Haku's Father

Youthful in the face, he keeps smooth black hair trimmed to roughly the cheek. His eyes are dark and drawn without any visible pupils.

In earlier days he was a cheerful sort who found real contentment in the modest rhythms of farm life with those he loved. That warmth curdles the moment he uncovers the bloodline in his household. Weeping, he resolves to destroy his own family, a choice steeped in raw prejudice; whether the tears reflect a man forcing himself to a terrible duty or one truly horrified by his kin is never made clear.

For years the farmer, his wife, and their boy Haku knew nothing but peace, unaware of the secret she guarded. Everything unravels when Haku, thrilled by his newly surfaced Ice Release, reveals it to his mother, not realizing his father watches from the shadows. Grasping at once that she descends from the Yuki, a line loathed across the region for the horrors their power caused during the civil war, the man gathers a mob and, tears streaming, cuts her down inside the very home they had built. He turns next on Haku, but the boy's ice nature answers in desperate self-defense, killing both his father and the crowd that came with him.