Tsien Wai-Ching
Wai-Ching Tsien (a.k.a. The Mistborn Child)
Tsien Wai-Ching, the youngest and most ephemeral of Tsien Chiang’s resurrected daughters, is a creature woven from living fog—a phantom child born of grief, magic, and the choking breath of I’Cath’s sleepless nights.
While her sisters enforce Tsien Chiang’s waking commands, Wai-Ching is a creature of the dream-realm. She weaves through I’Cath’s sleeping minds, blurring the boundaries between dreams and nightmares.
- Children often see her in their dreams as a playmate of smoke, inviting them to chase her through spiraling, endless gardens that turn to ash upon waking.
- Those who resist Tsien Chiang’s rule may wake gasping, their bedsheets soaked in dew, having dreamed of being drowned in fog—a visit from Wai-Ching.
- When citizens wake unrested or forgetful, they blame "the Mistborn Child."
Wai-Ching is lonely, always drifting, always watching. She longs to be held, to be known, but she is made of that which cannot be grasped. Even her sisters cannot hold her, and sometimes forget she is there at all. But she remembers everything.
- Some whisper that when I’Cath falls silent in the early morning hours, Wai-Ching visits the faithful and the mourning, curling around their hearts to keep them warm.
- Others say she drains memories, that those who dream too deeply of her forget their families, their names, and even why they fear the fog.
Tsien Wai-Ching is the mist-born youngest daughter of Tsien Chiang—an echo of love and loss, too soft to touch, too vast to escape.
Physical Description
General Physical Condition
Wai-Ching has no solid form. She drifts through the Palace of Bones like a lost breath, her silhouette barely more than a suggestion. Sometimes she appears as a girl of no more than six or seven years, her features partly glimpsed through drifting haze—a soft mouth mouthing forgotten lullabies, empty eyes brimming with vapor. Other times she is nothing but dense, sentient fog, pressing against windows or coiling around the ankles of those who displease the Empress.
- Her presence is always cold and damp, her touch soaking through flesh and soul alike.
- Her voice is like exhaled sorrow, whispering in dreamers’ ears things they dare not repeat.
- At times, she mimics the sound of her sisters' voices—a cruel game, perhaps, or a cry for recognition.
Mental characteristics
Personal history
Wai-Ching died youngest, and was least remembered by Tsien Chiang’s people—her face the faintest in the paintings, her name spoken in whispers. Of all her daughters, Wai-Ching is the most unstable, her form and mind shifting with the winds.
- She sometimes seems joyful, dancing through moonbeams, giggling like water bubbling over smooth stones.
- At other times, she grows immense and suffocating, filling rooms and lungs, consuming the air and leaving nothing but silence and tears.
- Her mother both treasures and fears her—for Wai-Ching is the most volatile of the four daughters, and the one most likely to slip from control.
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