Umbral Plumekin - We are not born whole. The sky must sculpt.

The Umbral Plumekin are a semi-avian species originally considered heretical cousins to the Aureline Spirefolk. Thought extinct after the fifth Featherhollow collapse, they survive as nomadic vault-dwellers—obscured from the wind by veils of atmospheric silence. What sets them apart is their metamorphic lifecycle, which reshapes both anatomy and glyph resonance across three distinct forms.

Stage One: The Murkseedling

Born wingless and mute, Murkseedlings appear as soot-feathered humanoids with sealed vocal cavities and dreamless minds. They live underground, feeding off inverted spores and memory rot. Their bodies house embedded stone-fragments that hum in windless places—believed to be leftover breath from the Hollow Sky Incident.

• Rituals: Silence-weaving, emotional fasting, and tattoo inversion trials.

Stage Two: The Windrupt

Upon a deep vaultwind exposure (usually triggered during the Vaultswirl Season), Murkseedlings shed their outer feathers and fracture their clavicle plates—emerging as Windrupts, now possessing unstable flight and the capacity for glyph-song. Their memories unravel and re-thread, and emotional cadence becomes vocal architecture.

• Traits: Spinal feathers stiffen to hold fractal glyphs; eyes develop wind-sensitivity.
• Behavior: Windrupts sing backwards prayers, engaging in sky-duels where flight paths dictate rhetorical debate.

Stage Three: The Glyphborne Ascendants

A fraction ascend fully, transforming into Glyphborne Ascendants—entities with no fixed form. They hover within Vaultwind tunnels, appearing only during theological anomalies. Their feathers glow with shifting sermons and they speak entire sky-languages in one breath. Most lose personal memory, becoming spiritual functions of atmosphere itself.

• Legacy: Said to rewrite doctrinal resonance when memory decays beyond control.