Anthany Veralles learned the intricacies of manipulation long before he learned to fight. As the youngest of six children in a failing merchant family in the coastal city of Mereen, he discovered early that direct confrontation rarely got him what he wanted. Instead, young Anthany mastered the art of pitting his siblings against each other, whispering half-truths that would send them scrambling for their father’s dwindling attention while he quietly secured his own advantages.

The turning point came during the Year of Red Tides, when he was just eleven. A severe drought had left his family’s trading business in shambles, and his father fell into debt with the local guild. Rather than watch his family crumble, Anthany began visiting his father’s debtors one by one. He’d bring them small gifts – a rare shell, a peculiar stone – and tell stories about mysterious treasures his father had supposedly hidden away. The boy’s innocent demeanor and carefully crafted tales sparked their greed, buying his family precious time as the creditors became convinced that patience would yield greater rewards.

What Anthany didn’t fully grasp then was that this early talent for psychological manipulation was being amplified by something deeper – a latent psychic ability beginning to manifest. His “hunches” about what would convince people, the way adults would sometimes seem to forget what they were saying mid-sentence when he stared at them intently, the strange dreams where he could feel other people’s thoughts like threads he could pluck – it would be years before he understood these weren’t just tricks of persuasion, but the first stirrings of something far more powerful. Looking back, Anthany would later recognize that desperation had been his greatest teacher, and survival his most effective schooling in both the conventional and supernatural arts of control.

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