The Nightbringer

**The Nightbringer** is the King of the Jinn. His only goal is to free the Jinn and enact revenge on humans, specifically the Scholars.

## Personality

The Nightbringer is driven by revenge. His need for it has led him to madness. He is wholly evil now. Before the imprisonment of his people, he was fiercely protective. His wife told him frequently that he "loved too much" and she feared what he would do if harm came to those he loved.

## Physical Description

The Nightbringer in human form has auburn hair and a beautiful face, according to Elias Veturius. Laia describes his voice as "not a sound so much as a feeling." The Nightbringer is swathed in darkness. He looks to be nothing more than a medium-sized man in a cloak and gloves. But he is clearly no normal man. Ghuls pool near his feet writhing. His eyes glow, slitted suns filled with ancient malevolence. When Helene Aquilla looks into his face, instead of eyes she sees "stars blazing out like the fires of hell." There is raw darkness in his voice. His presence makes humans feel the instinct to flee. His skin beneath his robe is shadowy and twisted, with an eerie glow beneath the darkness that makes one think of banked embers.

## Biography

 This page may contain spoilers! Do not proceed unless you wish to be spoiled.

Before becoming The Nightbringer, he was Meherya, King of the Jinn. Meherya is the name that brought him into existence and defined all he would ever be. It means "beloved." As his true name was unknown to humans, they called him the King-of-No-Name.

Meherya had a wife, whom he loved dearly. The Forest of Dusk was his home. He was the Soul Catcher, helping humans to move the spirits of the dead on, so that the living were not haunted by them. One of his own, Shaeva, betrayed him by helping the Scholar Empire's king to create the Star. This weapon imprisoned the jinn in a grove of trees. The jailing of the jinn was so powerful it shattered the Star into hundreds of shards that were flung across the land.

Meherya escaped imprisonment, but was unable to save his wife and people. This failure drove him mad. He carried this madness with him like a cloud of ruin. Wherever he went, darkness fell, and so he was named The Nightbringer.

Since this time, his mission has always been retrieving the broken shards of the Star in order to free his people. However the magic of the Star requires that each time he finds a shard, he must ensure that it is offered to him in love and trust. The magic is not one-sided, so the Nightbringer has to render love and trust as well before receiving the shard. This is the only way he can reassemble the weapon and set his people free. The Nightbringer also cannot kill those who touched the Star because it protects them.

His hatred for the Scholar was so great that he whispered the secrets of steel-craft and statecraft to the Martials. Within a few generations, the Martials managed to bring down the Scholar Empire. He sought to destroy the Scholar Resistance leaders, Mirra and Jahan, for the Resistance was the only hope the Scholars had. He used all his power to transform into a redheaded five-year-old orphan named Keenan. He then refused to speak to anyone until being discovered by Jahan who brought him to the Resistance's encampment.

From then on he became a spy. He wheedled information from Mirra and Jahan's daughter Lis. He stalked Mirra, who had a shard of the Star in her silver armlet. One day, when Mirra arrived at the encampment without the armlet, he became furious. The Nightbringer allied with Keris Veturia and give her the Resistance leaders' names and location. This led to their capture and death.

### *An Ember In The Ashes*

A few years later, when Laia of Serra came to the Resistance begging for aid in rescuing her brother Darin, the Nightbringer recognized the silver armlet she wore. He began winning her over using information stolen from Darin, in order to receive the shard of the Star from her. At the same time, the Nightbringer kept up his cover among the Resistance in order to persuade the rebels to kill the Emperor and rise up in revolution. He knew this would result in the extermination of the Scholars by the Martials, giving him his revenge for what the Scholars did to his kin centuries before. The Nightbringer was very close to getting Laia to fall for him, but she gives the freedom he had offered her to Izzi instead, making his carefully wrought plan to get the shard of the Star fall to pieces.

### *A Torch Against The Night*

The Nightbringer is at Quin Veturius' estate, where Emperor Marcus Farrar has set up his headquarters. Helene Aquilla overhears him talking to the Commandant. After the Commandant leave, the Nightbringer speaks with Helene, who does not know who he is. He tells her that he can smell the power on her. He warns her that it will destroy her if she is not careful. He then demonstrates her own power by healing some of her injuries from her interrogation. When Helene somewhat jokingly asks if he is volunteering to be her teacher, he replies that he is not, but perhaps one day he will be. When she asks what he is, he responds, "I am the Reaper, girl. And I go to collect what is mine."

