Helnyx Koester

Helnyx is a Patchwork child taken from captivity by Amelian and Gracelyn Koester prior to the Koester's joining the Archive. They tend to be very quiet and avoid speaking around unfamiliar faces they're uncomfortable with, preferring to hide in the safety of the presences of the adults they know and trust, though they're most keen to speak names if they must speak at all. They're learning to vocalize more comfortably, but the sound and feeling of their own overlapping echoes of several voices at once is unpleasant enough to hold them back, leaving them to instead prefer to hum or whistle when able. They now live with the rest of the Koester family, including Codell, Kigo, Twinkle, Deputy, Quinn, Tsuuki, and Tsukii.

The exact extent of which is unknown, but Helnyx has an innate ability to perceive things beyond the tangible realm.

## Physical Description

Helnyx is very slender aside from their deer-like legs, usually seen wearing multiple layers of baggy clothes. Their hair is starkly white, partially hiding their dark eyes that nestle a triad of green irises in each. Their ears have three points each, their right having a small piercing hole on it. Atop their head are two pairs of horns, a larger in the back and smaller a little in front. The corners of their mouth stretch off far across their cheeks, usually hidden well under their loose hair, punctuated with stitch-marks that hold their jaws together if and when their mouth opens all the way to reveal their rows of needle-y teeth. The seams of their body appear to be actual seams, portions of them visibly patched together in blotches at smallest and at entire limbs on the larger end. Their shiny wings fold up much like a beetle's under a small, thin little shell. Their wings are framed by six little feeler-tassels, two at the top and four at the bottom. They have Cloven-esque hooves, and a slender tail with a silky tuft at the very end.

## History

While Helnyx does not remember much of their earliest life, they are aware they were created artificially by someone named The Mother, whom they were expected to refer to as either Momma or something of the like, and that they were told repeatedly they were "Special" though they did not understand why. This is in reference to them being the first stable result of experimentation with Ivea's reincarnation system, which involves taking pieces from souls who have lived their time and are no longer able to repeat the cycle, and revitalizing them anew by piecing them together with other fragments. Helnyx is the result of taking several other beings and essentially welding them together, leaving the child to struggle with a variety of memories not their own, strange senses and instincts, and an overall slowed down comprehension process due to the constant excessive intake of information.

At the age of about five and a half, Helnyx was stolen away and set to be traded off to the highest bidder as a one of a kind marvel of science, but the process was intercepted when Amelian and Gracelyn rescued them away and fled the continent with them, back to the Beastlands of Ivea. Here, they spent a short time learning to acclimate, finding that they were supposedly safe with beastfolk, even if not exactly their kind, and that their new family with Amelian and Gracelyn ought to be safe, potentially happy, even. Then, Amelian went missing abruptly, leaving Grace to take the Patchwork and search exhaustively for her missing brother, only to later find word through the recently revived Pantheon that her brother was alive off elsewhere in the multiverse, and is still trying to come back for them. In the meantime, Helnyx is left to simply wait, now meeting Amelian's revived family and starting to take comfort in a companionship with Cereus, Amelian's twin brother.

When the Pantheon vanished, however, and Gracelyn withdrew from the world in an effort to protect Helnyx, the only person she had left after losing Ame's family and countless neighbors, Helnyx grew ever quieter, though they hadn't truly spoken a word since Ame left months prior. Upon finally reuniting with Ame, they chose to finally speak, informing him with one word - "Faye." - that they were aware a wraith of someone they never should have been able to perceive, let alone even know existed in the first place, was either present or involved in the immediate situation.

Now that they've been safely brought to the archive, they're left to attempt to adjust to the new environment and new people, but are slowly acclimating and coming back out of their shell.