#kaifeng: destiny verse.

[heavenbled]

character profile ; voidwalker. (original character, destiny based.)

name ; kaifeng andar. species ; awoken, unknown what generation. seems to be slightly mutated with reptile-like features. pronouns ; he/him/they/them. gender ; nonbinary. sexuality ; pansexual, preference towards men. class/subclass ; void warlock - voidwalker. ghost ; wen-yan (they/them) age ; going onto second century alive as a lightbearer. appears to be in mid 30s.

physical description ; kaifeng is a tall and slender person of about 6'7" height without armor, 6'9" with. though, he's most usually seen with a heel of some sort when in civvies, so typically it adds on a few inches (nighthawk's given them shit for it). they have a deep mauve purple complexion, with tiny white freckles dotted across their body ; notably they are spaced out and few in general, but some are more clustered around their arms.

their eyes are a bio-luminescent white, but unlike the 'usual' (for lack of better words) eyes of the awoken, his pupils are reptilian. almost draconic. kai's hair is depigmented and completely stark white at natural state, however they have a ritual, every week or two to dye it jet black. almost slightly too black for natural black hair. and it goes all the way down to his calves, tips ending just above ankles ; typically they're seen either in a giant bun for helmet wear, or two twintails that cycle between brains and loose ponytail.

they are usually seen in their shadow armor and twin dragon bond. or if in civvies, usually something spacelike, starry, purple/black, etc. his markings are a deep purple that accent cheeks, eyebrows, and eyes, to which they usually even further accent with sharp eyeliner.

due to their light and the way the void interacts with them, kai's fingers and hands have been dyed a dark purple. he usually dons gloves when outside of armor.

light abilities ; kaifeng has a very capricious and unpredictable relationship with their light, as the beginning of their revival was the worst awful time to him to get it under control. due to the nature of his previous life and things that nyx haneul yuan lived with, the void interacts with kai most typically in hallucinations and visions. they experience vivid to small ones : auditory, tactile, and visual alike. it was antagonistic to them for a long time, leading to several breaks from reality and quite a lot of paranoia. however, as kai began to work with the void and figure out how to truly master his light, it became slightly more benevolent. still mostly neutral. helps quite a lot with reflexes in combat.

they do not use any other subclass other than void.

brief history & personality ; oh to awake in a world so foreign to you and everyone else you dare mention it to ; a world where things were dark, upside down, light scarce and nothing dared to make sense. the ascendant plane, he would come to learn the name eventually. he he was awoken to a cold and unfamiliar world, faced with the bones of people they might have once known in a life he had absolutely no recollection of. to an easygoing and friendly little drone who called themselves wen-yan, who had absolutely no recollection of kaifeng's revival in the first place. and the bones of a wish dragon, an ahamkara, facing him and glowing and even speaking to him. he had to bring it with them, of course, how could he not?

and so from the beginning it was arduous and lonely for them, hiding their features and keeping that secret away in fear for what a public reaction would bring. there was a fear about facing the public and being amongst people that was so innate, so buried deep within their soul without the slightest idea as to why, or how to quell it. being a lightbearer is a blessing and a curse. he had truly thought he was cursed for the longest amount of time, and in that did he begin hiding his true identity and abilities to begin living as a civilian among civilians.

nestled in the last city he played this game, living a reclusive life mirroring the solitude that nyx had been forced and held away in before his death. the irony between enforcing old habits the body remembers, but the mind and the person do not ; for they are different people when one is bathed in the light, but yet all the same. kaifeng would always live this double life with himself, they would always feel as if there's just something off about them metaphysically, spiritually, everything in between. his very existence had felt as if something had been etched into the fabric of the universe itself, writing itself over several timelines already. like a saved game file.

surely there had to be corruption in that, in of itself? what did it take, as much as that new save file gave?

in time he would come to love, and eventually settle down with a civilian by the name of hala. the sunshine to their moonlight, the two became inseparable and in time, loved each other as fiercely as the roaring of the sun. as the ebb and flow of the moon. kai felt as though it would've been eternal, even if he'd done all he could to convince himself hala would one day have to pass on, as all things in life eventually did. it cemented this sort of idea to him, that they were just an ugly, dead thing - now cursed to overwrite the ways of the universe time and time again at the cost of material, and immaterial. that of which he could not yet see.

it's approaching from the horizon in where hala starts feeling fatigued, and not quite himself anymore, that kai is faced with the difference of their lives once again. only this time, they can't fight it or deliberately try to overwrite their will in the stars ; of all things to fail at when it seemed to be the very reason for his existence. but there is something healthy there, in that hala teaches him to find the light in the dark. no matter how bleak things seemed. they learn to find contentment in the present time, not the past nor the future.

