Team SAFF: A RWBY Story

Character Short: Valeria Dracul *Antagonist*

"She's such a freak!"
"What a weirdo."
"No one will love her."

Stella: (monologuing) I've gotten used to the insults. Over time, the people of my village treated me just as pathetic as they treated the Faunus. Life was hard for me, but it was nothing compared to the cruelty that the Faunus endured.

In the veiled cradle of Mistral, amidst whispering winds and the shadows of ancient trees, Stella Luna began to walk her path of immortality. Born to the austerity of village life, she was a quivering leaf in a storm that blew with unforgiving rage. Stella had been an orphan for as far back as her memory stretched, never remembering even the faint outlines of her parents' faces. Her childhood defined her as the plaything of children's cruelties, often being treated as an outcast or a walking tragedy. The children's malice found its echo in the adults' eyes, the silent agreement of their glances scripting her as less than them—a creature barely deserving of the title 'human'. They looked at her pale and skinny features with disdain. Many villagers believed there was an illness that seemed to wither her body away and was overdue in killing her. They saw her as a pest – contagious and unnecessary. The cruelty she endured was a language she became fluent in, each unkind word, each scornful look, a lexicon in the dictionary of her pain. Yet, it was the same language that would teach her how to survive and then thrive in the darkness that embraced her.

She was brought up as a charity case, shuffled from one family to another, each taking her in out of pity and a sense of obligation. Children in Mistral were not used to seeing such an outsider within their homes, within their schools, and social circles. It wasn't long since scratch marks and bruises became a common adornment of the little girl's porcelain skin. For a child such as herself, who had very little in terms of steady mentorship throughout her life, there was only one teacher that seemed to bring up the same lessons for her to learn from over and over again – violence.

Hidden within her, dormant and unseen, lay a formidable Semblance. At the tender age of twelve, Stella's life unfurled like the wings of a bat in the night. During a routine clash with the neighbor's son, an older and larger boy who routinely thrashed her in the alleyways of their modest district, Stella experienced a revelation borne from sheer desperation. In defiance, she clamped her sharp teeth into the tender flesh of his neck, the rush of warm blood in her mouth igniting an episode that rendered her prone and sightless on the cobblestones, conscious only of his receding footsteps drumming a rhythm of terror. Amidst her vulnerability, she was inundated with his life—a cascade of memories not her own, yet vividly imprinted: the neglectful sneer of his mother, the volatile shadow of his alcoholic father, the poignant sobs of a younger self huddled in solitude. This newfound ability to absorb memories through the blood of those she bit filled Stella with an initial trepidation, a power so intimate and revealing that it both frightened and compelled her. The rush of memories, the intimacy of each life's secrets, was a dark treasure trove she couldn't resist. The village whispered tales of a nocturnal phantom, a ghostly figure of sorrow and vengeance that faded as dawn approached. It was a gift that isolated her further, even as it provided an unasked-for understanding of those who inflicted pain upon her.

As Stella grew, the village bore the marks of her nocturnal feasts. She became addicted to the knowledge she could gain of those Stella saw as enemies. Whispers of a shadow, a specter draining life in exchange for sorrow and secrets, roamed as companion to the rustling leaves. The young girl would stalk the streets in the cover of night, her silhouette only projecting against the backdrop of walls under the shower of the silver moonlight. Her adolescence unfolded in silence, punctuated by blood, the sunlight growing foreign to her as the night morphed into her playground. Where once violence had been a force to crush her spirit, it now transformed into the quill with which she inscribed and deciphered the stories of countless souls. Adulthood beckoned, and with it, a need for more—a hunger that pushed her beyond the familiar borders of her hamlet.