Chapter Text
Lirael had never felt at home in the Summerset Isle, always the outsider, forever wishing she didn't have to watch the blatant racism committed against the other races. She was born beneath alabaster spires and raised among golden skinned elites, but none of it ever felt like hers. Where others wore pride and arrogance like a mantle, she wore quiet worry and annoyance. While her people preached superiority, she found beauty in the flawed and strength in the humble.
She was Altmer by blood, but not by heart. Even as a child, she could feel the way people tensed around her when she questioned things. She asked too many questions, and not the right kind. Her father said she would outgrow it, as if kindness was a phase that an elf needed to leave behind.
Her mother, before she vanished, had simply smiled and whispered, Never stop. Years later, Lirael still hadn’t stopped. Now, far from home, she wore sky blue robes with golden trims and smelled faintly of alchemical reagents. Her magic was quiet, precise, made not to impress but to heal, to shield, to protect. She helped where she could.
She listened when others didn’t. And though many assumed her cold because of her race, her eyes betrayed her: warm, thoughtful and never judgemental. There was power in her, deep and old, but she never reached for it. She feared what it might become if wielded selfishly.
And lately, it had begun to stir. Drawn by dreams of towers and ancient halls, Lirael had begun to feel the pull of something forgotten, Aetherspire Castle, a place that existed only in half-heard rumors and her own fractured visions. She didn't know why she felt drawn to it, only that the pull grew stronger by the day. She was not alone anymore.
Somehow, she had found others who didn’t ask her to be anything more, or less, than what she was: Maevra, a grieving breton necromancer, Selanwe, a devout daedric ice mage, and Rix, a wild half elf fighter. Strange souls. Wandering ones. But hers now, in some quiet, unspoken way.