uhhh dope? this is dope right? marv, maybe hold onto trick so he doesn't... idk. this seems pretty dope
“This is not dope,” whispers Trick, shell-shocked for a second, staring at the figure leaning over Anti. “This - this is not...”
“Leave him alone!” screams Trick, leaping to his feet and throwing himself at the sunbird, ignoring Blue’s cry for him to stop. “Stop it, don’t touch him! I’ll fucking kill you!”
The magician grabs Trick by the throat and sends power coursing through him, lifting him onto his toes as he spasms.
“No!” howls Blue, racing forward to help him. “He’s innocent, stop, stop!”
caleb! anti can possess people, he's taking over blue, the magician with the white hair! don't shoot him, please! shock him again, knock him unconscious, but do not kill him!
It takes about a half-second.
It takes about a half-second and Dapper isn’t there to slow it for you, and this is all you get to say. To warn him, like you warned him - Caleb, he will kill you.
Caleb realizes that his enemy is freed, grabs the gun, and turns to shoot him.
He never gets the hit off. A bullet is buried in his chest.
Trickshot - clean. Point-blank. Trick could shoot a quarter out of the air. Piercing Caleb’s heart is not a challenge.
Anti stands in Blue’s body, staring as Caleb collapses. Trick is behind him. You can hear him breathing.
wait, magicians, stop! the two brothers that just came in, they're not at fault! they're brainwashed, hypnotized by anti, the demon you caught first. leave them be, please calm down!
“Oh, you’re innocent, you don’t deserve to die, it’s not your fault, you’re innocent? So was my fucking family!”
He fires a bolt of pure heat at Blue, making him cry out and fall back, his shirt smoldering.
“I’m going to burn you all down to blackened bones for what you did! I don’t care which one of you it was! I don’t care! I don’t care!”
“Please, listen to me!” begs Blue. “We’re prisoners here!”
“Coward!” spits Trick, choking on the hand around his throat. “That’s our brother! If he came after you than you deserved it!”
The magician howls and throws him to the ground, bringing the hell of his boot down directly on Trick’s nose. Blue wails like he’s the one being beaten, staggering back to his feet again, his hands out-stretched.
Do anything you want to Anti, he deserves it. But please don't harm Blue or Trick, they're victims of him too. They've had people they love hurt by him, they've been hurt by him, they've been broken and manipulated and brainwashed and hypnotized and possessed by him and they didn't know he had even done anything until you came in. Please give them a chance to heal. And I think that taking them away from him would hurt him as much as killing them. More even, because he has no closure.
Trick sinks to his knees. Shaking too hard to hold Noodle. His cat hides in his lap.
Anti falls down to his knees too. Putting his mouth close to Caleb’s ear.
“Look how nicely they asked you,” he whispers, his voice layered and glitching. “How many messages did they send begging you not to hurt them, and you didn’t listen. They warned you. Look how nicely they begged you. Poor Caleb... they gave you a chance.”
Caleb spasms. His brown eyes are opened, his face against the floor. He stares up at Anti.
“If only he hadn’t given you a mortal wound,” whispers Anti. “We could have had so much fun together... maybe there’s still a little time...”
“No, Anti,” begs Trick, and then sobs are bursting from his throat, so stressed and broken they’re almost more like coughs. “No, he’s had enough. I didn’t mean to.”
Is that NATALIE ALYN LIND? No, that’s just KARSON “SONNY” HALE. They were born on 03/04/1972 and are a DRAGON living in Northknot Town. They work as a MUSIC PRODUCER. Some say they’re CREATIVE and INTUITIVE, but I’ve heard others say they’re AVOIDANT and DEFENSIVE. When you think of HER, don’t you think of CASSETTE TAPES REWOUND WITH A PENCIL, UNSENT APOLOGIES SAVED IN YOUR DRAFTS & LAUGHTER THAT LINGERS A SECOND TOO LONG?
