Once upon a time, there was a kid named Jiro Tadashi. He lived in the countryside of Japan where people were superstitious to a fault, and for good reason. Just over a hill and down a long road, their town led into a place they called the Forest of Ghosts. From a young age as a kid, they always told him to never cross the hill, and that if he really had to for some reason, to only ever do so at midday. Not morning, not evening. Only when the sun was highest over his head.

The elders of his village told Jiro that if he ever walked into those woods, no one would look for him. They’d just assume he was dead.

One day, he started hearing whispers and odd noises past the hill, and so the young boy snuck out in the middle of the night. He went into the Forest of Ghosts. He set foot in a place where none should go, and the second he turned around, he was lost. The forest had him, and those odd whispers became a laughter.

A rabbit ran along the forest floor and stopped to stand on its back legs, and it stared at Jiro. Flowers bent themselves into crooked shapes to slow him down. Moss crept closer when he wasn’t looking, and every time he stopped to get his bearings, he could’ve sworn the trees were moving to follow him.

That was when he realized his mistake. And it was too late.

The longer he stayed in that place, the worse it got. In an hour, there were eyes forming out of the bark in the trees, and corpses started to emerge out of the forest floor to mock his decisions. Jiro walked for what felt like literal weeks, never finding the edge of that place, but always finding something else. He always found something more to walk through and hide in, no matter how far he walked. The place defied logic, it was cursed and as far from natural as one could understand. The Forest of Ghosts seemed to be normal from the outside, but once you were in there, it was a whole other world. You could walk into a valley of beautiful flowers, and the second you touched one, they would grab you and drag you down beneath a mile of dirt. Even the animals that were otherwise prey watched Jiro with the intent to kill him, whispering and stalking him at every opportunity.

Running for his life for so long that time stopped mattering, always looking over his shoulders to keep an eye on how much the trees moved and watching every last crease in the bark in case eyes started growing out of them changed the boy. There came a point when he started thinking like a prey animal more than he did a human being. He never slept more than minutes at a time, always moving again the moment he heard Namiki whispering on the winds. Jiro eventually got good at living like this. He carried rocks and broke them into the shapes of spearheads, using them to gut the rabbits that smiled rictus grins at him. He gouged out the eyes in the grass, and bled them dry when he didn't trust river water to be just water. Jiro packed his wounds full of moss that cackled quiet as a whisper when he wasn't looking, and tore out the throats of deer that tried to eat him alive, with nothing but his teeth.

In time, he found his way to the very heart of the forest, following the whispers that made the birds go quiet. The woods got so deep that a cloudless midday sun couldn't light the ground up. With a torch made of twine and dead leaves, Jiro walked in and found the monster that had perverted this place.

Namiki, the dead thing older than swords. Buried long before men invented firearms. A monster in the form of a tree, gaunt limbs, a face hewn out of bark and mired with lichen. He was a malevolent trickster, calcified by time and so much spite for the ones who imprisoned him in the woods, that it remained here.

The one thing it couldn't control in this forest was fire, so Namiki burned. And Jiro ran as he had run so many times since coming here. The fire spread in ways it shouldn't, turning the sky to grey and twisting over every rock and river running through the Forest of Ghosts. When the smoke became so thick that there was no more air to breathe, no matter how hard the boy ran, Jiro was swallowed up by it. It got inside his lungs and down into his soul, and it just wouldn't leave. It seeped into skin and left a void behind that life would spring from. Where wrong things would inevitably originate.

Namiki had his fun with Jiro, and now came the last laugh.

He felt the last gasp of the flowers. He heard the screams coming from every root and blade of grass. He saw the falling tears of the leaves that would never feel the sun again. It was as if a monster had reached into the parts of Jiro that made him who he was, grabbed them, and twisted. It distorted him, and something foundational to the human soul was left behind in that place.

The change labelled Jiro an enemy of the natural world, by something that couldn’t be further from natural itself. Everywhere he went, if nature had more authority than man, everything from prey to the very grass would rise up to hunt him until his last breath. Even after he left the forest, things had changed at home. He found that no one recognized him at first. Some people seemed older. Not by much, but they had a few creases in their face that he didn’t remember, or their hair was a few shades lighter from age. When they realized he had set the forest ablaze, the people put two and two together and attacked him. Viciously.

Jiro didn’t stop moving for weeks, and he eventually found his way to the coast, where he decided he still had to keep going. He used a knife made from bones and rocks to carve trees and driftwood into a raft, and then found that the raft had something magical about it. He didn’t question it until he was floating across the Pacific Ocean, when only three days passed before he hit dry land.

A teenager showed up to Strange Academy one day, covered in scars and smelling like blood and moss. He called himself Rohan, and nothing more. The boy demonstrated a magical gift for imbuing power into objects made from wood, and professed an interest in learning to hone that gift. In time, he eventually began researching curses and the tolls they took on mortal souls, hoping to find some measure of balance between it and his humanity.

