This is a journey into the making of Elian Thorne, focusing on the visceral discovery of Elian's gift and the fractured relationship with his father, Silas, which planted the first seeds of his eventual descent.
A man who started by trying to mend the world and ended by deciding it wasn't worth the thread.
The Weaver's District was a place where the sun never quite reached the ground, choked out by the black smoke of the textile mills and the perpetual damp of the Oakhaven docks. In the Thorne household, the air was thick with the scent of lanolin and the sound of Elian's mother, Martha, coughing—a wet, rattling sound that signaled the "Grey Lung" was taking hold.
The Discovery
Elian was six years old when he first realized he was different. He had found a stray dog in the alley, its hind leg crushed by a passing carriage. The animal was whimpering, a sound so sharp it felt like a needle pricking Elian's own skin.
Impulsively, he reached out to stroke the dog's matted fur. As his small palm touched the animal's flank, a terrifying sensation surged up his arm. It felt like molten lead pouring into his veins. He gasped, his vision blurring as a sickening crack echoed in the narrow alley.
The dog stopped whimpering. It stood up, its leg miraculously straight, and wagged its tail before bolting into the shadows. Elian, however, collapsed. His own leg had flared into a brilliant, screaming agony. He looked down to see his skin bruising black and blue, though nothing had touched him.
He had not healed the dog; he had stolen its injury.
The Father's Ambition
Silas Thorne was not a cruel man by nature, but he was a man hollowed out by poverty. When he found Elian limping back into the house and heard the boy's sobbing explanation, he didn't call for a doctor. He didn't even look worried. He looked at Elian's bruised leg with a predatory sort of wonder.
"Do it again," Silas whispered, grabbing Elian's hand.
"It hurts, Papa," Elian whimpered.
"Pain is temporary, boy. But a gift like this? This is a way out of the wool-dust."
Within a month, the Thorne house became a secret infirmary. Silas would bring home the broken men from the docks—men with shattered ribs or festering infections. For a few silver coins, Elian would take their agony.
The process was always the same: Elian would hold the stranger's hand, the "Siphon" would activate, and the man would walk out standing tall while Elian spent the night vomiting or shaking in a cold sweat.
The Clash of Wills
The breaking point came on Elian's tenth birthday. He was skeletal, his eyes sunken and surrounded by dark circles. He had just spent three days "carrying" the fever of a wealthy merchant's daughter—a job that had paid enough for Silas to buy a new suit and a bottle of expensive gin.
Elian lay on a pallet in the corner, his skin hot to the touch. The door creaked open. Silas stood there, trailing a man whose arm was mangled from a loom accident. The bone was visible, jagged and white.
"Up, Elian," Silas commanded, his voice slurred by the gin. "Master Miller here has a busy shift tomorrow. He needs the Siphon."
"I can't," Elian whispered, his voice raspy. "Papa, I feel... I feel like I'm going to break. The fever hasn't left me yet."
Silas's face darkened. He saw not a son, but a failing tool. He crossed the room in two strides and hauled Elian up by the collar of his nightshirt. "You'll do as you're told! Do you think the food on this table appears by magic? You're a Weaver's son. If you aren't weaving wool, you're weaving the sickness out of people. That is your purpose!"
"My purpose is to die for your coins?" Elian snapped, a sudden, cold spark of defiance lighting up his exhausted eyes.
Silas backhanded him. The strike was hard, intended to cow the boy into submission. But something happened in the moment of impact.
The Reverse Flow
Instead of Elian absorbing the blow, the Siphon reacted to his rage. For a split second, the link didn't pull—it pushed. Silas screamed. He collapsed to his knees, clutching his face as if he'd been struck by a hammer. The skin of his cheek split open, and a massive, phantom bruise bloomed across his jaw. Elian stood over him, trembling, his hand glowing with a faint, sickly violet light.
For the first time, Elian didn't feel the pain. He felt the relief of letting it go.
"Don't touch me again," Elian said, his voice devoid of the warmth a child should have. "The next time you try to use me, I won't take what's hurting you. I'll give you everything I've been holding for ten years."
Silas looked at his son and, for the first time, felt genuine terror. He realized that the "bandage" he had been using to mend their lives had developed a serrated edge.
Elian walked out of the room, leaving his father shivering on the floor. He went to his mother's bedside and, for the last time, took a portion of her cough into himself—just enough so she could sleep.
He realized then that the world was divided into two types of people: those who bleed, and those who thrive on the blood of others. He decided that night he would never be the one bleeding again.
The rain began to lash against the thin windowpane, mirroring the storm brewing inside the cramped cottage. Elian stood by the heavy oak door, a small satchel slung over his shoulder containing nothing but a loaf of stale bread and a single, rusted needle—the only tool he knew how to use.
Behind him, the house he had known for ten years felt like a cage that had finally burst open.
The Father's Fury
Silas sat slumped against the kitchen table, his hand trembling as he nursed the phantom bruise on his jaw—the injury Elian had reflected back at him.
His eyes were bloodshot, vibrating with a mix of primal fear and the indignity of a master losing his most profitable beast.
"You think you're a man now, boy?" Silas spat, his voice a jagged rasp.
"You're nothing but a freak! You walk out that door, and the world will eat you whole. They won't pay you for your 'miracles' out there—they'll burn you for them!
You're a Thorne. You belong in the dirt, weaving the rot out of better men!"
He slammed his fist onto the table, the wood groaning.
"You owe me! Ten years of bread, ten years of a roof over your head! You're a thief, Elian! You're stealing your own life from the man who gave it to you!"
The Mother's Warning
From the shadows of the corner bed, Martha's frail hand reached out. She didn't have the strength to shout. Her voice was a ghostly thread, woven with the very Grey Lung Elian had tried so hard to siphon away.
"Elian… come closer," she whispered.
Elian knelt by her side, his cold expression softening for a fleeting second. She took his hand—the hand that had absorbed a thousand fevers—and pressed it to her hollow cheek.
"Listen to me, my little bird," she wheezed. "Your father sees a coin, and the neighbors see a cure. But I see the weight. Every time you take someone's pain, you leave a piece of your soul behind to make room for it. Don't let the world fill you with so much darkness that there's no room left for Elian.
She coughed, a dry, racking sound that made Elian's own lungs ache in sympathy.
"If you go… don't go to save them. Save yourself. Because a heart that only knows how to hurt for others will eventually learn to hate them."
The Farewell
Elian stood up, his silhouette tall and sharp against the flickering candlelight. He didn't look back at Silas, whose curses had devolved into a low, bitter muttering. He looked only at the door, the gateway to a world that had demanded everything from him and given back only scars.
"You're right, Father," Elian said, his voice terrifyingly calm for a child. "I am a thief. I'm stealing back the years you spent selling my blood. And don't worry about me rotting in the gutter."
He turned his head just enough for Silas to see the cold, violet glimmer in his eyes—the mark of a Siphon who had learned to push back.
"The world won't eat me, Papa. I've been tasting its sickness since I was six years old. By now, I think I'm the one who's poisonous."
He looked at his mother one last time, a silent apology in his gaze for the pain he could no longer take from her.
"Goodbye, Mother. I'll find a place where the air doesn't smell like wool and death. And if I can't find it... I'll build it out of the bones of the people who put us here."
With a final, decisive click, the door closed. The bolt didn't slide, but the bridge was burned. Elian Thorne stepped into the rain, the cold water washing away the last of the Weaver's dust, leaving only the jagged edges of a boy who was done being a bandage.