Velka Seren

At seven, Velka was possessed by the Keeper of Ash for three months, trapped inside her own body, aware but helpless. The affliction reversed something: curses began migrating into her on skin contact, leaving their hosts clean. She apprenticed to another curse-eater who taught her black-glass containment before the accumulation drove him to the sea. Now twenty-eight, she extracts maledictions alone in Black Bell House, sealing fragments in reliquaries that whisper louder each night. She broke things off with Ilya after eight months when a fragment whispered his childhood name in her sleep, because the voices know too much.