Born beneath the weight of stone and cruelty in the shadowed city of Xil'Veltrin, the dark elf now known only as Nightingale was never meant to survive. The name he was given at birth is lost—stripped from memory by the screaming silence of the Underdark and the merciless hands of his kin.
From his earliest days, Nightingale was different. He flinched from pain. He cried when others laughed at cruelty. He begged where others killed. To the priestesses of Lolth, this made him weak. But to his mother, a high-ranking acolyte, he was an opportunity: not to mold into a warrior, but to use as a compliant servant in the temple.
Cloaked in fear and bound to ritual, he became a temple initiate—a trembling, obedient boy who learned prayers not out of piety, but terror. While others sought power through blades and backstabbing, Nightingale sought safety in silence. He was smart, meticulous, and never asked questions, which made him useful. Disposable, but useful.
Everything changed the day he was sent on a surface raid. His party ambushed a faerie glade along the Feywild border. But the fae fought back. Not with brutality, but with a terrifying beauty. Light, laughter, radiant agony—their magic seared his soul, and he was cursed by what he can only describe as "the smiling burn." When he awoke from unconsciousness days later, everyone else was dead. His prayers had saved no one. His fear had kept him alive.
That day, something in him shattered.
He wandered the surface like a ghost, half-mad, hollowed out by radiant fear and the betrayal of his own gods. He found solace in the shadows—not in hiding, but in devotion. The darkness welcomed him. No judgment. No pain. No laughter. Only stillness. And from that stillness came Shar, Mistress of the Night.
Nightingale didn't choose Shar. She was simply there—whispering in the void, embracing his hatred of light, his fear of joy, and his aching need to forget. Under her influence, he learned to cloak his fear in silence, to turn pain into absence, and to pray not for peace, but for numbness. In Shar's darkness, he found control, and that felt close enough to safety.
But nothing in the world remains untouched forever.
He met Lily by accident—an injured human girl caught between a band of orc raiders and a crumbling chapel. Nightingale should have left her. She was foolish, loud, and alive in a way that made his skin crawl. But she didn't scream when she bled, and she didn't flinch when she saw him. She just asked for help.
He healed her—grudgingly, muttering Shar's name under his breath. But Lily didn't care which god he served. She thanked him. Genuinely. Warmly. Like he mattered.
He told himself it meant nothing, that it was just one kindness to buy silence. But she returned. Again and again. With questions, with laughter, with terrible food and a stubborn hope he couldn't kill. Over time, Nightingale found himself praying less and listening more. He hated how she chipped at his shadows. He hated how he missed her when she left. And most of all, he hated the idea that maybe—just maybe—Shar's silence wasn't enough anymore.
Now, torn between the comfort of the void and the unbearable weight of light, Nightingale walks a path neither holy nor damned. He still fears pain. Still hates fairies. Still wears his cowardice like armor. But somewhere, tucked behind the fear and sarcasm, is the memory of a girl who didn't run from him—and the dangerous thought that he might not need to run from himself either.
The conflict gnaws at him daily. He prays to Shar at night, then spends the morning recalling Lily's laughter with guilt-twisted fondness. He's stuck between two worlds: one where nothing can hurt him, and one where he dares to feel. He needed distance. Clarity. Anything to drown out the echo of his own indecision.
That's when the letter came.
A simple job—guard a train carrying something valuable, something secret. Others would be assigned too. Nightingale accepted immediately. Not for coin, not for glory—but for time. Time to think. Time to run toward danger without commitment, to bury himself in action while he quietly sorts through the mess Lily left behind in his heart.
And maybe, just maybe, if he can survive whatever waits aboard that train, he'll finally have an answer to the question that's haunted him ever since she smiled.