He is an emotionally intelligent, brilliant linguist and historian. Citing moral reasons, he leaves the Synod after only three short years, despite bypassing older members in rank when he tested far above them. His ability to see connections and patterns where others can't is not a magical trait; it is something he was born with and a part of how his brain works. He often doesn't realize he is seeing these patterns, intuitively making decisions before he fully understands why.

This can sometimes get him into trouble because he doesn't always realize he's been rambling. Consequently, he ends up saying too much to the wrong person, or has incredibly bad timing when accidentally spilling the beans. The "divine perspective" of the Summit felt like mere detachment to him. Here at the base, where merchant caravans from the lowlands traded amidst the clamor of the Grand Bazaar, the world felt real.

He mumbles his Cloud Speech, though it wasn't the clouds themselves he disliked. Their conversations always ended in both drowning in tears. The language of Cloud Speech is surprisingly personal; it doesn't use many words, and the ones it does use are extremely emotionally strong. It is airy, and some words mean something completely different depending on context or inflection. Sam refrains from speaking it until the 'Big Sad' comes, and then he seeks their company. He believed his father when he called him a failure of a Solari. He suffers from Chronic Melancholy with persistent episodes of color shading, which causes those afflicted to see only in shades of blue and grey. While those are physical symptoms, he suffers mentally as well. He often completes tasks without being fully present, and he has no desire to paint, fish, play his lute, or even tend to his garden—his absolute favorite thing.

Despite being born in Aurealia's Reef, he was raised in the capital city of Centerstone. His father left the coast soon after Sam was born, and Sam never knew his mother. He was a child of the deep roots, not the high canopy, and the constant pressure to look up was exhausting. He felt at home on the ground. He was what the Solari called a Greenmage—a mage especially talented in gardening, alchemy, and nature magic.

The Scholars’ District was too bright. Sam stood under one of the Solari lamp-posts, its pale gold light humming with holy geometry, and felt the pressure building behind his eyes, a dull, tightening thump-thump, like something inside him was trying to push its way out. Too many lights, and they all seemed to gravitate toward him. Everything in line, its perfect place; there was too much order, it felt unnatural. Solari made every facet of life like that, with one too many clean lines. He needed shadows.

His hands shook as he slipped down a dark, narrow side passage, one most pretended didn’t exist. The marble gave way to cracked stone. The lamps fizzled out. The dark softened around him. And finally, at last, the buzzing inside him lessened. He exhaled. His breath came out shallow and shaky. This should’ve been enough, he thought, a small pocket of the city to himself.

The lights weren't harsh because they were bright. They were harsh because they were loud.

They told everyone's secrets that hid in the way people looked at him, the way they moved.

He saw the shift in his father when his crushing disappointment in Sam and his embarrassment of him fought for attention. He kept those feelings away from friends and his fellow Archivists at the Synod. Sam was the 'Golden Boy' as far as they knew, pun intended.

These quiet moments to himself were few and far between, stolen moments of silence he never wanted to end. Then the humming returned. He let out an exasperated sigh and began his breathing. "One..." Before he got to two, he heard a faint hum, almost a response to his, and it was growing louder. He froze; his heart jumped in his throat, thumping against the light crystal that grew at its base. That second hum was a reply and it wasn't coming from him. Someone was humming back.

“Lovely night to flee your problems,” a voice called from above. Sam jerked his head up. There she was, a girl balanced on the edge of a crumbling rooftop, bare feet dangling, hair curling in wild, dark waves, eyes glinting like cracked gemstones.

Shardborn. He swallowed, the rock in his throat defying his every command to go down so he could breathe. No use. Even without the rock, his breath held as if waiting for the signal to release. She tilted her head, studying him with the lazy curiosity of a cat that had just noticed a butterfly. “You’re buzzing,” she said. “Loud enough to wake the sleeping dead.” The smirk on her face instantly softened the rest of her features. Her skin was a pale grey with just a shade of lavender. Her hair, though darker, held that same lavender color. Her vermillion veins glowed a soft silver under the lantern light.

Sam bristled. "I'm not buzzing."

"You are." She hopped down from the roof, landing on the cobblestone without a sound. "Solari usually hum like polite little candles. But you?" She stepped closer, nose wrinkling as if tasting the air. "Your hum sounds like a storm trapped in a lantern."

Sam's heart stuttered. "That's not, I'm not—"

She placed one finger on his chest, right above his increasingly rapid pulse. Almost instantly, his humming stopped. Everything inside him went quiet in a way that felt just as terrifying as it was miraculous. She withdrew her hand and grinned.

“See? Easy.”

He stared at her, breath caught in his throat. “Who… who are you?”

“Anastaria,” she said, popping the name like a stolen sweet.

“And you’re the boy who vibrates wrong. I like that.”

Sam frowned, his eyebrows scrunching together. “I don’t vibrate...”

“Yes you do.”

She turned away, hands behind her head.

“Come on, sunshine. There’s a market down the old canals that sells fried bread after midnight. And you look like you need to get out of your own head before it collapses on you.”

He shouldn’t go. Solari didn’t wander. Solari didn’t slip into shadows. Solari didn’t follow strangers who hummed like broken divine relics.

But something deep inside him, a low, almost primal thing, said one word: Go. He took one hesitant step. Anastaria looked back with a wicked smile.

“Atta boy.”

And Sam, just a boy wanting silence, found himself enthralled. He didn't know why, but he had to know this girl, and so, he followed her into the dark. Anastaria was just a girl drawn to those who fell outside the lines. She too was not quite what was expected of her, a girl who lived comfortably in both the loudest light and the quietest dark.