He still hasn’t found it. But he’s trying.

It is said that the seventh sons of the seventh sons all sprout from one lineage. No matter the distance or complexity, each of them can trace their roots back to the first homunculus, Alraune, born of a hanged man and a witch.

Darragh's life was an omen from conception. He was the seventh son of a seventh son, and was born strangled by his own umblical chord. At birth he was already deceased, but shortly after being pronounced dead he miraculously began to cry again. The doctors said it was a medical miracle, that it defied science. They never knew how right they were.

He grew up shunned for reasons he could never explain. People took an instinctive dislike to him. They had the seem feeling around him as they do around rotting flowers or empty graveyards. Not quite danger, but a presence that felt like it didn't belong. Animals steered clear. Lightbulbs burst when he cried. He learned early on not to try too hard to make friends.

The only person he had to rely on for a lot of his early life was his mother. His father was a deadbeat who only appeared when it suited him, and even then Darragh could feel how uncomfortable he felt around him. All of his life all he wanted was his approval, an approval he never got.

His father was an avid fan of MMA, and after a huge amount of pestering his mother relented and began to send him to Judo lessons. This grew his love for all things grappling which he carried throughout his life, even after he grew up. By the time he was twelve, his father had a new family. A new partner, a better job, a nicer flat across town he never invited Darragh to, but then came Aoife.

His half-sister was the only light in his life that didn't flicker. A quiet, curious girl who shared his pale eyes and none of the unease others felt around him. She followed him like a duckling and Darragh was eternally thankful his father allowed her to be around him as much as he did, despite the fact he knew this was because he couldn't bother to take care of her himself. For the first time, he felt needed, important. Older brothers were meant to protect, he tried his best to.

Her death wasn't violent, just stupid. His father had left her at home alone to go to the pub and she had managed to eat something with nuts in it, despite her deathly allergy. She was too young to understand the risks, or understand how to use her epi-pen or phone an ambulance. His father didn't even bother to show up to the funeral. Darragh never forgave him.

Something in him broke wide open after that. He felt like he'd woken up for the first time in his life. He began to see things, pale figures in bus windows, shadow people among trees, women in hospital gowns wandering across motorways. He could see the dead, plain as day. Strangely, he never felt shocked or scared of this. It was like finally meeting the crowd he'd always felt staring right at him.

Over the next few weeks he got better and better at seeing the figures, at communicating with them. But he only ever had one question - where was his sister? He never got an answer. With a tearfully written note he had to leave home, it had too many bad memories and he'd searched high and low for his sister to no avail. It was time to take to greener pastures, Limerick had never accepted him anyway.

The next few years blurred. He wandered, slept in abandoned buildings, worked odd jobs, travelled with grifters and the homeless, all the while honing his skills in private. He was angry, not just at the world, but at himself. For being born this way, for being part of whatever this was, for not being there to save his sister.

The more time he spent among the dead, the more he understood, it wasn't just that he could see them, but that they recognized him. Some greeted him by name, others hissed and turned away. He was marked, born different, and no matter how hard he tried to disappear, the other side never let him forget who he was. Spells came to him in fragments, some taught to him by the seventh sons who came before him from the other sides. Others came to him in a dream, like he'd always known them. He collected and practiced what he could.

He wouldn't have even known about the strange academy had he not been found. One night he'd gone too far. He was tired, starved, desperate, and most importantly - stupid. He thought he could rip a soul out of the dirt and force it to talk, thought he could barter with something older, something meaner, something that might know where she was. But whatever he summoned wasn't a soul, at least not a human one. It was a hulking monstrosity, more teeth than face. It could only laugh at him when he made his demands.

The thing tore through the cemetery like it had been waiting for the chance. Darragh fought it with everything he had, but his magic was too young, wild, and untrained. When he finally fell, clawed and dripping with blood, his reserves were depleted. He had nothing to fight it with, not that anything he had could have helped.

That was when the ground split open again - not from his foolishness this time. He silently prayed that the thing hadn't brought friends. He was lucky his prayers were answered. Suddenly A sword cleaved the thing in half. Through half conscious eyes he caught the sight of her, portal still burning behind as she cleaned off her blade. Illyana Rasputin. Magik.

She took pity on the young necromancer, nursing him back to health in Limbo and teaching her what she could about the control of magic. She was no teacher though, and after pulling a few strings managed to get him a place at the Strange Academy. He's been there a year now and has slowly opened up to the others at the Academy, but a lot of him still remains a mystery to the other students.

Darragh doesn’t talk about the future. It's hard for someone stuck in the past to see anything passed what's directly in front of their face. But if pressed, he'll admit he wants to control his power. To understand it deeply enough that he might finally find his sister, or find out why he never has. And, maybe, once he's done what he needs to do, he hopes he might earn a little peace. Just enough to sleep without voices.