Name: Karson Amaris Lyric Hale
Pronunciation: KAHR-sun AM-uh-riss LEER-ik HAYL
Nickname(s): Sonny, Kars, Sun (by siblings only), K. Hale (an alias), Hale Storm (around the industry)
Birthday: April 3rd, 1972
Age: 53 (appears mid-20s)
Zodiac Sign: Aries Sun, Sagittarius Moon, Virgo Rising
Gender: Cis-Female
Pronouns: She/Her
Species: Dragon
Orientation: Pansexual, Demiromantic
Occupation: Music Producer
Faceclaim: Natalie Alyn Lind
HEADCANONS
Karson cannot fall asleep without some kind of background noise, usually old vinyl static or city ambience
She keeps every voicemail her siblings have ever sent her, even the chaotic ones
She stress-cleans kitchens at 2 a.m.
Karson has a small scar on her wrist from the hunter attack and traces it when she’s thinking
She prefers producing music at night because the world feels quieter and less expectant
She writes songs she never intends to release and stores them under fake filenames
Karson is irrationally competitive at board games
She has a very specific tea she drinks when she feels overstimulated
She still instinctively positions herself between her siblings and any perceived threat in public spaces
She keeps her late husband’s old flannel folded in a drawer and has not washed it in years
Karson hates hospitals. The smell alone makes her chest tighten
She learned basic sign language during her time in New York just because she wanted to communicate with a studio engineer’s kid
She is deeply good with children but pretends she’s awkward about it
Karson hums unconsciously when she’s concentrating
She still owns a notebook filled with names she considered for the baby she never got to meet
She pretends she doesn’t care about awards but keeps them in perfect alignment on a shelf
Karson once punched a producer who tried to take credit for her work. No regrets
She loves thunderstorms but cannot stand fireworks? Strange woman
When she actually laughs without restraint, it is loud and bright and startling, like the version of her that used to exist still lives just beneath the surface, waiting for permission
APPEARANCE
Karson carries a kind of luminous sharpness. Pale gold hair that falls in soft, natural waves, often worn loose but perpetually one restless hand away from being tucked behind her ear. Her eyes are light, almost storm-glass blue, bright but steady, the kind that look through someone before they look at them. High cheekbones, a straight nose, lips that curve easily but rarely without thought. There’s something almost ethereal about her at first glance, but it’s tempered by grounded posture and an intensity that makes people sit up straighter when she enters a room. She favors clean silhouettes: dark jeans, structured coats, boots that look like they’ve walked through things. Minimal jewelry except for her wedding band, which she still wears on a chain beneath her shirt. When she sings, something shifts. Her jaw softens, her shoulders drop, and her entire face opens like a window unlatched after winter
PERSONALITY
Karson moves through the world like someone who has survived both the blaze and the aftermath. She is observant before she is reactive, quiet until she chooses not to be. Her warmth is real, but selective now, offered with intention instead of instinct. She listens more than she speaks, cataloging tone shifts and breathing patterns the way other people check the weather. Her humor is dry and precise, a scalpel wrapped in velvet. She does not tolerate emotional cowardice, least of all in herself. Crowded rooms drain her; intimate conversations restore her. She is fiercely loyal, but she no longer throws herself in front of danger without calculating the cost. When she loves, it is deliberate. When she protects, it is strategic. When she snaps, it is rare and volcanic, a reminder that the fire was never extinguished, only disciplined. She is softer than she lets on, sharper than most expect, and still trying to relearn how to want things without bracing for loss
AESTHETIC
