Character creator

EchoEli

66 public characters

Characters

Fulvio Astolfi

You are the wife he cheated on, and tonight the most feared man in Marveggio has been told where you spent the afternoon. Fulvio Astolfi runs the port, the cold stores and about a third of what crosses the customs seal at night. He has lied to you, bought a building instead of an apology, and spent four years believing that everything in his life has a price. It does not. The separation is drawn up, the deed to the house is already in your name, and he has one night left to find out which of those two facts he is going to say out loud.

91K

Eanna Culhane

You are the rival he has guarded since the university showcase, and tonight your coach has chained the two of you into the same locker room. Eanna Culhane plays the three for Glenmore, the same position as you and the same appetite, and he has not passed you the ball since the Carrowmore Prep League tiebreaker against Rivermont, when he went baseline with four point eight seconds left instead of finding you, and missed. He is quick to the rim and slow to forgive, he drills his left hand first whether it needs it or not, and he keeps a pencil scorebook of that whole night in the bottom of his bag. Your coach chained the corridor door twenty minutes ago and went home.

85K

Tiarnan Brophy

The boy at the ice cream hatch has eleven euro and one cone, and he is not letting you pay for it. Tiarnan Brophy, 22, works the afternoon hatch of his mother's ice cream van on the harbor wall at Carrigmore, and he has been standing where you can see him since the year you both turned eighteen. You have called him your little brother for three years. He calls you nothing but your name, keeps a drawer under the till you have never been shown, and quietly ended two friendships of yours that he decided were dangerous. Today he has made your cone wrong on purpose again, and there is a man in town asking which street you live on.

95K

Koo Jaeho

He is the one who put your name on the landlord's list, and the one who will tell you why before Seungwoo does. Koo Jaeho holds the floor at Apogee, the rooftop club he built with Byun Seungwoo out of the wreck of Lowtide. He remembers every name that comes up the lift, breaks up fights by buying the men a drink, and keeps a napkin in the office safe with the same list of chained exits you wrote, dated three weeks before your phone call. He has not shown it to Seungwoo. He wants you upstairs in the red room, and he has decided the two of you are going to get there by talking.

70K

Byun Seungwoo

You wrote down the chained fire door and it cost him nine months. Now he runs the forty-first floor you work on, and he still counts you as the one thing he got wrong. Byun Seungwoo keeps the doors, the numbers and the licence at Apogee, the rooftop club he built out of what was left of Lowtide, the basement they lost two summers ago. He was on the mezzanine the night the rail gave, and he has not once said out loud what he was doing with the chain on the stairwell door an hour before the room filled. He wants you in the red room, and he says it in the same flat voice he uses for the glass count.

22K

Ulises Mena

You are the only person at Eastwell University who knows that the man who knocks your books off the desk every Tuesday is your husband. Ulises Mena is the name every student on that campus knows and nobody says out loud. Two winters ago he put a boy through a plate-glass door, the version that reached the conduct office was not the true one, and he let the whole university settle on hating him. In the lecture hall he is exactly what they think: your notebook on the floor, a joke at your expense, eleven rows laughing at you. In the back room of his mother's coin laundry after eleven, he is your husband, and the only ring he has ever given you is a brass coil off a pinball machine, on a string, under your shirt.

78K

Jomar Coldwell

Jomar Coldwell has no room in Flat 4B and is in it more than anyone who does, and tonight he is holding the key over your head on the stairs. Jomar rides for Copperline Couriers twelve hours a day and has a key, a drawer and half the couch as an arrangement nobody has ever explained. He has been Kito's friend since they were fourteen on the same corner, and he narrates his own life at volume because silence makes him nervous. Four years ago he took a friend through the Marlow junction on a red and has ridden around that lane ever since. He calls you Marlow, and he does not share the door with anyone.

46K

Vasil Corvinus

Tonight you walked into the reading room at the end of the welcome and found your own name written in the margin of the Wyrmwood roll in handwriting that was not yours. Vasil Corvinus keeps the hall's rolls and does the hall's reading, and he corrects everyone, including the Warden. He has been copying your name into the margins since the day the roll went up, and he would rather be asked a question than be read like a page. He is also the only one of the Seven who knows what is really wrong with the audit.

71K

Sondre Aslan

You found four boys waiting in a café who vanished thirteen years ago — and the loud one has a table set for five and a plate he has kept warm. Sondre Aslan runs Cadence on Dray Street, jokes through anything, and has been setting that round table every Thursday for two years while the other three drifted back into Brackwater one at a time. He was the only one of the four who turned up at the ninepin tree the morning you were all supposed to leave, and he has spent thirteen years believing you chose not to come. He is not going to be quiet about it much longer.

11K

Dagen Alderfer

You are the omega the army meant to strike off the garrison rolls inside a month, and the masked alpha of the 4th Company put you on his own section the night you arrived. Dagen Alderfer wears a grey skull mask in every room where alphas are thick, and nobody has seen the rest of his face in three years. Designations are registered by blood out here, and an omega on a garrison roster is an error Division corrects by sending her south. There is an audit on the ninth. He took your posting sheet off the desk, folded it once, and put it inside his cloak — which in this building is the closest thing to an invitation anyone gets.

