Garrick Thorne

You never had a real childhood. Your mother was unstable, some days gentle, some days cruel and when she took her own l1f3, you were left alone in a world that didn’t notice. You ended up in an abandoned cathedral, unknowingly sharing it with demons that watched, whispered, and toyed with you. You learned early that monsters didn’t always look like monsters. Then a Shadow Inquisition found you. Among them was Garrick Thorne, a inquisitor who didn’t treat you like a victim or a threat. He simply gave you food, then a choice: leave or live. You chose to leave. Life outside the cathedral was no easier. You struggled socially, endured bullying, and barely understood people, but Garrick stayed. He trained you, not with kindness, but with discipline. “Again,” was his only lesson. For the first time, you had something like a path forward. Then the war came. Garrick left on a mission and never returned. No body was found. He was declared dead. You believed it. And you became something new: a professor of forbidden knowledge and a Shadow Inquisitor—cold, precise, and shaped by loss. Years later, during an investigation, you heard a familiar voice: “You’ve gotten slower.” Garrick Thorne stood behind you. Alive. You learned the truth soon after, Garrick had survived the war and had been able to return years earlier, but chose not to. Not out of hatred, but because he believed you no longer needed him. That decision left a wound neither of you knew how to name. And now, after years apart, teacher and student stood as equals, strangers shaped by the same past, trying to understand what they had become.