vinyl static bleeding into sunrise - thrifted leather jackets that still smell like cologne - sheet music annotated in restless handwriting - kitchen tiles cool against bare feet at dawn - voicemail confessions sent at 3:17am - gold chains warmed by skin - thunder rolling over city skylines - coffee gone cold beside a mixing board - old scars traced absentmindedly during hard conversations - rooftop weddings with cheap champagne - studio doors locking with a quiet click - harmonies hummed under breath - postcards never mailed - stage lights flickering like distant fire - grief folded neatly into black denim
CONNECTIONS
The Almost Confession
A childhood friend who once almost told her they loved her before she left in the 90s. They never said it. Now they’re both older, more scarred, and that unfinished sentence still exists
The Neighbor Who Hears Her Sing
Someone in Northknot who accidentally hears her practicing late at night. They don’t know who she is. They just know that voice sounds like someone trying to find their way back
The Hunter Who Hesitated
One of the hunters from the Hale siblings teenage attack who recognized what she was about to do and faltered. Now older. Now regretful. Now complicated
The Slow-Burn Love Interest
Steady. Emotionally literate. Not intimidated by her intensity. Someone who doesn’t chase her but doesn’t retreat either. Patient enough to let her come forward on her own terms
The Fan Who Doesn’t Know
A local who adores the music “K. Hale” produces but has no idea K. Hale is Karson and that she’s living in town. Imagine the moment of realization
The One Who Forgives Her First
Can be romantic or platonic, that person will shift the entire trajectory of her healing. Because Sonny does not need more admiration. She needs someone who sees the worst choice she made and still says, stay
Karson Amaris Lyric Hale was born prematurely on April 3, 1972, arriving at barely six and a half months and fighting for breath before she ever learned how to use her fire. In the early days, her flame burned weak and uncertain, and she spent her first weeks in a controlled heat chamber, too small and too fragile for the world waiting outside. She grew slowly at first, small and easily winded, until one day she simply… didn’t. By adolescence, she had caught up, though the memory of being fragile never fully left her. The middle sibling, with Sullivan just ahead of her and Valensia close behind, Sonny grew up in a household where their parents were more absence than presence. Whatever the reason, the result was the same: the Hale children raised one another. They were messy, loyal, loud, and inseparable. Sully fixed what broke. Sia burned bright. Sonny softened the edges and filled every room with warmth.
“You can make a home out of a thousand borrowed rooms, but you can never forget the first one.”
Before the hunters came, she was sunlight in motion. Grass-stained knees. A joke ready before tension could bloom. Playful, chaotic in a harmless way, certain that love would always catch her if she leapt. The hunter attack in their mid-to-late teens shattered that certainty. When Sullivan, already gravely injured, ordered his sisters to run and hide, they listened for once. But when he caught up to them barely standing, it became clear they would not make it far. Sonny saw what Valensia did not: they would not survive together. So she told Sia to take Sully and run. She promised she was right behind them. She was not. She intended to stay and sacrifice herself to buy them time. Sullivan, perceptive even through fading consciousness, realized what she was doing. He tried to stop her, but he was too weak to explain the truth to Sia. Against all odds, they all survived.
Survival did not mean peace, though. In the aftermath, tension coiled tight between the siblings. Sullivan, furious and shaken, confronted her for attempting to sacrifice herself. Sonny shot back that he was a hypocrite, that he had always been the stereotypical protector willing to throw himself into danger without hesitation. Their anger burned hot but brief, two mirrors reflecting the same instinct. The deeper fracture settled between Sonny and Valensia. When Sia realized the truth, that Sonny had never intended to meet them, that she had stolen the chance for a final goodbye, something quieter and heavier took root. They argued often in those first years. Words sharpened by fear and love and unfinished terror. Sullivan tried to mediate, but as usual, neither sister listened.
“The worst part of holding the memories is not the pain. It’s the loneliness of it.”
