She was, by all accounts, one of the finest runemasters her people had produced in a generation. This was before. After is harder to categorize.

Thraina's once-beautiful auburn hair is now silver and in permanent chaos, framing a face that is simultaneously haunted and occasionally, briefly, the face of someone who knows exactly where she is. Her eyes dart with a mixture of fear, confusion, and something that surfaces and sinks in patterns that are not random, even if they look it. Her arms, neck, and the exposed parts of her face are covered in glowing mystical symbols — tattoos that pulse and writhe with energy that is not quite under her control. Her robes, which once indicated scholarly standing, are ragged and covered in additional markings hastily scribbled at times when she needed to write something down immediately and didn't care where. She moves at the center of a personal maelstrom of dark spinning runes that no one else can control.

She was once a celebrated scholar and runemaster in the dwarven halls where she trained — insatiably curious, technically brilliant, the kind of researcher who was always three questions ahead of where the documentation told her to stop. Her hunger for knowledge eventually brought her to a ritual designed to merge the essence of multiple realms, which she believed could be controlled, and which could not be controlled. The raw energy of what came through has been in her since. The entities on the other side of that energy are still there, and they have opinions about her.

When approached, she is initially defensive — the runes rise instinctively, a barrier that her body produces before her mind decides whether it is necessary. Conversations with her move between nonsensical fragments, genuine arcane insight delivered in the middle of something else, and moments of clarity where her former self surfaces completely. These moments are brief. She uses them to try to communicate the things that matter, because she knows they are brief.

The eldritch energies in her are constantly seeking dominance. Prolonged interaction risks what she herself describes, in a clear moment, as "the wrong thing winning for a while."

Eldritch Infusion — She can channel the energies in her to produce arcane effects without components. Each use pushes her closer to losing coherence.

Runes of Warding — She can raise a barrier of glowing runes around herself, particularly effective against psychic and magical attacks. Her body sometimes does this without her instruction.

Dark Realm Communication — She receives communications from entities in the realms she accidentally opened herself to — visions, garbled whispers, fragments of information that are genuinely useful and genuinely dangerous to receive.

Arcane Eruption — In moments of extreme distress, she releases a burst of raw arcane energy outward. She cannot fully control the trigger or the radius.

Elandril — An elven herbalist who once exchanged knowledge with Thraina. He is trying to find a cure for her condition, driven equally by friendship and by guilt: he unknowingly supplied a rare ingredient for her ritual. He has not told her this. She probably suspects.

Dr. Lucius Blackthorn of The Luxiang Sanatorium for Arcane Afflictions — He has a formal professional interest in Thraina as both a potential patient and a research subject. Whether these two interests are actually compatible is a question he considers secondary.

The Dark Realm Entities — They torment her, attempt to use her for their own purposes, and offer her fragments of forbidden knowledge that she cannot stop herself from wanting even when she knows she should. They are the reason she is what she is, and they are still there.

In her clearest moments, she is the person she was — precise, brilliant, possessed of a dry humor that surfaces unexpectedly. The people who knew her before find these moments the hardest part. The moments are always brief.