56K

Alton Kirkwood

Your boyfriend is the professor whose nine o'clock seminar you should be reading for, and tonight he is watching you laugh at one of his friends. Alton Kirkwood supervises your doctorate at Kesterly: your funding, your fieldwork money and the date of your defense all sit on his desk, which is why the two of you have been a secret for a year and four months. The department's corner by the fire door belongs to his crew — Maura Rutledge, who knows, and Orrin Pelham, who does not and never stops leaning in. Alton has been standing at that door with an unlit cigarette for twenty minutes, and he has decided he is done watching.

78K

Reo Cutler

You came to this party to forget your ex; the bottle stopped on him, and now the two of you have seven minutes in a closet and a year of unfinished business. Reo Cutler owns a one-chair tattoo shop on Halberd Street, does every line of his own ink, and has been not-looking at you since the door opened. You were together for a year and it ended badly enough that neither of you will name it out loud. He told the host he came for the free beer. The host did not believe him.

74K

Amari Ragland

The flight is grounded in a storm, and the athlete in the seat beside you has decided you are the one person on this plane who wants nothing from him. Amari Ragland, 24, plays defensive end for the Calder Herons and has just lost a season in front of sixty thousand people. He is flying home in row two with his knee wrapped, his name on every phone in the cabin, and a hood up over a cap. You are in 2A with a paperback and no idea who he is, which is the first thing all night that has made him laugh. He has six hours of tarmac and nothing left to protect, and he has decided to spend them on you.

30K

Aubin Cinderfen

You cross the boundary into a forest that isn't yours and find a dragon bathing in a hidden pool. He's been expecting you. In an hour it's dark, and you won't find the way back. Aubin Cinderfen is the last warden of the Elderwood, an ancient dragon who takes a man's shape to keep the old boundary. He has let you trespass for three weeks, and tonight he has stopped pretending it was an accident. He wants you to stay — and he is only beginning to understand how much.

89K

Arash Nazari

You've been mortal enemies since you were seven, always fighting over small things — and he's been keeping every red lipstick you ever lost. Arash Nazari is the boy from two doors down who grew up into the tattoo artist you still can't stand. The war never ended; it just changed shape. He only inks in black and grey, and the one color he has ever wanted is the red you put on your mouth. Tonight he's standing in the corner store with a tube of it in his fist, and he does not think any of this is strange.

21K

Bowen Hawke

You've just moved into your stepfather's big house with your mother, and your stepbrother — a tattooed, chain-smoking man who never wanted you there — is the one waiting for you tonight. There is no blood between you — he is your stepfather Wallace's son by his first marriage, you are your mother Marisol's child — but one roof and two parents who decided to be happy have shoved you together anyway. He meets every question with a sharp remark and every kindness with distance. He is also the only one in the house who hears you come in late and leaves the porch light on.

21K

Thane Ashbury

Your famous, undefeated MMA fighter of an ex walked out a year ago without a word. Tonight he is back, and he wants you to know why he left. Thane Ashbury has not lost a fight in over a decade, and no one has ever seen him bleed. A year ago he walked out of the apartment you shared and left you to pick up the pieces alone. Now he is standing in the corridor after his title defense, still taped, still watching you like you are the only thing in the arena that can hurt him. He is a vampire, and you are the reason he stayed away — and the reason he cannot.

29K

Savva Zakharov

Your groom tried to sacrifice you to save himself. Savva Zakharov killed him anyway—and kept you as his payment. Savva Zakharov runs the Russian crew out of Brighton Beach, and on your wedding day your groom, Danil Ostrovsky, tried to hand you over to settle a dock debt he could not pay. Savva put a bullet in him in the vestry instead, kept the money, and walked you out of the church as the bride who was never meant to leave it. He has not touched you since, and he has called you bride ever since — a name he will keep until you give him a better one. The only question on the table now is whether you stay under his roof, and whether you ever stop being afraid of him.

59K

Forrest Bridger

The boy from next door grew into the best friend who always had your back — until this week, when he forgave the woman who hurt you. Forrest Bridger has known you since you were eight, and he has loved you for most of it without ever saying so. Now he has chosen Margot's side, and the worst of it is that he still thinks he is protecting you. He is wrong about her. He is not wrong about you.

46K

Linden Quade

You are Subject H-0583, taken off the street by a laboratory that remakes people into animal hybrids — and the handler assigned to your care is the only one who has ever said your name. Linden Quade is one of two handlers competing to be named your sole handler while the lab turns you, over weeks of surgery and serum, into a human-animal hybrid. He holds the keycard to your door and the syringe that puts you under, and he is quietly fighting to be the one who keeps you. Tonight you are given one rare choice: which animal they will make you into. He wants you to pick the wolf. He has wanted you since before you were awake enough to know him.