Redolence Aurelius Dorian Ashcroft

Genasi / Cleric

Submitted character story

You are the medic who talks armies down before raising your spear, the cleric who chose persuasion over force at the Iron Matron's door. What carried you back was not vengeance but the memory of hands reaching through smoke, taking everything you couldn't protect. You bear your father's rebellion and your family's shattered name like a wound that won't stop bleeding, even as you stitch others whole. They'll remember you as the healer who never flinched, who stood in the space between ruin and restoration until everyone else made it through.

Defining moment: The Vanishing (A Narrative Account) - Southern Empire - Capital City of Aldekef
Norwynthal
For nearly a year, the southern provinces of Norwythal simmered under open rebellion.
General Nathaniel Ashcroft (Formerly known as The People's Blade) once one of the crown's most decorated military commanders had turned his banners against the throne. To the common folk he was a reformer. To the crown, a traitor. With disciplined strategy and the loyalty of thousands, his rebellion burned hot... but not long enough.
In the end, the royal forces prevailed The surviving rebel leadership was dragged in chains to the capital city, a sprawling southern metropolis whose white spires overlooked the sea.
Citizens packed the Royal Plaza, hungry to watch the downfall of the man blamed for a year of bloodshed. Among the prisoners stood General Ashcroft and his most loyal officers, including his eldest daughter [Aerilyn "Aeri" Ashcroft]. 
Redolence and the rest of his family watched from the crowd praying that his father and sister would be alright.
The sentence was moments away.
Then the world broke.
Without warning, the air across the entire city shuddered, not with sound, but with pressure, as if reality itself had inhaled too sharply. A heartbeat later, a catastrophic surge of raw mana erupted across the southern continent.
Witnesses would later describe it differently:
Some saw the sky fracture like glass. While others felt their teeth vibrate as if they were in an earthquake. A few even swore that the wind screamed
I think the best way to describe it is almost like watching ink spill across an invisible glass ceiling
What is certain is what came next.
Portals began to tear open.
Not dozens, Not hundreds.
Over one hundred thousand rifts split reality across the nation in the span of minutes.
A merchant's wife near the front of the square was lifted clean off the ground, her cry cut short as the smoky fingers closed around her torso and drew her backward into the tear. There was no blood. No struggle against the portal's edge.
She was simply... gone.
All across the city, across the nation, reality ruptured. Portals split open in alleyways, over rooftops, in crowded markets and quiet bedrooms.
Some were small enough to reach through. Others were wide enough to swallow wagons whole. Wherever they appeared, stone blackened and warped, as though existence itself had been scorched.
They did not open cleanly. They ruptured into existence. Leaving ragged wounds in the air that bled smoke and pale, otherworldly light. Wherever they appeared, stone blackened and warped. Buildings sheared apart as if caught in gravitational crossfire. Entire streets were left gouged and half-collapsed
And from within the portals came the hands.
Long, smoky blueish purple appendages. They were vaguely humanoid but stretched wrong, like shadows pulled too thin that reached into the Material Plane. They did not attack.
But rather, they seized.
People were grabbed at random:
Nobles and Beggars, Soldiers and Children, Rebels and Royalist alike
No pattern. No mercy. No discrimination.
Panic swallowed the capital in seconds. The Royal Plaza became ground zero for the catastrophe. Several rifts tore open midair above the square. Screams drowned out the priests' final rites as spectators and soldiers alike were dragged into the void.
The king himself vanished in the chaos.
So did much of the royal court. Across the nation, the same horror unfolded. In homes. In marketplaces. In temples. In quiet country roads. Over the course of less than an hour, tens of thousands of people simply... disappeared Then, as suddenly as they came, the portals collapsed.
Silence followed. Immediate Aftermath-
The kingdom did not recover. Major cities were structurally scarred, missing people and destroyed infrastructure caused trade to collapse. Due to the missing members of the Royal Court, the line of succession was fractured and astray. There were entire communities that were missing their loved ones.
And worst of all, The Displaced did not return.
Divinations eventually revealed the terrible truth: the taken had not been killed. At least not initially, They had been scattered.
Across the world.
Across planes. 
Across realities.
Though many ended up in dangerous territory and some are rumored to have died or been killed shortly after they were displaced.
Some appeared in distant continents. Others surfaced in the Feywild, the Shadowfell, and stranger realms still. Many have never been heard from again.
The Blame-
In the chaos that followed, one story spread faster than any official investigation.
The rebellion had done this. General Ashcroft had done this.
The timing was too perfect. The location too convenient. The damage too widespread. To a grieving nation desperate for someone to blame, the conclusion felt obvious.
It was never officially proved. But it didn't have to be. Public hatred did the rest. Now the Ashcroft name is spoken with bitterness across the southern lands. Doors close when it is heard. Spit follows in the street. To many, the family is not merely traitorous, they are the ones who tore the world open.
Only the surviving loyalists know the truth:
The General looked just as shocked as everyone else. He too had lost family to the portals and him and his loyalist seek to recover the Displaced and return them to their loved ones, even if their homes are nothing but ruins now and not much to go back to.
Now Redolence searches now survivors and his lost family, his Mother and younger Brother. He seeks to restore the Southern Empire to what it once was and reclaim his noble family's honor and restore his family's happy memories and bring them back together. His mother is named Aeloria Ashcroft.
His Younger Brother is named Callum Ashcroft but Redolence refers to him as Little Cloud.

Never breaks first