Ixia

The Netherworld is not a place most people choose to visit. It is a realm of shadow and cold fire, where the boundaries between life and death grow thin and the powerful prey on the weak with impunity. Ixia was born there — not by choice, but by the accident of a mother who crossed the wrong threshold at the wrong moment and never found her way back.

She grew up in the Netherworld's twilight markets, learning early that survival required two things: the ability to see threats before they materialized, and the ability to eliminate them before they could act. She developed both to a degree that made even the Netherworld's most dangerous denizens cautious around her.

Her weapon of choice was not a blade or a spell but a specialized energy rifle — a weapon she built herself from salvaged Netherworld technology and components she acquired through methods she declines to specify. The rifle fires concentrated bursts of netherworld energy that can pierce through multiple targets, its shots leaving trails of cold blue light that linger in the air like accusations.

The Netherworld's ruling council, recognizing talent when they saw it, offered her a position as an enforcer — a collector of debts, a resolver of disputes, a finder of those who preferred not to be found. She accepted, because the alternative was being on the other side of that arrangement.

She is not cruel. She is precise. There is a difference, she will explain to anyone who asks, between enjoying the work and being very good at it. Ixia is very good at it.