| Relatives | Leonard Stormwind |
|---|---|
| Languages | Elven, English, Gnome |
| Affiliations | Upper-Middle class noble mercenary |
| Aliases | Marc |
| Marital Status | Forever taken |
| Place of Birth | 100 year old Bunny Pasture |
| Date of Death | deathdate |
| Place of Death | deathplace |
| Species | Human |
| Gender | Male |
| Height | 6'4 |
| Weight | 230 |
| Eye Color | hazel green |
MARCUS VALEBRIGHT - LEONARD'S FATHER - CAELYNN'S LOVER is (Information on your heritage/background/class)
The Man Built for Everything Except Joy[edit | edit source]
Marcus Valebright was born into a world where expectations were carved in stone long before he existed.
The Valebright name commanded respect, demanded obedience, and offered very little in return. Marcus was the youngest son of a house where duty was a religion, affection was a rumor, and lineage was a cage no one acknowledged as such.
His mother treated children as proofs of competence.
His father treated them as assets.
His brothers took their roles like fitted armor, each settling into a predetermined path that left Marcus the only one without a script.
He was educated thoroughly, but loved sparingly.
Gifted resources, but denied purpose.
Given freedom, but never direction.
Which meant the young nobleman grew into a man filled with all the worst kinds of hunger:
the hunger to understand,
to belong,
to matter.
He studied philosophy because he wanted truth.
He questioned tradition because he wanted meaning.
He craved connection because — in a home filled with people — he had never once felt seen.
Nothing in his life changed until he was thirty-two.
And nothing about his life ever recovered from what happened next.
The Golden Years[edit | edit source]
Ages 9 and 7
Ages 12 & 10[edit | edit source]
MARCUS VALEBRIGHT – AGE 7[edit | edit source]
The Boy Who Thought the Sky Felt Sorry for Him[edit | edit source]
When Marcus Valebright was seven years old, the ground knew him better than half the people in his father’s court.
Seven-year-olds should be worrying about skipping stones or stealing pastries from kitchen windows—not about the angle of their sword grip or the fact that their father was watching, silently judging, from the marble terrace of the Valebright estate.
But Marcus lived a life carved from expectations, and every expectation left its own mark.
He was on his back again.
Not metaphorically.
Physically.
Flat on the practice yard dirt for the third time that morning.
Above him, the sky held that soft, shimmering blue that looked too gentle for a world so strict. The clouds drifted lazily, unconcerned, almost sympathetic. Marcus imagined them murmuring to each other.
He fell again.
Poor thing.
It’s always the sweet ones.
He lay there for a breath—just long enough for dust to settle in the curls of his hair and for the sting of the latest blow to pulse hot across his ribs.
Another sparring match lost.
Another bruise freshly blossoming on his shoulder.
Another chorus of snickers from the noble boys who trained alongside him.
But every time he hit the ground, something hardened.
Not cruelty.
Not anger.
More like a promise.
Marcus didn’t want to be the strongest.
He just wanted to be good enough.
Good enough to not be discarded by his lineage.
Good enough to protect someone—anyone—if he ever needed to.
He didn’t know yet that the “someone” would arrive years later wearing cosmic destiny and a smile sharp enough to change the shape of his entire heart.
For now, he was just seven.
Just trying to breathe.
“Up,” barked Instructor Brae, a man whose voice was carved from old stone.
Marcus rose, jaw clenched, dust sticking to his cheek. His opponent—Talen Fross, two years older and born with arms like tree trunks—twirled his wooden sword like a toy.
“Again,” Brae commanded.
Marcus didn’t nod.
He didn’t speak.
He simply lifted the practice sword again, aching arms shaking.
Talen rushed forward like an avalanche. Marcus blocked, barely. The blow rattled his bones. The next one knocked him sideways.
The third hit split his lip.
Marcus stepped back, vision flickering.
His father made a subtle sound. Not quite disappointment. Not quite surprise. Just enough to make Marcus’s chest tighten.
Lord Hadrian Valebright believed emotion was a weakness. Especially in boys. Especially in sons.
Especially in his sons.
“You’re hesitating,” Brae growled.
Marcus tried to answer, but another strike came flying. He dodged too slowly, and the blade hit his shoulder again—the same spot as earlier, a hot flare of pain.
