Given their marginal status, the realm’s few wealthy elves have good reason to be anxious about maintaining appearances. Unfortunately, Cassandra’s vitiligo bore some resemblance to Void corruption, so it was out of misplaced love and protectiveness for their daughter — as well as fear and shame for their reputation — that her parents kept her sequestered away from the world throughout her youth. To alleviate her loneliness, the girl performed card tricks and fortune tellings for her dolls and the servants. Yet these dramatizations were not mere play.

Cassandra often heard strange melodies in alien languages, though no one else could hear them. She tried to ignore them. She couldn’t. She told them to go away. They didn’t. Finally, Cassandra stopped trying to screen out the words. She listened, and found they were, impossibly, messages about future events, though Cassandra struggled to make sense of them.

One day, in an eerie voice, Cassandra told her mother her next trading excursion would bring fortune and misfortune in equal measure. Her mother went anyway, making a mint, but perishing on the road home. Cassandra’s father blamed his “accursed” daughter and banished her. Cassandra slept in gutters, pilfering to survive until she was chased into the wilderness.

She wandered until she heard another melody, less strange but reminiscent of those in her head. It led her to the Carnivale’s camp, and a new family. The nomads’ life suited her. Cassandra honed her talents and persona as a fortune teller. Eventually, she became the head of the nomadic family – protective, like her parents, but warmer and more accepting.

As Void outbreaks became more common, the Carnival was often barred from entering towns. With no coin to be had, the troupe disbanded. This time, Cassandra did not wander, for the melodies had told her to seek out Void Hunters, whose fate she knew was intertwined with that of the whole world.