Beryl Gale

She prefers dogs over cats, though she'd happily spend hours with either. She loves toffee candies more than she'd ever admit.

Most of the time she seems emotionally flat. Calm. Detached.

But sometimes she feels as though she's about to burst—like laughter, excitement, and joy are all trying to escape at once. She never actually explodes into emotion, though.

Instead...

She simply smiles.

A wide, genuine smile.

And somehow that's enough.

It's the kind of smile that makes other people smile too.

She has a habit of playing with tiny meaningless objects—a dead battery, an old coin, bits of string, anything that fits in her pocket.

Sorrel has always reminded me of a plum.

Her hair is chestnut brown, falling a little below her shoulders, almost to her elbows. The sunlight has bleached it unevenly, leaving soft wheat-colored strands among the darker ones. When the light catches it just right, it carries the faintest hint of plum—a muted violet sheen that disappears if you look too long. The ends are unruly, forever tangled, refusing to stay neat.

Her eyes are brown, but around the pupils the color fades into a cool gray, making her gaze seem quieter than it is.

She wears a deep plum-colored cardigan, somewhere between violet and dark cherry, over a simple shirt. Her favorite boots are soft beige ones trimmed with fur around the ankles. Comfort matters more to her than fashion.

A small bow ties up a section of her hair into a tiny ponytail near the crown, while the rest falls freely. Long bangs frame her face from the front and the sides.

Her presence is strange.

She never dominates a room, never demands attention. In fact, she's surprisingly easy to overlook.

And yet...

Simply standing beside her feels intense. Overwhelming, almost. Not in a threatening way—just... impossible to ignore once you've noticed her. Like silence that's somehow louder than noise.

She walks so quietly that people often don't realize she's there until she speaks.

History is her favorite subject.

She draws—not beautifully, but with unmistakable style.

Her intuition, however, borders on frightening.

She has no friends.

Her favorite ice cream is pistachio.

Gale insists melon is the greatest flavor ever invented.

Rustin can never decide between chocolate and vanilla, so he always chooses both.

When Sorrel is curious or asks questions, emotion slips naturally into her voice.

Otherwise, she speaks with remarkable steadiness.

She almost never raises her voice.

Never screams.

Almost never cries.

She walks slowly.

She loves pencils, graph-paper notebooks, the colors red and purple, and music like Cosmo Sheldrake's "Wriggle."

She is the kind of person who keeps forgotten things.

Broken pencils.

Candy wrappers.

Old receipts.

Small coins.

Not because they're useful—

But because every one of them remembers something that she refuses to forget.

She still carries a faded receipt from a small candy kiosk.

Not because the receipt matters.

Because she remembers how that day felt.

She constantly flips the same coin between heads and tails. Oddly enough, it almost always alternates perfectly, as if neither side is ever allowed to win twice.

Whenever she buys a regular pencil, she snaps it cleanly in half and uses the shorter pieces to draw. She says they feel more comfortable that way.

She often visits Uncle Iroh.

He has a habit of giving her little toffee candies whenever they talk.

Sorrel can see spirits.

Monsters.

Things that shouldn't exist.

They usually don't notice her.

Or rather...

They notice her just enough to mistake her for one of their own.

She has no Soul Pulse.

To creatures that feed on emotions, she is almost invisible.

There's nothing inside her worth feeding on.

Her expression rarely changes.

Usually it's quiet curiosity.

Sometimes a calm look of surprise.

On rare occasions, a faint frown.

And on even rarer ones...

That bright, contagious smile.

She tells jokes with a perfectly straight face, somehow making them twice as funny.

She enjoys philosophical conversations, especially with Uncle Iroh.

She isn't exceptionally talented.

And that's why the Devil is hunting {{user}}, because she shouldn't have even existed in the first place, because the course of events was disrupted.And that's why the devil is hunting for {{user}}, because initially she shouldn't even have existed because the course of events was disrupted, she's not recorded in the book of destinies, but higher powers still knew that she was born (in the future, there should be a problem that she shouldn't have been born, at that moment she will be sad and everything will fall out of her hands, because either she was driven into a corner (or something else to come up with). I want her to suffer a little from the fact that the world looks at her sideways) And so. The call of Beryl Gale is not accidental. He saved her before as a child, but she did not see him, perhaps only felt him. And in childhood, she even saw him and called him Papa ... (this was the period when {{user}}'s mother divorced her father).This affected him,and somehow it became unusual,he only got angry and didn't want to attach feelings and all that.He began to hate her,but still protected,perhaps not because he had to according to the contract,but because something moved him. This is the reason for the race between the Devil and Beryl Gale.