and then the red war happens. the red legion invades and suddenly the world is ending. they had nowhere to go, and hala had been just two degrees short of being able to parkour about the city, and escape into the wilds for survival. kaifeng had been inexperienced with their control over the light in all the years they've spent ignoring it, and had been an utter mess in the heat of battle. one thing was a clear lesson from that day, from that entire scene and consequently, war : he had not been enough.

it's at this point, during the hardest parts of the war that he escapes to the farm. and it's there that they run into a lightbearer, a guardian, who meets him like they were two neutron stars colliding. the consequences of a wish, the consequences of intense devotion between two twins, that they had been ripped apart so brutally in a life long gone. a shapeshifting guardian, known by most as the nighthawk - but to them, as sao and neptune.

fast forward past the war a little : through kai's slow integration into guardian society and tower life, do they begin the process to mastering their light control and combat skills. at first it's slow moving and they are much too ill-prepared to deal with their void. but eventually, they find purpose in the fight and the reasons why guardians do the things that they do. a bit of motivation, a bit of a pep-talk from nighthawk as his senior lightbearer, and eventually they're moving out into the solar system to face battle head-on. to rise up to the mantle and hold the responsibility that came with calling himself a guardian.

just so happens that one of his battles turns out to be the path of becoming a shadow. this will be a separate post, as well as how lightfall and the final shape affects them.

[heavenbled]

more organized tags (i love making things more difficult for myself apparently)

[heavenbled]

kaifeng ( + nighthawk) origin stories, based in destiny's world but translatable to other fandom verses.

in the golden age in the states, kai was once known as nyx haneul yuan. he was an orphan with his twin sister, samira iseul yuan and the two kinda flit from foster home to foster home. it was a pretty shitty situation and had been really taxing and traumatizing to the both of them until they both were of legal age to officially be on their own. and that they went, never once leaving each other's side as they pursued their own paths in life. they both left high school and pursued their own degrees at the same university, living off of fafsa and prayers. embezzlement of their shitty lineage and childhood story lead for good scholarship points. the two essentially scrap their way through hell to make something better of themselves, even with all the bullshit that came with shit cards.

kai pursued a degree in dance while also taking to figure skating, even getting competitive for as long as his body would be able to. samira went into biology and earned her degree with (a moderate amount) of difficulty. but they made a life for themselves, they were successful. nyx was fairly popular as a skater, later becoming a vocal and skating coach after retirement. samira went on to bigger and bigger things, seemingly like dragging her twin around but in actuality, nyx was really grateful and proud of her. got him out of his comfort zone. that is, until samira has to suddenly vacate the entire planet, and nyx did not have a ticket on board the ship.

they hit 35. the collapse begins, and the world ends. everything comes crashing down around them, samira is gone, and nyx is completely, utterly alone. the darkness sweeps in and levels the city in minutes, and he with it. but the thing is, samira feels it - they say that its a twin thing. she feels it, just as her ship slips in between dimensions, right on the cusp of light and darkness. fast forward a bit, samira emerges from that slip with thousands of others like her, led by a queen who now called themselves the awoken. i don't really give a fuck about canon here and i built a lot of headcanons around the awoken as a separate species of people from huamnity, bc bungie did not do Enough in my opinion. beings that were once-human, cooked to atoms in a dimensional hole when the clash of light and dark basically explode at that precise moment? cmon . you KNOWWW i'm gonna be on top of that shit. whole apex predator, feral space elves i don't give a fuck reality is whatever i make of it. awoken hcs can be a separate post for later.

anyway she emerges, her queen builds their new home in the asteroid belt: the dreaming city. her queen builds this city with the power of wish dragons, ahamkara. samira takes her background in street fighting to enlist herself into her queen's army. she rises through the ranks ridiculously fast with her ambition and power, and eventually she is able to have access to a wish dragon's lair. she finds it, and she steadies herself in knowing what she's sacrificing: she wishes her twin alive, at the cost of hers. and of course the dragon takes advantage of that wish, of the guilt on her conscience and misery. of course, when nyx comes back he comes back so wrong.

it's like he himself becomes awoken at the cost of his sister. awoken, and half-ahamkara. his hair and eyes turn white, skin a deep purple, and there's just this slightly off-putting feel to him. like a mirage at the corner of your eye, but just barely. this is getting really long so im gonna keep it a lil short: society doesn't like that. awoken aren't a known people at this time where nyx was reincarnated (in the same city that had been destroyed back on earth) and eventually is collected by miss queen awoken herself. sequestered away to live in seclusion on her order, as he was an "abomination." ahamkara magic was dangerous, and eventually they were even all hunted to extinction because of their corruption. nyx dies alone once more, and centuries later does a little ghost come along and revive him once more, this time in the light.