He collapsed to his knees.
Talen smirked.
Marcus forced himself to stand. Not for pride. Not for strength. Not even for his father. Something deeper pushed him up. Something quiet and fierce and ancient.
He trained not to win.
He trained to endure.
He trained because, someday, someone would need him.
He didn’t know who.
He didn’t know why.
But the tug of destiny was already threading itself through his small, bruised body.
After training, he escaped into the Valebright gardens—the only place that let him breathe without critique. The gardens stretched wide, filled with towering hedges and rare flowers imported from lands he couldn’t pronounce.
He ducked behind a willow tree and sank onto the grass. The shade pooled like a cool hand on his overheated skin.
He whispered to the tree, which in his imagination understood him better than the adults in his life.
“I’m trying,” he said softly. “I promise I’m trying.”
The willow swayed, leaves brushing his cheek like a mother’s touch he didn’t remember.
He pressed his forehead to his knees and breathed in the smell of earth and green. In the quiet, the ache in his chest faded enough to think.
He didn’t want glory.
He didn’t want titles.
He didn’t want songs written about him.
He wanted to protect.
To shield.
To choose softness without being punished for it.
He wanted his strength to be the quiet kind—the kind that catches someone before they fall.
He didn’t know that one day, he’d meet a girl who fell from prophecy itself.
A girl whose destiny tangled with his long before they shared a breath.
A girl who would turn all his seven-year-old ache into purpose.
He didn’t know that.
But the stars did.
That night he pressed his forehead to the cold window glass and gazed at the sky. A single star seemed brighter than the rest, dancing just slightly—like a spark waiting to become wildfire.
“Who are you?” he whispered.
He didn’t know she was whispering the same question on the other side of the world.
The Boy, the Dirt, and the First Bully[edit | edit source]
At seven years old, Marcus Valebright already knew the feel of the ground too well.
He hit it again—flat on his back—staring up at a sky that looked like it was trying very hard not to laugh at him.
The training yard spun in a blur of light and dust. Heat clung to his skin, sweat stinging the shallow cut on his lip. The sun glared down with the smugness of someone who’d never had to hold a practice sword in their life.
Another match lost.
Another bruise blooming purple on his shoulder.
Another wave of laughter rolling across the yard.
He heard it before he could get his breath back.
“Didn’t know we were practicing falling, Valebright.”
That was Garrett.
Garrett Thorne: two years older, half a head taller, arms already starting to thicken with the promise of muscle. His father commanded one of the city’s outer garrisons, which gave Garrett the blessed freedom of being both a noble’s son and a soldier’s heir—spoiled and hard-edged at the same time.
He was Marcus’s first real bully.
Not the casual mockers.
Not the boys who snickered from the sidelines.
No. Garrett did his work from up close.
Garrett stood over him now, wooden practice sword casually resting on his shoulder like it weighed nothing.
“Maybe next time they’ll teach you how to land,” he added, smirking.
The other boys laughed. A small, mean chorus. It wasn’t always what they said—it was the relief in their laughter. They were just glad it wasn’t them on the ground.
Marcus’s shoulder throbbed, but he pushed himself up anyway. The dirt clung to his tunic, streaking pale blue fabric with brown. His practice sword lay in the dust where he’d dropped it, a mute witness to his defeat.
“Up, Valebright,” Instructor Halden barked from the edge of the yard. “You fall, you rise. Again.”
Marcus picked up the sword with a hand that trembled just slightly.
He hated that shake.
He hated that Garrett saw it.
“You sure you want to keep going?” Garrett taunted. “We can find you a feather or something. Might be more your speed.”
“Enough, Thorne,” Halden snapped, but only half-heartedly. The man believed in “hardening boys” the way some people believed in gods. If a few feelings got crushed in the process, that was just the cost of doing business.
Marcus didn’t answer Garrett. He didn’t trust his voice not to crack.
He took his stance again: feet apart, knees bent, sword raised. He’d memorized all the positions. His body just never quite matched the confidence of the diagrams.
“Ready,” Halden said.
Marcus nodded. He wasn’t ready. He rarely was. But readiness, like bravery, was expected on command.
