes found hers instantly, and for a long moment, they simply regarded one another—two beings who understood the weight of what they carried.

Annabel spoke first, her voice like the strike of a silver bell, inviting her to join the Butterfai Society. At first, she refused. The Vale was hers to guard, and she had no need for alliances. But Annabel told her the truth: the disturbances were not born in the Vale. They were spreading from beyond, and if they were not contained, the boundaries she protected would tear apart entirely. Reluctantly, she followed Annabel to the gathering place, where other Butterfai waited—creatures of fire, mist, crystal, and storm. None approached her too closely, but none turned away.

By the time the night ended, she understood that the Society was not a chain but a covenant, one she could leave if she chose. She agreed to join—not out of loyalty, but because she knew there would come a day when the Vale alone would not be enough to hold back what was coming.

Her sector, the Gothic Fantasy sector, is a place forever suspended between dusk and night. Pale fog drapes the land like an endless mourning veil, pooling among ruins and skeletal forests where blackwater rivers coil. Lanterns drift untethered across the surface, their flames unburning yet steady. No birds sing here; the air hums with the weight of memory. Moss muffles every step, and the ground is marked by the faint trails of the departed, paths that lead to nowhere. It is a place the living avoid and the dead never leave, a resting place for all that lingers too long.

Her responsibilities within the Society are rooted in balance. She is the hinge on which the Gothic sector swings, ensuring neither life nor death gains too much hold over the other. When spirits wander too far into the living world, she draws them back with the tone of her Flings, a soundless call they cannot ignore. When the living stumble into the sector, she decides their fate,escorting the pure-hearted to safety, or letting those with greed in their eyes be swallowed by the fog.

Her work is not only in defense but in preservation. She tends to the ruins, not to rebuild them, but to keep their stories intact. A cracked altar remains swept of moss so its memory can still be heard. A fallen bell is propped where it can catch the wind, its faint note carrying into dreams. She understands that decay is a truth, and truth must be guarded.

When breaches threaten—the tearing of the veil by dark magic, storms of shadow that sweep in from beyond the Vale—she is among the first to act. Her wings can carve protective paths through fog, her Flings can knot a ward so tightly that nothing can cross. In the Butterfai Society, she is the one who steps forward when others hesitate, her calm making her as feared as she is trusted.

Above all, she keeps the Gothic Fantasy sector honest. Too much sorrow, and it will drown the world. Too much light, and it will forget itself. She walks the seam between both, never entirely in one, never abandoning the other. The living think of her as a ghost. The dead know her as a guide. The Butterfai call her a guardian. She knows she is none of these things. She is simply what the Vale made her.