The jist of Asher’s life is that he moved around the Dusk Realm and the Middle Realm with his twin sister Iris a lot, and most of those relocations happened because of dragons. He was extremely and probably unhealthily close with Iris up until they had a massive fight and she started distancing herself from him. Feeling betrayed by this, he decided it was time to move away from her and focus more on himself. Spoiler alert: Iris is still alive, this isn't a sole-surviving twin story. This means she’s going to be in this backstory a lot and sometimes it will feel like the twins’ backstory instead of Asher’s but that’s the point: he needs a life that is just his own.

Asher’s childhood was a lot like a game of hot potato, if he and his sister Iris were the potato, and his relatives were playing. He was born in the Dusk Realm alongside Iris in 21AV, then was orphaned in 23AV when his parents were murdered by bandits. The twins were being watched by their paternal grandma at the time of death, and from that point Asher’s childhood was just him and Iris under the care of various relatives, who would send them off to the next relative when the burden of raising them became too much. Which happened often, because the lack of stable homelife only encouraged jadedness. It was like a self-fulfilling cycle: the twins misbehaved a lot because they felt abandoned and unwanted, and so they became abandoned and unwanted a lot because they misbehaved. Jaded kids gave way to angry teens, as Asher especially was all about rejecting the society he felt had rejected them first, so they often skipped religious congregations and any attempts to train them in forms of combat. But just before this behavior brought any serious consequences, the twins were sent to live with their great aunt Miriam when they were 15 in 36AV.

Miriam was a milliner who had just returned to the Dusk Realm after spending the last 40 years in the Middle Realm, and she was both worldly and patient enough to let the twins express and work through their anger, which is what won them over. It was Miriam who encouraged Asher’s style and got him started in sewing, which helped him and Iris mellow slightly into a more creative than destructive force (Iris got into jewelling instead) as they entered adulthood. Things were looking up: the twins now had a real place to call home and completed apprenticeships that turned into jobs in their respective fields. Iris became a social butterfly of sorts, while Asher tagged along—he still couldn’t trust enough to make his own friends, but he at least managed to be friendlier. But one late night, when Asher was 19 in 40AV, one of the first dragons to ever seen in the Dusk Realm destroyed everything. The twins were out in the town, which is why they made it out alive, as they were able to take shelter in the sewers after they saw the district where Miriam lived was already gone. After the dragon moved onto elsewhere, there wasn’t much time for Asher and Iris to process their loss and their sudden first-hand exposure to death.

They spent some months hitchhiking aimlessly and planning their next move, passing by many struggling settlements and many more that were reduced to dust. Eventually they found a new city to settle in, somewhere that had survived a few dragon attacks already so they could ease down and grieve. But by then, Asher had bottled everything up, choosing to react the same way he reacted to his hot-potato childhood: ignoring the home he lost and instead focusing on what he did have which was Iris and himself. But Iris was reacting her own way, deciding she was going to embrace and protect this new home by throwing herself into the new community and joining the local guard. Asher kept his head down, taking up a seamstress job instead of a tailoring one so there was less people to deal with, and spent all his free time either alone, getting roped into being a sparring partner with Iris, or tagging along with her to events. Maybe if this new city had stuck as a new home, he would have opened up with time, but a year later another dragon happened, and after a long fortnight of defence and destruction, everyone was evacuated and the twins were once again homeless.

This was when Asher first suggested that they stay on the road, instead of settling down and wasting their time building a new home. He was a bit gentler with the wording though, mostly just selling the idea of freedom and adventure, but Iris desperately wanted a place to call home again. Asher understood that his sister needed stability and hope, while he just needed his sister, so he went along with it. 3 years passed and another home was made and lost in a little town this time, where a heartbroken Iris proposed a compromise of sorts: moving to the Middle Realm, where there were no dragons at the time, but also where it was uncharted territority for their generation of Xitians. Asher accepted. Sure, there were other kinds of danger, and there was a chance they’d never return because they’d have to lie at the gate, but knowing Miriam had survived all those years skewed his perception of their chances, and Asher felt no ties so long as Iris was with him. They packed up what little they had, lied and said they were searching for a long-lost relative at the Gate, and moved into the Middle Realm when they were 23 in 44 AV. In the end, they adjusted quickly to the racism, Asher especially. Back in the Dusk Realm, he often felt rejected for being difficult and strange, and the Middle Realm just didn’t feel much different.

