Aether was built as a vessel first, a solution second, and a weapon last. His body exists as an engineered compromise between flesh and machine, grown and assembled for one singular purpose: to contain the inugami bound inside him. His bones are reinforced with alloy, his organs laced with conduits, his veins threaded with seals woven deeper than nerves. He breathes, bleeds, and heals like any living thing, but every biological process runs beneath the watchful correction of mechanisms buried so deep they've become indistinguishable from instinct.
Rinu is not a passenger. Rinu is the axis around which Aether's existence pivots. Their bond isn't symbolic or spiritual in the abstract sense. It's architectural, structural, fundamental. Aether's spiritual abilities don't truly belong to him. They're permissions granted by proximity, powers he can access only because Rinu resides within him. When Rinu is housed inside, Aether can channel yokai-based phenomena: spectral manipulation, curse projection, psychic pressure. But if Rinu is forcefully removed and manifested outside his body, those abilities go dark immediately. The circuits still hum. The body still functions. But the supernatural aspect of him goes hollow, gutted, like a shrine with its god torn out. And it is physically painful for the pair.
The curse that binds them is etched into Aether's blood itself. His blood is corrosive, acidic, alive with spiritual decay. It eats through metal, flesh, and ether alike. It can be weaponized, splashed or pressurized, smeared into blades or used as a ward, but it refuses to be obedient. Exposure to oxygen ignites it into agony, burning Aether from the inside out if exposed, searing whatever it touches and eroding his own tissue in the process. Rinu suffers the same backlash. Every use of it becomes mutual harm, a constant reminder that power must be paid for in shared pain. They cannot wield it without hurting each other.
In terms of his own abilities, Aether does not know what he can do yet. Hidden beneath the yokai functions and mechanical failsafes lie abilities that belong to Aether alone. Latent systems. Dormant instincts. Unaccessed protocols. Whether they were intentionally locked away, overwritten by Rinu's overwhelming presence, or simply never activated remains unclear. When he reaches for power without Rinu's influence, he meets resistance. Static. Something buried deeper that pushes back, waiting for the right condition, the right trigger, to finally surface.
What Aether does know is that he can contain more. His body was designed to house multiple yokai simultaneously, folding them into layered spiritual compartments like a living nesting doll. Consumption is the key. By eating a yokai, absorbing its essence and core, Aether can imprison it within himself and access its spectral or psychic abilities at will. But this isn't clean assimilation. The spirits don't dissolve. They persist. They watch. They remember.
To facilitate this consumption, Aether can convert one arm into a gunblade, part firearm and part spirit-cleaver. The weapon doesn't kill yokai outright. Instead, it weakens them, destabilizing their spiritual cohesion just enough to make them consumable. It's a harvesting tool by design, built specifically to feed the thing Aether has become.
Every spirit he houses leaves an imprint behind. Memories bleed through unbidden. Emotional responses misfire. Mannerisms surface uninvited. Voices overlap and tangle in his thoughts. Over time, the accumulation fractures him into a shifting constellation of selves, each yokai carving out space in his psyche like squatters in an abandoned building. This personality bleed manifests as dissociation, identity fragmentation, and eventually full dissociative identity disorder. Sometimes Aether doesn't know who is speaking through his mouth: himself, Rinu, or something else entirely that remembers a different name, a different life, a different death.
Despite his creation, Aether is not evil, but he is not whole. He exists as a constructed paradox, simultaneously protector and prison, weapon and wound. Every additional spirit he consumes makes him stronger and renders him less himself. Every use of his cursed blood corrodes what little autonomy he possesses. And buried beneath it all lives an unanswered question that no one programmed him to ask:
If Rinu was the reason he was built, and if Rinu is ever gone, what is Aether supposed to become?