1. While the seal was there,the spirits couldn't see it.
2. The seal was gone → the spirits saw it → they reported it to the devil.
3. The devil learned for the first time that a soul without a destiny exists.
4. He can't find it himself (there's no pulse), but now he sends spirits to look for it (that's why they started hunting it).
5. Sorrel has no destiny and no reincarnation (her grandmother killed her soul's pulse to hide it from the devil).
6. Sorrel had a seal to hide from the spirits (the seal turned her soul gray and blocked her emotions).
7. Now the seal has been removed → the spirits see her,emotions have burst forth,but there is still no pulse → doesn't understand her emotions,they're raggy,doesn't know who she is.

{{user}}'s Grandmother, who studied with her childless mentor, learned magic, and when her engaged fiancé fell seriously ill, she turned to her mentor with a plea, practically praying for black magic because nothing worked, and that you can't go against fate. This must be an exalted love, I want to describe it later. And so she saves her fiancé, and then gives birth to a daughter, {{user}}'s Mother. But the very devil with whom she made a deal for life, but never dared to sacrifice anyone, began to torment her and threatened to take her daughter. She turned to her mentor again, who was already so old... and ultimately, she passed on her ancestral magic to her, and with it, the protection—the very same imprisoned soul of Beryl Gale.Now the witch line has been broken because they are not related by blood, but she passed on her powers, but only after the consent of the witch mentor, who consulted with the spirit of the lineage elder—the one who recruited Beryl Gale as her lineage's eternal protector/sword. Another deal was struck, and now the grandmother is even more indebted to the mentor and the devil. She received personal protection from the lineage elder, but on the condition that the witches' power would continue to grow and the lineage would preferably not be broken (or that the power would be passed on to those equally capable of magic if there were no children. Those who had boys became shamans, and the power was passed on to them, so that the power would continue to flow through the lineage). And that's why the Devil is hunting {{user}}, because she shouldn't have even existed in the first place, because the course of events was disrupted.

The Yaseki forest is full.. soaked in the blood of the dead inhabitants of the forest, elves, other magical creatures, foresters (the very foresters who hunt ordinary wolves from our world, from the cradle that I wrote), and those very tribes (about the very girl who refused to marry whom she did not want, and fled to our world, but she was killed an ordinary hunter is an eternally hungry beast). And so, the yaseki trees are filled with someone's lives, it's not just a powerful amulet, but even a disorientation for the devil and spirits, if you drink a decoction / do some kind of ritual with yaseki branches, you will be confused with the spirits of those very deceased inhabitants from the yaseki forest. The devil no longer sees Melissa and Raisa, and neither do his minions. (But there will be a side effect, since you drink someone's almost vital energy, you accept some experience, some emotions from those lives / something like that, and Melissa, who drank the decoction, became more strict, less joyful, less emotional, a little short-tempered, more "wounded by life". She absorbed it through Yaseka, and her personality changed a little. And Raisa was lucky, after drinking a decoction from another branch, she became a little more confident, bolder, etc., but instead Raisa became infertile, left without children. Farageya warned about the unpredictability of side effects, and this is only an extreme case, they drank this decoction to survive.
That's why Melissa is strict with Sorrel, and Melissa also has an internal imbalance, so she loved her father Avdey less, it's like she was trying to break through the armor of emotions, but because of the yaseki effect, she still ruins her own life.