After a month of sightseeing, they settled into a city some good distance away from the gates named Prale. Iris threw herself into the community again, and with some encouragement, so did Asher. He ditched seaming for tailoring again, operating a small boutique in their home. He made friends, went on dates… but 45AV rolled around, and with it the dragons. The city had some preparation in place, but once again, it proved not enough. The twins were forced to evacuate and they witnessed another home turned to dust. The next year of Asher’s life was basically the same routine twice over: he and Iris would find a new settlement, make a life for themselves, then lose everything to a dragon. Sometimes it was a different type of dragon, and sometimes the settlement would survive attacks for a while, but the outcome was always too much damage and not enough survivors left to rebuild. The twins lost 3 homes in that 44-46 AV period, and it all took its toll on Asher. He became self-interested and careless.

Whenever they relocated, he still made his life: he would do his time at work, gossip in the markets, party in the taverns… but he never got close to anyone or cared to do anything new. When everything was future dust, what was the point, other than killing time? It was during this time that his interest in sewing professionally waned completely and instead he picked up mining, using it to  train his powers to better his chances at survival when the time to evacuate came. But where he became distant and hopeless, Iris was becoming determined and compassionate. Her idea of coping was to get better at protecting people, and as she and Asher rapidly became different people they began to butt heads a lot, mostly over their lifestyle. Asher wanted to stay on the road like he’d suggested years before, without wasting their time getting their hopes crushed, but Iris always wanted to stay somewhere and fight for survival, swearing the next home would be different. But despite this their disagreements never escalated into full-blown fights: they had been together all their lives and couldn’t lose each other.

So they found another compromise: they would stay on the road for six months, and Asher would pick where to go. But it was only a break from the usual, a vacation of sorts, and when the time was up they would make a place home again. And Asher chose the Forbidden Lands, and one horrible ship ride later, they arrived in early 47 AV. He didn’t know much about it, other than some rumors that there weren’t dragons there yet (and by this point he understood it to be a yet), and some other rumors that there wasn’t much for civilization. He was hoping to prolong the travel time by picking a place with few settlements to settle in. He was wrong, and the twins wound up making a home for themselves in a very small village that relied heavily on its mine, and Asher lived here with Iris until almost a year later.

In this time, he eventually joined the village’s mining efforts, mostly because Iris was taking up jewelling again and needed materials to work with. But in late 48AV, Asher and his coworkers broke through to an earth dragon’s tunnel network. Shamelessly leaving his coworkers to their fates, Asher made it out first with his powers and alerted the rest of the village. There an emergency meet within the hour where the Elders theorized that the dragon would be unlikely to leave its underground tunnels, especially since there was now a food source. With little fighters and the village’s main resource now a death trap, the general consensus became that the miners had to be sacrificed so everyone else could evacuate. The village asked Asher to collapse the mine entrance to seal the dragon underground, and thinking of survival, Asher was happy to comply.

But Iris, thinking of the miners, made a lot of noise at the emergency meet. She couldn’t agree to sacrificing the unwilling, to abandoning people she had befriended and the home she sailed an ocean to find. As always, she wanted to fight, or at least attempt a rescue mission for whoever was still down there. After she was ruled against, she turned to Asher, begging him to not collapse the entrance. This is when the twins’ personalities finally clashed in full and they had their first real fight, which was messy, cruel, and ended in Asher collapsing the mine entrance anyways. The village evacuated and Asher moved someplace new with Iris again. He and Iris were quick to patch things up with each other, but it was never the same after. She began to distance herself from him, and for the first time ever Asher was constantly feeling like they had lost each other, and Asher was alone.