Garrett moved first. He always did. He came in strong, swinging his sword in broad, forceful arcs. Marcus blocked the first hit, barely. The impact rattled up his arm, but he stayed on his feet. The second blow he deflected with a twist of his wrist.
There was a flicker then—just a breath of something like surprise in Garrett’s eyes.
You blocked that?
Interesting.
And then the moment passed. Garrett pressed harder.
The third hit came down on Marcus’s collarbone, sharp and clean. The practice sword slammed into him like a hammer. Marcus’s legs folded, and he dropped again, knees striking dirt, then palms, then cheek.
The ground embraced him like an old friend.
The laughter came back in waves.
“Pathetic.”
“Valebright falls again.”
“Maybe he should be a scribe instead.”
From the terrace, Lord Adrien Valebright watched, face unreadable. The family crest—radiant sun over a crossed blade and shield—gleamed on his breastplate. Marcus could feel his father’s gaze like a second sun, hotter than the first.
He wanted to look up.
He didn’t.
Shame made the ground suddenly very interesting.
“Enough for today,” Halden called. “Thorne, go run laps. Valebright, see to your bruises. Be back tomorrow. Earlier.”
“Yessir,” Garrett said, rolling his eyes just enough to be disrespectful without being caught.
The boys began to drift away in groups, voices rising in animated chatter. Garrett didn’t immediately leave. He lingered a moment, standing near Marcus as he struggled to his feet.
“You know,” Garrett said, tone deceptively casual, “you weren’t completely awful that time.”
Marcus blinked.
Garrett shrugged. “You actually blocked two hits. Would’ve only been one last week.”
There was no softness in his expression, but something in his voice had shifted. Less cruel. More… testing.
Marcus swallowed. “I’m trying.”
Garrett snorted. “Try harder.”
Then he turned and jogged off to start his laps.
Marcus stood there breathing, dust sticking to his sweat, heart pounding in some strange rhythm that wasn’t just pain. It was something else—resentment, yes, but underneath it, an ember of something harder to name.
He walked toward the edge of the yard, where a low stone wall separated the training grounds from the gardens. Each step hurt, but he welcomed the ache.
Something hardened in him every time he hit the dirt.
Not into hatred.
Not into a desire to crush Garrett beneath his heel.
Marcus didn’t want to be the strongest.
He didn’t want to humiliate anyone.
He wanted to be solid. Reliable.
Good enough to stand between someone and harm.
Good enough to not be the one rescued.
He just didn’t know that one day, before either of them turned twelve, Garrett Thorne would be the one standing between him and danger.
He just didn’t know they’d trade places, again and again, until bully became rival, rival became partner, and partner became something like a brother.
Bruises, Gardens, and Quiet Resentment[edit | edit source]
After training, Marcus slipped away to the lower gardens where the violets grew wild and unattended. The main gardens—the ones the guests saw—were neat rows of imported blooms: manicured, measured, controlled.
Marcus preferred the forgotten corner near the old stone wall, where nature still argued with the gardeners and sometimes won.
He sat in the shade of a crooked plum tree and gingerly touched his shoulder. A sharp flare of pain answered him.
He thought of Garrett’s smirk.
Of the laughter.
Of his father’s thin-lipped silence.
He also thought of that split second when Garrett’s eyes had widened, just a fraction. The moment Marcus blocked a strike he “wasn’t supposed” to block. The flicker of… respect? Recognition? It felt almost like the beginning of something, though Marcus didn’t yet have language for it.
“Why do you care?” he muttered to himself, plucking a blade of grass and shredding it between his fingers. “He’s an ass.”
Still.
Something in him cared.
Not about Garrett’s approval, exactly.
About not being written off as hopeless.
About being seen as capable by someone who clearly was.
He blew out a breath and leaned his head back against the tree trunk, eyes half-closed.
He didn’t want to be like Garrett. He didn’t envy his swagger or his loudness or the way the other boys orbited him like moons around a too-bright star.
But he did envy the certainty.
The way Garrett took up space without asking.
The way no one expected him to fail.
Marcus’s life had rules, edges, consequences. He was not allowed to be mediocre. He was not allowed to be fragile. He was not allowed to exist quietly.
