fₒᵣ ᵢ ₐₘ bₑcₒₘₑ dₑₐₜₕ, dₑₛₜᵣₒyₑᵣ ₒf wₒᵣₗdₛ
Anastasia Morozova is a kinslayer. Anya Varamyr is a murderer. Anastasia is a decorated soldier. Anya is a backstreet cutthroat. Anastasia would die for her country. Anya would die for her friends.
Anastasi...
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In the beginning, it was just Baghra, Aleksander and Anastasia. A mother and her two children who loved each other more than anything else in the world, for a time at least.
Aleksander came first. The son of a nameless Ravkan heartrender whose power had caught their mother's eye. For decades the pair were as happy as they could be, still having to resort to a nomadic lifestyle to escape the hate that stuck to them like flies to honey. The pair were Grisha, you see - and not just any Grisha, but shadow-summoners.
For years, Baghra was blind to what her son was becoming. Sure, he showed immense power, but that was natural given that he himself was the human embodiment of an amplifier. Where otkazat'sya and Grisha of lesser caliber would soon be reduced to mere dust on the wind, her son would be eternal - he would be everything and anything he wanted to be.
It wasn't till Aleksander had turned 13 that Baghra came to the conclusion that perhaps a mother's love and the company of shadows wasn't enough for a soul as precious as her son's, and so 9 months later, she birthed another child.
Anastasia had been a beautiful babe. She'd inherited her father's thick hair and golden complexion. The man in question had been another nomad Grisha - an Inferni sea captain she'd found rather dashing. Anastasia never met her father but that was of little importance as she already had a man in her life who she knew would raze villages to the ground in order to keep her safe.
From the moment Aleksander had set his cold, slate eyes on his baby sister he'd decided that not even all the stars in the night sky could compare to the precious soul he held in his arms. As she grew older, it became clear that Anastasia had followed in her mother and brother's footsteps. She was a shadow-summoner - that was certain - yet she seemed to lack the power her family members shared, for Anastasia was not an amplifier. In the arms of her brother, she could encompass entire lands with shadows, she could use the Cut to destroy mountain peaks, she could blind legions of soldiers. By herself, Anastasia could just about summon enough power to darken a room, cut down a washerwoman (not that she'd tried), or take the sight of an elk.
Much like her mother, Anastasia remained oblivious to Aleksander's growing thirst for power. Even when others called him a heretic of sorts, even when he took her in his arms and created a rift so vast no mortal man could cross it, even when his rank began to climb to the point that he brought them to the Ravkan Capital to reside in the Little Palace.
"Why did you create the Unsea, Aleksander?" She'd ask as her mother sang softly by the fireplace and her brother ran his fingers through her long dark hair. "Those creatures within it are so terrible I can't bare to think about them."
"To keep you safe, sweet sister," he'd reply. "When you were still a babe I swore that I would rule the world, build our mother a castle, make you a princess - that way no one will ever touch us again."
It wasn't long before the three shadow-summoners were surrounded by Grisha. For the first time in her life Anastasia truly thrived. She danced, she drank, she laughed. Soon enough, her brother had to begin ushering her out of corners she'd darkened to sneak away into with a handsome young Heartrender, or a pretty Durast girl or two. Soon enough, she began to question why her brother was so keen to hide their true identity, why they had to mysteriously disappear for a few years every couple of decades, why she wasn't permitted to travel, or to love, or to fight.
The day she turned 213 was the day Aleksander told Anastasia that she'd never leave the gates of the Little Palace again.
200 years of growing resentment and suspicion later, Anastasia had bittered considerably. A life of no purpose, no passion, no excitement had left her soul empty and dark. However, one day she met Alina Starkov and that was when the cogs began to turn and the pieces all fell into place.
Her own mother had sent Alina running for the hills, away from her elder brother - and Anastasia was beginning to understand why.
Aleksander Morozova had become a wisp in existence, and the Darkling was not someone she could find it in herself to love.
The last straw had been when she'd finally been escorted out of the gates of the Little Palace. A moment she'd been waiting for for centuries soon became sour as she realised the only reason the Darkling had taken her so far from home was to partake in his oh so selfless plan of world domination. No matter how he tried to spin it, Anastasia couldn't do anything but curl her upper lip in disgust.
Still, she followed her brother. She watched him as he clasped the legendary antlers around Alina Starkov's neck; she watched him as he screamed in rage from the pits of the Fold; she watched him as he emerged scarred, but brimming with newfound power.
Then, one day, Anastasia met a loud-mouthed, obnoxious, yet admittedly dashingly handsome privateer and the rest was history.
