Ashleigh Crichton

The attack that killed his parents left Ashleigh without his face, a wound the stolen Star can sustain but never fully mend. To hide the ruined flesh he keeps a mask on and moves through the Cretan ranks in a military uniform under the false name Herschel. In combat he commands ice-based alchemy, turning frozen strikes on his foes. Only at the very end, when Julia pours the last of her power into him, does his face knit itself back together.

A single purpose drives him: to punish everyone responsible for the murder of his parents and the mutilation of his own body. Over time that thirst widens into contempt for all of Milos, whose people had shunned and exiled his mother and father. He works coldly and patiently, hiding behind an alias for years as he waits for his enemy to surface. Even so, a genuine bond with his sister still lingers beneath the vengeance.

As a boy, Ashleigh pored over the notes his parents left behind, which detailed the hidden Sanguine Star and the buried secrets of Milos. He walked in on their killing and was assaulted by the murderer, Atlas, who peeled away his face along with a strip of arm skin bearing a tattooed map to the ruins of Milos. Bleeding out after Atlas fled, the boy found a Star his parents had concealed nearby and swallowed it, forcing his failing body to keep going. He then buried himself inside the Cretan military as Herschel, masked and disguised, while quietly locating his sister Julia and posting chimera guards around her.

When Atlas finally resurfaced, Ashleigh entered Milos himself and destroyed him, only to resolve to continue the rampage as payback against the Milosians who had wronged his family. Julia, wielding a Star of her own, overpowered and mortally wounded him, then spent the last of her strength to restore his face and steady the fraying tie between his body and soul. He later wakes in a Milosian hospital, slips away without a word, and returns to the Cretan army with his mask and false name still intact.