He wanted, more than anything, to be reliable. To be someone another person could lean on and not fall through.
He imagined—like he often did—someone he cared about standing behind him, hands gripping his shoulders, trusting that he would hold the line.
He imagined raising his sword with no tremble in his grip.
He imagined not hearing laughter when he fell.
He imagined a world where strength wasn’t measured only in how hard you could hit, but in how many times you were willing to get back up.
He didn’t know yet that Garrett, of all people, would one day be the one extending a hand to help him off the ground.
He didn’t know that one night—years from now, long before they turned twelve—they would fight side by side against something much worse than each other.
But the seeds were already in the dirt.
They always are.
A Father’s Shadow, a Boy’s Promise[edit | edit source]
That evening, Lord Adrien came to Marcus’s room.
Marcus sat on the edge of his narrow bed, tunic off, trying to bind his own shoulder with a strip of linen he’d stolen from the infirmary. His fingers fumbled with the knot.
“Let me see,” his father said from the doorway.
Marcus flinched, then turned.
Adrien crossed the room in three strides, his presence filling the small space the way his voice filled the great hall. His hands were practiced and efficient as he loosened the makeshift bandage and rewrapped it tighter, cleaner.
“You’re leaving your left side open when you pivot,” Adrien said. “Thorne sees it every time.”
The mention of Garrett’s name made Marcus’s cheeks burn.
“I’m trying,” Marcus murmured.
“I don’t doubt that.”
Marcus looked up, startled. His father’s tone wasn’t warm, but it wasn’t sharp either. It sat somewhere unfamiliar—almost like… assessment.
“You lack strength,” Adrien continued. “That much is obvious. At your age, your brothers were already—”
He cut himself off. Marcus knew what came at the end of that sentence. He’d heard versions of it his entire life.
“But,” Adrien said slowly, “you see angles they miss.”
Marcus blinked. “Angles?”
Adrien nodded once. “You track patterns in how people move. You hesitate, but you’re not blind. That hesitation will kill you if you don’t learn to move through it. But if you lean into what you see…”
He tied off the bandage and sat back.
“One day you won’t just be reacting,” Adrien said. “You’ll be predicting.”
Marcus swallowed. “And then?”
“Then you might actually be worth the trouble of training,” Adrien said, standing.
It wasn’t praise. Not exactly.
But it wasn’t pure disappointment either.
For Marcus, it was enough.
After his father left, he lay back on his bed and stared at the ceiling.
He thought of Garrett’s smirk.
Of the way he swung his sword with blunt force.
Of how easy everything looked for him.
He thought of what his father said—about patterns.
He replayed the match in his mind, tracing Garrett’s movements.
He began to see it: the rhythm, the repeat, the tell.
For the first time, a thought settled over him that felt less like self-blame and more like strategy.
I can learn him, Marcus realized.
Not to crush him.
Not to humiliate him.
To survive him.
To stand beside him one day as an equal.
He didn’t know that in learning Garrett, he was also making room—for loyalty, for grudging respect, for the kind of friendship that only grows when two people have seen each other at their ugliest and chosen to stay.
He just knew this:
He would get up tomorrow.
He would go back to the yard.
He would face Garrett again.
Not just to prove himself to his father.
Not just to silence the laughter.
But because something inside him refused to accept that the boy who kept knocking him into the dirt would always be standing on the other side of the line.
Somewhere, underneath the cruelty and bravado, Marcus sensed that Garrett was more than a bully.
He just didn’t know yet how much.
Garrett began training for military life — the kind that shapes boys into blades.
He thrived.
He liked structure, enjoyed the praise.
Marcus thrived only in the library.
He studied philosophy while the others studied sword forms.
He asked “why” while the others asked “who do we fight?”
Garrett found Marcus strange.
Marcus found Garrett exhausting.
But something unspoken connected them:
they were both boys trying to earn affection in houses that saw children as investments.
Garrett respected Marcus’s stubbornness.
Marcus respected Garrett’s discipline.
They would never say it out loud.
Ages 18 & 16[edit | edit source]
Trouble started because Garrett hit eighteen and suddenly decided he was a man of the world—or at least a man who deserved bad ale in questionable establishments.
