Origin
He was born wrong, even by goblin standards. In a rain-soaked castle ruin, deep in a warren of mud-patched stone and goblin noise, the one called Nibshade arrived twitchy, too quick, with a green-violet shadow that flickered around him like a second skin. The other goblins kept their distance. The shadow wasn't normal. Nothing about him was.
Griselda Gizzleflitz was the exception. Old, hunched, running a salvage operation from the lower keep. She didn't care about the shadow. She fed him, put him to work sorting scrap, and never once flinched when the dark around him moved on its own. She was the only person who ever treated him with uncomplicated kindness.
She died of old age. Her son Droggit, who ran the family business, needed someone to blame. The strange goblin with the creeping shadows made an easy target. Droggit told everyone Nibshade killed her. There was no evidence. There didn't need to be. The rumor stuck.
Nibshade left. Not because he was afraid, but because staying meant proving something to people who had already decided. The rain was behind him. The road ahead was dark and broken and his.
His magic matured on the road. The shadow-flame that had clung to him since birth learned to listen, to shape itself into blades and hounds and pools of darkness only he could see through. He learned to move through the world the way he always had: sideways, fast, and gone before anyone understood what happened.
He carries Griselda's memory the way he carries everything else: close, quiet, and without explanation. She is the reason he protects people. He just does it from the dark, where no one has to say thank you.
