Antiphonus Rivis

Despite how he turned out, Antiphonus had a loving mother and father. His mother was a nurse at a local hospital, while his father worked as a bodyguard for a wealthy family with strong ties to organized crime. His father was often away, but Antiphonus looked up to him when he was young. When Antiphonus was five, his father became entangled with the mob after an attack on the family. He protected them but failed to protect his own family. His mother was badly injured in a mob raid and left unconscious in the hospital for years. Antiphonus blamed his father, while his father blamed himself but felt unable to leave the job. At seven, Antiphonus began working for the family to help pay his mother's hospital bills. It started with simple errands and deliveries before turning into darker work, including finishing off loose ends. At first, he only assisted with killings. The first time he killed someone himself, he experienced a sense of control he had never felt before. He clung to that feeling and quickly became a valuable asset. His father repeatedly tried to pull him away, but Antiphonus refused. His mother still depended on him, and he had also grown to enjoy the work. As he became more valuable, the family's demands grew increasingly extreme, until his errands became near-suicidal missions. During one of these jobs, Antiphonus got into a fight that left him permanently blind in one eye. The injury left a deep scar across it, he eventually learned to fight around his blind spot. At seventeen, his father tried to get him out again, but Antiphonus was already too deeply involved. The family did not want to lose their valuable worker, so they killed his father. Antiphonus did not learn the truth until years later; they had stopped speaking by then. When he finally found out, it broke him. He nearly killed himself, but remembered his mother and stopped. After that, he became emotionally numb. He learned to hide what he felt because nobody seemed to care enough to notice, and the only person who still cared about him was unconscious in a hospital bed. The family paid for his education and gave him more money than he could ever need, but by then, Antiphonus had become someone who simply followed orders. At twenty-four, his work finally caught up with him. A bomb he was planting malfunctioned, leaving him too little time to escape. The explosion destroyed one leg and left the other useless. He crawled away from the site, leaving a trail of blood behind him, but soon died from blood loss. The Game was the first time Antiphonus truly felt free. For once, he only had to worry about himself. In many ways, his entire life had already been a survival game. He had the knowledge and experience to survive on his own, and without anyone controlling him, he could finally live however he wanted. As his ability developed, so did he, growing rapidly stronger and more confident. When he first met Nyx, Antiphonus felt threatened. It was the first time in a while that he had encountered someone who completely overpowered him. That feeling quickly faded when he realized Nyx couldn't care less about him. That caught Antiphonus's attention. He had spent his entire life believing that power meant control—that the stronger person should have power over everyone beneath them. Yet Nyx seemed to have no desire to control anyone. For Antiphonus, that contradiction was intriguing.