“It’s not even a real tavern,” Marcus muttered as they walked toward the Broken Spoke. “It’s where farmhands go to pickle themselves.”
Garrett grinned, the grin that always signaled “danger, chaos, or both.”
“Exactly. No one important goes there. Which is why we should.”
Marcus wasn’t boring, but cautious people get miscast that way all the time. And Garrett had a gift for making caution feel like cowardice. So Marcus followed.
Inside, the Broken Spoke looked like it had given up decades ago and was still open out of habit. Half the chairs were wobbling through their last days. The air smelled like sweat, damp wood, and regret.
Perfect.
Garrett ordered ale with the swagger of somebody who’d practiced confidence more than sobriety. The barkeep judged them with the accuracy of a woman who’d seen every kind of fool.
“Don’t start fights,” she said.
They promised nothing.
Three drinks later, Garrett was louder, Marcus was lighter, and a drunk farmhand decided to identify Marcus as “that little lordling from Thornhaven.”
Marcus froze.
Garrett did not.
“He’s humble,” Garrett cut in. “Ridiculously humble. It’s almost disappointing.”
The farmhand disagreed. With a fist.
Chaos bloomed like spring.
Garrett ducked. Someone else got punched. A mug flew. The barkeep shouted something that sounded like a threat and a prayer.
“Run!” Garrett laughed, pulling Marcus toward the door.
They ran like idiots. Laughing, breathless, alive.
When they collapsed against the mill wall outside town, Garrett wheezed, “Tell me that wasn’t incredible.”
“That was the dumbest thing we’ve ever done,” Marcus replied—laughing, glowing with adrenaline.
And that was the moment Marcus realized:
Garrett was the first person who ever made him feel free.
Garrett at 21 — Marcus at 19[edit | edit source]
At twenty-one, Garrett had already grown into the man people expected him to be — broad-shouldered, disciplined, intimidating without trying. Responsibility had been placed on him young and had only grown heavier with time, the way a blacksmith slowly adds weight to a training hammer.
And then his father died.
It wasn’t sudden — illness had been chewing at the man for months — but death always feels abrupt to the ones who survive it. One day Garrett had a father whose word was law, and the next, he had a house, lands, debts, alliances, and a grieving mother looking at him like he had become every answer she would ever need.
He didn’t cry.
He didn’t falter.
He stepped into the role with the same grim determination he took into everything else.
But something changed.
Garrett stopped laughing.
He stopped lingering in the streets where the local girls fluttered around him.
He stopped caring about flirting, play, or praise.
All the softness of youth compressed into a single, unbreakable line across his jaw.
He didn’t have time for romance — not anymore.
He had a household to run.
A mother to protect.
Tenants depending on him.
Servants waiting for instruction.
And the shadow of his father’s expectations breathing down his neck.
Garrett became a man overnight, and it hardened him.
Marcus, at nineteen, was buckling under his own kind of weight.
Lord Matthias Valebright — stern, iron-spined, impossible to please — fell deathly ill, and the Valebright estate turned silent in the way homes do when the patriarch is slipping toward death.
Rooms felt colder.
Voices dropped.
Servants moved like ghosts.
Expectation thickened like smoke.
Marcus, always the overlooked son, suddenly found eyes on him — calculating, assessing, waiting to see if he would rise to the moment or crumble under it.
He wasn’t ready.
He never had been.
His brothers were established, occupied, and emotionally distant from the crisis. Marcus was the one still drifting, still “finding himself,” still failing to fit the mold carved for him before birth.
And now the man who defined that mold was dying.
Marcus visited his father’s bedside daily, sitting quietly, unsure whether to speak — and unsure whether his father had ever wanted to hear him in the first place.
Responsibility did not fit him easily.
It pressed.
It constricted.
It made him feel like a man drowning in obligation he had never asked for.
Where Garrett grew harder, Marcus grew quieter.
They were two young men standing on the same threshold of adulthood —
both burdened,
both grieving,
both watching the fathers who shaped them disappear before they were ready.
For a brief moment in those years, their lives ran parallel again —
not as rivals,
not as brothers,
but as sons
learning how devastating it is
when the men you needed to understand you
begin fading away.
Physical Appearance[edit | edit source]
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Personality[edit | edit source]
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History[edit | edit source]
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