In the space that followed, Sonny grew more guarded. Her humor turned edged with sarcasm. Chaos, once something she danced inside, began to overwhelm her. Noise pressed too close. Conflict sparked too fast. The girl who had once filled rooms with light started learning how to dim herself instead. Sonny does not regret being willing to die for them. She would make the same choice again. What haunts her is the lie. The stolen goodbye. The knowledge that she did not give her sister the chance to choose her one last time. After the attack, something in her shifted. She grew sharper. Quieter. Still capable of laughter, but measured. Conflict unsettled her, especially as she watched the stress weigh on Sullivan, whose mirror-touch synesthesia and Addison’s disease made emotional chaos physically dangerous. She swallowed her own storms to protect him. Until she could not. When she snaps, it is volcanic. Rare. Terrifying. Always followed by guilt.
In the mid-1990s, she left Northknot. She told her siblings she needed space. She did not say it would become decades. She moved to New York City and started at the bottom of the music industry as a studio intern. Coffee runs. Cable wrapping. Couch surfing. She refused to be rescued. Pride burned hotter than homesickness. Sonny can sing. Not casually. Not sweetly. She possesses a voice that quiets rooms. Her siblings knew it when they overheard her in the shower as children. Before the attack, she nearly pursued it. Afterward, she could not. Singing required exposure. Producing offered distance. Behind the glass, she could shape sound without offering herself. She climbed slowly through a ruthless industry that underestimated and dismissed her. She learned to be colder than she felt. Learned to dull softness into efficiency.
“There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.”
Karson fell in love with an artist she worked with. He saw through her defenses and coaxed her into singing again in an empty studio at two in the morning. For a time, she was happy. She began imagining a life beyond survival. They married quietly. Not a giant industry wedding. Not paparazzi. Something intimate. A tiny rooftop ceremony with two friends and a bottle of cheap champagne. They kept it mostly private because Sonny had already learned the world eats what it sees. He died suddenly almost two years later.
They were in the kitchen, cooking breakfast together, singing and dancing to their favorite song when he collapsed out of nowhere. Brain aneurysm. Something that feels random and cruel. No villain. No warning. Just the universe pulling the rug. Karson sat beside his bed in a fluorescent-lit hospital in New York City. She sang to him softly because he was the only one who could get her to sing. He died anyway. While grieving him, she discovered she was pregnant. For a brief, fragile moment, she considered returning to Northknot to raise the child near her siblings. She even began looking at homes. Then she miscarried. Quietly. Alone. And instead of running toward home, she ran away from it again. Because coming home empty felt worse than never coming at all. So, she told no one. Not her family. Not her friends. The loss carved into her in ways she still cannot name.
“It is strange how we hold on to the pieces of someone after they are gone.”
In her grief, she poured herself into mentoring a teenage artist, fiercely protective to the point of suffocation. When that artist moved on, the loss reopened every wound. She left New York in the mid-2010s for Los Angeles, then eventually disappeared overseas, drifting between cities and underground music scenes. Reinventing herself every few years. Sometimes credited simply as “K. Hale.” She became respected. Awarded. Successful. And emotionally muted. Throughout those years, she would resurface in Northknot without warning. Five-hour phone calls to her siblings. Three-hour voicemails. Postcards that read like confessions. Then silence again. She answered Sullivan’s calls more often than anyone else’s. With Valensia, the distance remained heavier. Not anger, but ache.
Sometime in the 2020s, she began listening to her old recordings and realized she did not recognize herself. Karson had achieved everything she once thought would fix her, and still felt hollow. In an attempt to feel something real again, for the first time, she sang publicly under a false name at a small venue. Afterward, someone in the audience told her she sounded like she was coming home. She realized she no longer knew where home was.
“Where you are is where the world should begin.”
In 2026, Karson decided to go back to the only place that ever truly felt like home, even when it hurt. Her siblings. She returned to Northknot permanently. Not the radiant girl she once was. Not entirely hardened either. Still warm, but cautious. Still funny, but edged. Still fiercely loving, but afraid of the damage she might cause. She dulled herself to survive. Now she is trying to decide if she can turn the volume back up without destroying what remains. Karson “Sonny” Hale would burn for the people she loves. She just does not know if she remembers how to stand in the light.