### *A Reaper At The Gates*

Upon receiving Laia's piece of the Star, the Nightbringer returns to a cavern where he keeps the other pieces he's collected. He joins Laia's piece to the almost completed Star. He gives the Wraith Lord a letter and tells him to deliver it to Helene Aquilla and no one else. He then orders the efrits to "go to our new allies in thee south" and "help them understand what they can call forth from the dark places." He tells them they have until the Grain Moon, in six months, to complete this task. Finally, he tells the ghuls to "glut themselves." His thoughts linger on his betrayal of Laia, even though it shouldn't. After she gifted him the armlet, she glimpsed in his eyes darkest moments of her life. But when he looked into her soul, he saw his wife gazing at him across the centuries. He saw her horror and sadness as what he had become.

The Nightbringer meets Helene when she arrives in Navium with her Black Guard. He causes the storm that allows the Martial fleet to hide, and then drags up decades of shipwrecks onto the beaches of Navium to make it appear as if the entire Martial fleet has sunk.

While Helene is forced to try and heal Marcus, the Nightbringer arrives. He tells Helene to stop, and even Marcus listens to him. He says that Helene cannot heal Marcus because he suffers no ailment and that his brother's ghost is real. Until Marcus submits to its will, it will give him no peace. He tells Marcus that he will soon face the darkest moment his future holds. The Nightbringer then orders him to leave Helene and Livia and tend to his empire, "lest your brother's death be for naught."

It is revealed that the Nightbringer has been sending Laia the visions she has after she uses her magic. He then purposely has the jinn reveal the truth about Laia's mother to her, knowing that she was about to be met by Cook.

The Nightbringer killed the other Augurs too swiftly to learn anything from their deaths. He then imprisoned Cain. Upon the release of the jinn, they release the Nightbringer from his current form into his true form, the form of flame, which he has repressed for ten centuries.

### *A Sky Beyond The Storm*

The Nightbringer is destroying Mariner villages along the border with the Empire. He tells the jinn with him to let the children live so that they can carry the story, but to kill everyone else. He claims Laia still has hooks in his heart. When he kills a Mariner boy who has the magic of the fey in him, the boy's spirit gives a death prophecy. *"The seed that slumbered wakes, the fruit of its flowering consecrated within the body of man. And thus is thy doom begotten, Beloved, and with it the breaking...."* But because the boy is young and human, he dies before he can finish his foretelling.

From the Nightbringer's memories it is revealed that Mauth created the Nightbringer. Mauth calls him son and the Nightbringer calls him father.

The Nightbringer and Keris have started their war with Marinn. They are winning. Ayo and Adisa have both fallen. Twelve thousand Mariners are killed.

The Nightbringer seeks to create a gateway between Mauth's dimension and the human dimension. He wishes to return all the suffering that has been cleansed from the world through the Soul Catcher back into the world.

## Powers

The Nightbringer is incredibly powerful and has a wide variety of magical abilities. He possesses all of the powers that other jinn have, and more. He is able to absorb the pain of others. He can disappear and ride the winds. He can read the future in the stars. He can manipulate minds, bodies, and the weather. He is able to heal others and himself. He is not weakened by salt like other jinn. The Nightbringer can communicate telepathically. Many say that looking into his eyes reveals their death. However, the Nightbringer says he shows a person the darkest moment their future holds. His presence snuffs out Laia's magic.

## Trivia

* Laia describes him having the scent of "lemon and wind and something smoky, like cedar."
* The Nightbringer is "the King" and "the Reaper at the Gates" in the prophecies.

## References

1. ↑ *An Ember In The Ashes*: page 223
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 *A Torch Against The Night*: page 70
3. ↑ *A Reaper At The Gates*: page 5
4. ↑ *A Reaper At The Gates*: page 272
5. ↑ *A Sky Beyond The Storm*: page 7