Feeling betrayed, he left at 28 years old in 49AV. At first he thought it was for the best, and went back to travelling for some months, this time through the Forbidden Lands. But the freedom didn’t fill the void, and eventually he decided he would try finding a home on his own, just for shits and giggles. Maybe the reason it hadn’t worked thus far was because he was always thinking about what Iris had wanted, but now he could truly focus on himself. So he picked Nightveil, after hearing it had a pretty good track record with surviving dragon attacks.

With his eclectic fashions and his squawky, Emo Philips-esque voice, Asher is generally an eccentric and whimsical person. This can make him seem pretty airheaded and goofy, which is something he likes to lean into for safety reasons. He believes being taken less seriously helps him avoid getting into tense situations with others.

In this sense hes a bit aloof and emotionally-stunted, playing up the aspects he wears on his sleeve so no one gets the chance to hurt him on a deeper level. He definitely has a hard time developing trust and being open with others, he’s the kind of person who assumes the worst but says he’s just being realistic.

After his overwhelming loss, he thinks it's not worth caring about much and just looks out for himself. So despite his whimsy and conflict-avoidance, Asher isn’t a good person in the purest sense. He’s selfish and prone to greed and cowardice. He can push people too far with his trickster sense of humor, ranging anywhere from petty to cruel.

Asher is used to abandonment but at the same time he hates being alone. Deep down he has a desire, maybe a need, to be accepted just as himself. So despite his aloofness, he’s a social person, a smooth talker and behaves to belong so long as it doesn’t conflict too much with who he is. He doesn’t compromise much on self-expression because he’s used to having a sister support and protect it for almost all his life.

Asher is an ethereal beauty, a young-looking androgynous man with dark earthy skin and a lithe figure. He has long pink-dyed hair, usually he wears it in a thick wispy braid with accoutrements like flowers or ribbon. He paints his lips and wears dramatic winged eye makeup. He has heterochromia, his left eye is maroon while his right is red. He has many mismatched piercings in both ears plus another in his right brow.

For clothes, he has an chic feminine style, sometimes there are heels and skirts involved. His clothes tend to be either very billowy or flowy with a fitted waist to give the illusion of a more shapely hourglass figure. He likes to accessorize a lot with hats, gloves, belts, spectacles, and jewellery. He also loves a good cape in cold weather. He mostly keeps to neutral or muted colors so the shapes of the clothes and his accessories pop more.

Asher is rarely seen without his umbrella, which is large enough to use as a cane when closed. It has a black oiled silk canopy and a steel hooked handle. The inside of the canopy has been beautifully painted and jeweled with the image of a night sky splayed with stars. It can keep one person fully dry and two people sorta dry.

Fire Powers - Easy Use
Drawing - Novice
Tailoring - Apprentic
Mining - Apprentice
Nether Powers - Normal Use
Earth Powers- Advanced Use
Xitian Language - Fluent

3 changes of clothes, a basic sewing kit for mending, his umbrella, some makeup.

Adreanna

Aster (Asher)

Avery

Eyana

Hades

Kane

Micha

Thorvald

Zaira

Zark

Eyana was born to a family of fishers living in one of the towns of the archipelagic southeast. Her mother, a foreigner, died before she could remember, so all she knew from infancy was her father and three older brothers, Jaumar, Tal'in and Dequain. With the only potential maternal figure being her aging aunt, her father, Souley, elected to simply teach her the family trade when she was old enough. Their village was small and coastal, so didn’t have much in the way of value for the factions warring around them, though they had strong allegiances with other nearby towns and villages if ever necessary. As luck would have it, they only bore witness to naval warfare off their coast. They made for good looting when they weren’t too deep.
Later, traders from the Mainland came to connect the tribes to connect them to their trade route for the tribe’s exotic fish stocks and art.

