The Caravan - In the northern reaches of Zweiwald, winter winds sing ancient songs, and a love story unfolds between fauna blood and the God Of Beasts, Lides. Their union is forbidden yet inevitable. As the seasons changed, they produced a child of two worlds - Fern Wayfarer, born during the deepest night of winter. Her early years were spent among the wheels and songs of the Shadow Path Caravan, a renowned troupe of traveling merchants and performers. Her mother, ever watchful of her precious daughter, wove a lesson into every lullaby she sang, teaching her that music was more than mere entertainment - it was survival and communication intertwined. The caravan became her first classroom, where she learned to balance on rope bridges while playing the pan flute and to wield practice blades in rhythm with ancient battle songs. During day cycles, she trained with the caravan's sword masters, her inherited grace making her a natural at the deadly dance of dual blades. In the quiet hours before dawn, she would often shift into her snow leopard form, practicing silent stalking prey on her down time. Sometimes, an elderly woman known as Miss Sage would talk to Fern, she seemed to have secret favoritism toward Fern. During the long hours between settlements, while the other children played, Miss Sage would take Fern foraging, teaching her to identify medicinal plants by scent, texture, and the subtle vibrations they made when touched by one with divine blood. Fern learned to identify safe herbs from poisonous look-alikes, to understand how moonlight and season affect potency. When Fern was around twelve her mother started to teach her how to work with wood, creating instruments and other important things like cups and wooden swords and she fell in love with doing it and started to practice it along with pyrokinesis dancing whenever she wasn’t busy with Miss Sage.

The Mist - The first warning came from the caravan's horses - their nervous whinnying cutting through the usual evening sounds. Fern, fifteen and full of youthful confidence, was practicing a new melody on her lute when she noticed the strange quality of the air. The fog rolled in unnaturally fast, not from the ground up as mountain mists usually did, but seeming to materialize from all directions at once. It carried a metallic taste, sharp and wrong on her tongue. The first screams came from the rear wagons, the twin sword dancers, and Miss Sage. Freya didn't know what to do, she was completely blinded by the mist surrounding them. Her father managed to push her instrument down, shattering it against the carriage floor; immediately, he replaced it with two daggers. “Remember your training.” These would be the last words she'd hear from her father. The attacks came in waves. Dark shapes moved through the fog with impossible speed. The sound of steel meeting steel rang out while Fern fought back-to-back with her father, her training taking over as she parried strikes from enemies she could barely see.

The moment that changed everything happened in a heartbeat. A massive force struck the carriage, sending it teetering on the mountain path's edge. Fern glimpsed a shape larger than anything she'd seen before, its eyes reflecting light that wasn't there. The sudden tipping of the carriage caused Freya to lose footing and slip off the side. The fall seemed endless. Sharp rocks tore at her clothes as she tumbled down the mountainside. When she finally stopped, the impact knocked the wind out of her. When dawn finally broke and the mist finally dissipated, the gruesome scene revealed itself. The caravan lay in ruins, wagons splintered and goods scattered across the path. But where there should have been bodies - where she had heard people fall - there was nothing but dark stains on the stones and claw marks gouged deep into the wood.

Fern spent three days searching the area, shifting between forms, following trails that led nowhere, and calling until her voice gave out. She found scraps of clothing, personal belongings, overturned wagons - but not a single body.

Life After Loss - After losing the caravan, Fern spent time with a wolf pack that adopted her, learning their ways and developing her instincts. The first months were challenging. Though she had welcomed despite her snow leopard appearance, Fern had to prove herself to the rest of the pack. She had to learn how to capture her own food in her leopard form and how to fight using her abilities in her form. Once she gained some respect in the pack by helping everyone as needed, whether she needed to hunt for food or guard the area from predators. They taught her how to gauge weather with her keen sense of smell, hunting techniques that she would later incorporate into her combat style and tracking prey efficiently. Fern spent nights listening to her pack howled around her. She would play her instruments for them whenever they had down time, putting the younger ones to sleep usually. While Fern couldn’t really communicate with the wolves at first, she managed to learn some of their body languages and the different tones in which they communicated. After two years with her new pack Fern knew it was time for her to re-enter society and start traveling again like she used to with her caravan. Her pack was supportive of her decision to leave, understanding that she was very different from them in many ways, they decided to ritualize her departure by doing it on a full moon. Freya entered the pack lost and traumatized and she was now leaving it confident and more in touch with her fauna-side than she had ever been before.