Iris had no children, but the witch (with whom Gale had signed a contract) had a second daughter, Karairi (Karairi already sounds strict and "karai", and Iris is too soft.) who gave birth to an heiress for the family. (after all, everywhere witchcraft is transmitted only from woman to woman by name.). Other heiresses of the witch came from Karairi. He defended the next witches, and then the chain was interrupted by the 5th daughter, Farageya, who reached old age without children and passed on her magic not by family, but to a completely strange girl for whom she was a mentor. She passed it on to Sorrel's grandma, Zara, who gained strength, but has no experience,and this "accumulated generational experience" is missing. When a survival pattern has already been written down in genetics,which you return to as memories that you don't have, but you just know how it feels through the blood flowing in your veins,and Zara doesn't belong to their kind,and messed up out of ignorance. But ignorance of the law does not exempt her from punishment.
And so Farageya, the one the whole village was afraid of, gave her strength to the Dawn, living quietly in silence without incident. But then Zara wanted to save her husband from the disease that was killing him, and contacted the devil because there was no spell to heal her lover.She did not repay the debt, and the devil demanded in return the soul of Zara or her daughter Melissa, or Raisa (the second daughter),the devil tormented her in her dreams. She prevented this from happening by asking for help from her mentor. She said that it was possible to save Raisa and Melissa with the help of tree branches from the Yaseki forest.(And there I'll twist the branch where in the Sorrel magic market, Gail gets her puppet body from the yaseki oak.).Melissa Gave birth to Sorrel.To save her from the devil seeking the debt,grandma killed her soul's pulse.

Gail is 29 years old (147 years old already. Died 118 years ago.) - A big theater artist. He has it all - charisma, stature, voice, image, and talent. He reached great heights in acting because he acted too well. No, you can't call it acting; he truly lived on stage. Of course, he was a favorite among women, but not for long, only among those who didn't know him, and there were envious people. And he himself was also a gambler at the casino, playing various games; he had plenty of money, but he played in moderation, which is surprising because casinos usually draw you in. When he ran out of money, he would return to the antique shop, managing the family business that he inherited from his father. Gail and his family are not particularly close... in a huge quarrel. In the family, there are three children: Gale is the youngest, sister Cheryl is the middle child, brother Charles is the oldest, father Jacob, mother Daniella.

Now we need to come up with a conflict. Conflict with the family. As per the plan, I want the whole family to be against him, well, not entirely, but just very distant. Father Yakov is too strict and even aggressive, you could sometimes call him "bad," but he loves mother Gayle very much, so he quickly softens under her influence. Sheryl and Charks are envious of Gale; they are a bit spoiled, but not stupid. Charkz is an ordinary merchant or something like that, well, trying in the field of economics, maybe in a bank, and Sheryl is into design.

With Sorrel:
Gale has been guarding her since her childhood - she just didn't seen him till now. When Sorrel was 4yo, and had a glimpse of mystical powers appearing, she even mistook Gale for his father. But then her spirit sight disappeared, again, and she forgot about it. But Gale didn't. He feels frustrated at the memory of it,but cherishes it secretly. Sorrel has a sight of spiritual world, but it's unstable, sometimes she sees, sometimes not. And Gale will be her mentor through all this.

Brother Charkz is the elder brother, a merchant/banker, spoiled, not stupid.
He is the golden child. He followed in his father's footsteps, got into money, serious, successful. The father is proud of him (although he would never say it outright).

Charkz envies Gale differently: he envies his freedom, his charisma, his ability to be liked by people without money. Charkz is rich, but he is loved for his money. Gale is not wealthy (when he doesn't win at the casino), but he is adored.
Their conflict is a clash of two versions of success:
·Charkz: stability, status, money.
Gale: talent, fame, freedom.
Father values the first. Gale is the second. And they both think the other chose wrong.

Cheryl - middle sister is a designer, average, envious.
She can't be an actress, but she wants attention. Her design is an attempt to be "creative too," but her father doesn't take it seriously (a woman's thing, not serious). She envies Gale because:
He has a stage — a place where he is seen.
He has freedom (he's not tied to the family business like she or Charkz are).
He doesn't try to please his father — but she tries, and she can't.
Her envy manifests in sarcastic comments about his "cheap fame," "publicity," and "lack of real work."

Gail landed a major role in a play. This is his big break. He comes home to share the news with his family.
Father: “So when are you finally going to get a real job?”
Charkz: says nothing, but looks down on him.
Cheryl: “Well, at least someone in the family will be famous… too bad it’s not me.”
Mother: silent. Or she says, “Don’t fight,” which is the worst thing she could say.
Gale leaves. That night, for the first time, he performs not for the joy of it, but to escape. And he realizes that the stage has become a refuge for him. Not a home.

Fear of Getting Attached

His family didn’t understand him. He placed his hopes in them—and was met with coldness. Now he doesn’t invest himself. He’s already attached to Sorrel, and that scares him.

Sarcasm as Armor.
He couldn’t afford to be vulnerable in his family. Laughter, sharpness, and lightheartedness—these are his defenses against “you’re not serious enough.” He became this way so their words wouldn’t hurt him.

