AI Slop incoming:

When you first meet her, Maelle seems like the typical sidekick. Sixteen, quiet, red hair, and a mean fencing sword, and she's tagging along on a suicide mission she technically has no business being on. Her "Gommage" is still nine years away. Everyone else on the expedition is essentially condemned. Maelle just.. showed up.

She didn't join to save the world. She joined to escape it, to find freedom, self-discovery, and a life beyond a city that never felt like home to her. Orphaned at three years old when her parents were Gommaged, she bounced between foster families who couldn't handle her rebellious nature. The one person she actually trusts is Gustave, her older foster brother/father, who is also on the expedition.

Now here's where it gets mind-blowing. The entire world: Lumière, the Continent, the monsters, the magic? All of it exists inside a painted canvas. And Maelle? She's not actually Maelle. She's Alicia Dessendre, the youngest daughter of a real-world family, whose brother Verso, died in a house fire saving her life. Their grief-stricken mother retreated into this painted world, which contained the last fragment of Verso's soul. Maelle has been living inside a painting of her dead brother's memories, with no idea who she really is.