Kamalam Risat

“Every tyrant needs someone to count the corpses and the Chits. Kazpur found himself the perfect little bookkeeper.
I once met her eyes—really met them. And let me tell you something: she sees more than he ever will.
Normally I'd have killed her for seeing my true face, but honestly she kept my secret. When Kazpur is gone I think I'll acquire her next.”

— Soki Noles

Origins and Early Ambition

Kamalam Risat was born into a family of old-world sohir—Northwest African workers of sihr whose praxis blended numerology, prayer cycles, and symbolic logic. Her parents were practitioners, but Kamalam herself inherited only a fraction of their tradition and almost none of their mysticism. What she did inherit was the quiet empiricism of a mind built for structure: numbers, patterns, budgets, and the hidden flows of capital. From childhood, she preferred balance sheets and fractal geometry to talismans and chants.

Her dream was simple: study accounting at the University of Cairo, finish with distinction, and take a position under Unionhouse Veylan. She was good enough—better than good, her grades unmistakably excellent. But when she became the silent supplier of answers in a cheating ring, her plan snapped. The scandal cost her both a career and the future she’d engineered. Veylan would not touch her; no bank or legitimate house would.

So crime touched her instead. One gang after another hired the quiet young woman who made their books sing. She set up blind accounts, ghost ledgers, shell corporations, automated laundering webs. She kept her signature hidden in ciphers lifted from her parents’ teachings—the Sator Square—sealed behind the sigil of Orobas (chosen because she liked horses). Crime loved her, because profit followed her. And through it all she remained dispassionate, inward, almost invisible.

Enslaved to the Goat Boys

Kamalam was working in Brazil for a crew of Trogs when Kazpur Gooding smashed through their operation like a wrecking ball in a goat mask. The Trogs died fast. Kamalam hid faster. Kazpur noticed the efficiency of the racket—unusual for Trogs—and followed the money to the “tiny thing” shaking behind a fake mahogany desk.

He almost let her go.
Then he saw the Seal of Orobas on her dataslate.
Three minutes of digging revealed the Risat family’s folkloric pedigree and their reputation.

To Kazpur, this meant destiny.
To Kamalam, it meant slavery.

He gave her an ultimatum:
work for him or die next to the Trogs.

She picked up the dataslate, smoothed her tunic, and nodded. He gave her a larger-than-normal cut. She never thanked him. She never forgave him. She simply started doing the work.

The Basirah Awakens

Everything changed when the Hellfire Cabal attacked. Kazpur’s mooks fought bravely—poor fools—but against Cabalists boosted by RAIs, most died screaming. Kamalam’s world inverted. She saw things she had no language for.

Her family’s whispered curse—the Basirah, inner sight—woke violently. While others saw wounds, she saw Snarls tearing at shadows. While others heard nothing, she heard whispers. She saw the psychic chains linking Cabalists to their servitors. The bleeding edge between realspace and subspace became visible to her, like heat shimmering off asphalt.

It broke her mind.
Then it rebuilt it.

Her terror crystallized into analytic obsession. She wanted to understand the things that killed the men around her. She wanted to know why their shadows tore free, why their voices gurgled with two breaths at once. She wanted to know what the universe really was.

Now she studies subspace the same way she studies accounts:
quietly, carefully, and with a growing sense of terrible inevitability.

Kazpur’s Shadow

She hates Kazpur.
She fears Kazpur.
And she uses Kazpur.

He thinks she’s a cute little clerk with mystical family window-dressing.
She knows he’s a blunt instrument for her research.

Now that he’s dabbling—idiotically, dangerously—Kamalam is positioning herself not as his slave, but his handler. She guides his curiosity just enough to push him toward useful scraps. She recognizes the danger he represents and understands that his protection is the only reason she hasn’t already been eaten by a Lilin or sniffed out by a Preenwight.

Her Basirah grants her the ability to sense subspace incursions, recognize shadows that move too slowly, and feel the “pressure differ­ential” between realspace and the hidden world. She masks this under the role she plays: the perfect, terrified accountant who speaks softly and moves like she’s afraid to make a ripple.

But she sees everything.
And she is starting to want more.
Destiny, enlightenment, power—whatever the Basirah reveals next, she is ready.

Appearance and Manner

Kamalam is tiny—barely brushing Kazpur’s sternum. Delicate wrists, slender build, soft oval face. The base of Kazpur’s thumb could nearly encircle her forearm. In public she disappears behind him, swallowed by his physicality.

She favors razor-sharp business tunics and has started painting her lips and eyes because Kazpur likes it; and a pleasant Kazpur is less likely to kill someone in a tantrum. Her heels click softly. Her hair is always immaculate. Her expression is unreadable glass. Behind her eyes, equations and horrors spiral endlessly.

Even in stillness she calculates.
Combat value of a firefight.
Risk profile of a betrayal.
Liquidity of a corpse.
Viability of escape.
Price of a soul.

She never smiles except in fear. She never raises her voice. And she never stops watching.