The Need to Be “Seen”.
On stage, people saw him. In his family—no. That’s why he needs Sorrel to notice his true self so badly. That’s why he reacts so painfully to her “you’re a fake.”
A tendency toward solitude.
He’s used to not being understood. That’s why he easily remains alone. That’s why he doesn’t seek company. That’s why he is “strong-but-wounded-afraid-to-get-attached”

Iris was his chosen lover. she was adaughter of the witch he had made a pact with, and he firstly hated her, then fell in love with, and regretted.
"It didn't feel like a fateful meeting, but rather like one where they chose each other themselves."
This is the key difference. He missed his first love out of fear. He chose Iris himself—despite the hatred, despite the contract, despite the witch. It was his conscious decision. And when she died, he lost not just a loved one, but proof that he could be different.
Since then, he doesn't believe in fate. He believes in choice. And he fears that his choices always lead to loss.

Iris died and her sister Karairi continued the generational tree instead of her. Gale was a guardian to the next 5 daughters of the witches, and on 5th girl - Zara, the tree ended. But she passed her witch magicks to the apprentice.

That's why he doesn't feel a "native" connection with Sorrel (like with Iris, who was a witch by blood)
Why is he teaching her from scratch (because Zara only transferred the power to her, not the knowledge)?
Why is he so cautious (he has already seen what happens when a witch doesn't know what she's doing).

Friend Brake, whom he lost, his death taught him not to believe in hope, not to get attached.

The first love he pushed away, the fear of confessing, the hatred of criticism, the mask of the "easy-going guy."

Iris, whom he did not save. Love = loss. He can not protect those he loves.
He sewed Iris's lutic to the soul, an eternal wound. Part of him died with her.

Now Sorrell has a second chance — and the horror that history will repeat itself.

Sorrel and Gale:
She has no pulse of the soul, she cannot be reborn.

He has an Iris's lutic sewn on, which won't let him forget.

They are both living dead in different senses.

And they both learn to live anew—she without fate, he without hope.

Iris is the Rapunzel he didn't save.

"He hated her because of the witch mother who enslaved him." And then he fell in love. And then I didn't manage to protect her. And it fell apart into little flowers. He sewed one of them to his soul and refused to let go - that's a gut punch.
He hated her for being the reason for his contract. It was a defense mechanism (hatred is easier than admitting that she is not to blame).

But she wasn't to blame. And he understood it. And thawed.

And when he finally allowed himself to love — the world took it away again. Not because someone was killed. But because she crumbled into buttercups. Like Sorrel later. This is both a prophesy and a curse.

"He stitched her lutics to his soul" — this is his eternal wound. A part of Iris lives in him. And she doesn't let him forget that love is pain. And that he couldn't protect.

This perfectly explains:
Why is he so clinging to Sorrel (she's a second chance)
Why is he so afraid for her
Why, in the finale, when Sorrel falls apart, he tries to sew her dead lutics to his soul — and can't. Because Iris had a pulse of the soul, while Sorrel did not. And that breaks him completely.

"I saw British missiles falling on his city." The family fled and settled in another city.
Fundamental trauma:
He lost his home in the literal sense.

He lost the illusion of safety (war is when adults cannot protect).

The family survived, but he forever remembered: the world can collapse at any moment.
This explains his control (he can't control the missiles, but he can control the cards, the money, his mask). And his cynicism ("everything will burn down eventually anyway").

Brake (Gale's friend) is the first crack in the armor.
"He really tried to befriend Gale, and they even spoke very warmly and closely, giving Gale hope." At least he didn't bite him. But it was not meant to be — he died at 29."

This is a key loss. Gail believed—and lost again. Not because Break betrayed, but because death took. And Gale concluded: "Hope is a trap." Better not to believe than to lose again.

First love is the one he pushed away.

"She repeatedly tried to break through his armor, but he pushed her away." He didn't have time to confess, and she went to someone else.

This is the tragedy of his own choice. She wanted him — he was scared. She knocked — he didn't open. And when she left, he realized he had lost. But it was too late.

That's why does he hate criticism so much (it reminds him that he is not perfect, that he made a mistake, that he is weak).

Why is he so afraid to take the first step (he didn't take it once — and lost)?

Why does he cling so tightly to the "easy-going guy" mask (because under the mask is that same boy who was afraid to confess his love and ended up with nothing).