Soon as she found her legs on land, Souley started to introduce Eyana to the water, first by dipping her in, then letting her float on her own, and then showing her some easy strokes by moving her limbs. She learned quickly, able to swim confidently on her own before she was 5, but she wasn’t allowed to go far from shore. During this time she spent a lot more time alongside her brothers as she shadowed them doing their works of various forms of fishing and scrimshaw. It was said early on that she’d be a natural in most of her family’s trades. Their island home didn’t offer much in the way of an education, so Eyana’s father taught her what he knew, which upon retrospect wasn’t much, a good grasp of Common and how to count to 100 was about it.

Finally reaching the double digits, at 10, Eyana quickly became one of the better skilled and capable children of their town and had several friendly rivalries. Still, she managed to excel, even without the coming changes of adolescence. 
Little changed in her teenage years, save for the obvious. Around the time the Dusk Portal began to reopen, when she was about 14, the tribe continued about their lives in their bubble of ignorance, but whispers come from mainland traders of large occurrences. The war that the tribes saw happen on their doorstep came to a sudden and abrupt halt as something was happening that pretty much every nation in the world feared. The traders called them ‘Xitians’. The name didn’t mean anything to Eyana or her people, it was just another word. These tales, however, fueled an as yet unnoticed sense of wanderlust in an impressionable Eyana, and by the time she was 18 it had become almost unbearable. Finally at 21, having enough of hearing about it and had to see it. She made sure to make as much as she could through either deliveries of raw or prepared fish and scrimshaw to fund her planned trip. When she told her family of the plan, they were unanimously in favour. Not nearly enough of the family had seen the world from outside their island’s little bubble.

It was easy enough to get a ride from one of the ferries that made landfall at the trading post, with some of her extra coin, she even managed to invest in some more ‘appropriate’ clothes (her usual attire drew no end of embarrassing attention from all angles) and towels, realising quickly that she wouldn’t always be able to rely as readily on a tropical sun to dry her off after a dive. 
Following a day or two of getting to know mainland culture as she always learned, by jumping right in, she learned of the Forbidden Lands, and the name alone was enough to pique her interest. With no delay, she bartered her way onto an outbound trade ship. The days went by quite slowly, not being able to leave the ship and take a dip in the water. Becoming the involuntary lust object of a frustrated merchant's fantasies was a constant thorn in her side for the last two months of the trip. The rest of the crew kept him in line, happy that Eyana contributed to the maintaining and feeding the ship in her free time rather than freeloading. She reached the age of 22 on the boat ride over. The crew broke out some finer food and drink to have an impromptu celebration. She was given a gift of an Epaulette from the ship’s captain, something they’d picked up much earlier than this trip.

A couple days later, the ship pulled into dock in a town called Nightveil. This was Eyana’s stop.

Rahan was born in the year 13 AV in the small mining town of Osiris. The towns major export was that of ore and other valuable gems found in a lucrative mountain the neighbored the town. Here in Orsiris Rahan grew in quiet ignorance of the civil war that raged beyond the town for most of his early childhood.

"Ra, come here you child. 'sigh' you can be one of the most troublesome of the younguns I swear." his mother said as she beckoned over a filth covered kid. "Have I said to avoid playing in the river?" wiping his face. Rahan could only help but grin.
"Moooom you don't understand all the other kids go and play! There’s nothing else to do here." Pouting as his mother continue, her only response was to chuckle at her boy.
"Oh dear. Do you wish to go on an adventure? Finally gotten too big for Osiris so soon?". Smiling to herself, Rahan nodded vigorously flinging mud here and there.
"Yea! I wanna see the knights and the big castles all around!" Ra held up his arms at full length to emphasis on the bigness of said castles.
"Yes, yes I can only imagine the wonders outside too child. Then how about I make you a promise? When you finally grow big and strong, just like your father. Then I'll let you escape my clutches!" She laughed as she pulled Rahan into a hug, satisfied at the job. "Now run along to bed, and stay away from the river!"
Letting Rahan go he marched off to sleep.

Of course a child would wish to follow the footsteps of his father as the town relied on the mine and it contents for a safe, secure livelihood. Rahan at the at of 15 (28av) took the trade of a Miner and learned the art to delve deep into the earth. Merely a year after he finally took off in his profession the war suddenly ended and the many refugees seeking a new beginning trickled into the town, much to the dismay and joy of it original residents.
Rahan remember coming home from a long day of work to find his father and many other people gathered, all discussing amongst themselves about the supposed issue of these refugees are causing for the town.

"They're taking up food and leeching off our hard earned food with no sign of thanks!"

"We need to do something or we risk losing more work!"

Confused, Rahan was ushered out of the way by his mother with urgings not to pay heed to old men and this complaints. Nodding with agreement he quickly took to the night in a soft slumber, the next couple of years (31av) felt different to the lad, the town grown tense and minor conflicts occurred more so than usual with the fear of the Dusk gate sparking up and the war coming to a conclusion.
Rahan tried to avoid the topics of refugees when it was brought to him. He had little care one way or another about the matter, until like any other day working the mines he was on the last hour before they would call it a day when the whole place shook violently and without warning.
The sound of screams and falling rubble would leave an impression on him till his last days. It was terrible the only thing the stayed Ra from an unfortunate death was the series of sturdy supports in his section of the tunnel, there was no light and only the sound of his own breathing to keep him company. Rahan knew the ins and outs of this mine but it did him little good when all he had was a dead end passage way and the other way stopped by rubble he was trapped.
It was only a couple hours, it didn’t take long of course he did have the good fortune on working near the main exit this day. First it was the sound of shuffling and then shortly a ray of light pierced the dark veil, illuminating a dirt covered face with a big smile at the sight of help.
After pulling him out though he wasn’t greeted with friendly faces but those of disgust. "What is wrong? Why do you look at me so?" he spoke hoping to make sense of this confusion. With no answered he was ushered to the clinic and left alone for the rest of the day and for a couple of days more as the healer didnt wish him to leave just yet. It was his stay here when he finally noticed, no one from the mines were here. For all the beds hastily made for the recovery effort only his was occupied, left to his thoughts Rahan was interrupted once more by the appearance of the town guard.
His father the man he looked up to more than anything in this world was under arrest for suspicion of sabotage in the mine, Rahan knew his father didnt enjoy the refugees coming in and doing work but he never thought it would go this far.
He felt betrayed and angry more and more the thought about it, this man would risk his own sons life for the sake of his ideal home. His father never admitted it but everyone knew better, they remember the meetings at his own home about the very topic on how to deal with the newcomers. It was a long and arduous time for Rahan but he had to stand to the side and watch the town come to its agreement that execution was the only way to right the wrongs done to the numerous families.
It wasn’t dramatic at least that’s what Rahan thought. He knew he should cry, yell, plea to the townsfolk to rethink this decision, just like his mother had! To take a moment to consider if robbing a family of another beloved was worth it. But he didn’t, no he couldn't bring himself as the words caught in his throat. All he saw was the others in the crowd around him and notice the missing faces in them and was reminded on how he could have easily been one of them.
his father gave no plea of innocence as he was shown to the noose and Rahan closed his eyes tight and heard the sounds of suddenly tightening rope followed by a deathly silence. His father already had died in his eyes long before this person in front of him did.
All Rahan could do was comfort his mom and say everything would be alright.

Many more years(46) had come and gone and the town had fallen back to its peaceful routine working the mine once more. Rahan had never strayed far from home during his time deciding it was best to take care of his mother than to be running about. Unfortunately his familys past and his lack of dealing with many people outside of those at work left him at the end a bit of a loner, it stayed this way for a long while till his mother finally passed away and Rahan was left with an empty house in a small town. He found himself a bit at a loss with the extra time he now had, money was never an issue for the family as the mine always provided. Rahan had then decided for himself that he would start anew, living in the past in a small town had made him weary, seeking for something anything really, he set off.
Leaving the town of Osiris he traveled for a bit carrying with him what he needed a pickaxe to continue working when he needed to and the clothes on his back. Soon he heard of the forbidden lands while at a stop in a coastal town, seeing sailors loading cargo and apparently make frequent stops to a town there he paid for passage and set off to the new lands beyond the sea.