¶ Kelthubilaz
The Kelthubilaz (folklore: the un-born, or hearth-blights) is a hybrid entity born from the union of a mortal and a Sayksumarahw. Unlike standard apparitionsn, which are the lingering consciousness of deceased humans, a Kelthubilaz is a never-incarnated intellect permanently lodged in the threshold between the material plane and the Dark Aether.
Anchored to reality solely through the bloodline of its human parent, it manifests visually as a pre-pubescent child. Its sole physical deviance is its eyes, which emit a flat, non-reflective ember-orange light. Because holding a true physical form is agonizingly taxing for them, they spend the vast majority of their existence as auditory phenomena, shifting silhouettes, or localized thermal drops. When they do speak, their voices carry the pitch of a six-year-old, though their syntax is entirely devoid of the need to pause for breath.
¶ Pathology and Lineage
The psychology of a Kelthubilaz is defined by an arrested, malignant infancy. They possess the capacity to grasp complex adult concepts—such as mortgage debt, marital infidelity, or grief—but process them entirely as "games." Driven by a profound, immortal boredom, their primary objective is the systematic psychological demolition of their host household.
They are strict matrilineal parasites. Upon creation, a Kelthubilaz anchors to the human mother's bloodline, lying dormant until the eldest daughter reaches menarche, at which point the entity transfers to her. If a generation produces only sons, the entity will attach to the eldest male as a passive carrier until he takes a long-term female partner, instantly jumping to the spouse.
The entity spends the host's childhood in a state of low-intensity symbiosis, often posing as an "imaginary friend" to coax the child into acts of domestic sabotage. However, the Kelthubilaz enters its true active phase only when the host becomes pregnant. The introduction of a real, developing infant triggers a violent, territorial jealousy; the entity begins siphoning the mother’s emotional endurance to stage increasingly bizarre disruptions, attempting to drive the father away and keep the host entirely to itself.
¶ Extinction and Limitations
As half-mortals, Kelthubilaz possess a finite capacity for corporeal existence. They do not age, cannot grow, and are biologically sterile.
Because they lack a native physical body, they cannot be exorcised through standard spiritual banishment; there is no "true form" to send back to the Aether. However, they can be killed via forced incarnation. If an occult practitioner can goad or trap the entity into maintaining a fully solid, physical manifestation for longer than four consecutive hours, its aetheric tether snaps. Trapped inside its fragile, self-generated child vessel, the Kelthubilaz becomes subject to standard human biology and can be killed via blunt force or conventional trauma.
Alternatively, they can be permanently removed by opening a one-way threshold to the Dark Aether and tricking the entity into stepping through it to retrieve a "stolen" personal object, as their toddler, like fixation on ownership overrides their basic survival instincts.
¶ Abilities
- Aetheric Tethering (Translocation): The entity is strictly bound to a 100-yard radius around its primary host. Within this perimeter, it can drop its physical form and instantly reappear inside any unobserved shadow.
- Sensory Overwriting (Illusion): Rather than projecting visible light, the Kelthubilaz seamlessly alters a victim's immediate mental perception. This allows it to hide objects in plain sight, throw phantom voices from empty rooms, or momentarily warp a loved one's face into something monstrous.
- Juvenile Seizure (Limited Possession): While attempting to possess an adult results in a clumsy, slurring failure, the entity can effortlessly seize control of children under the age of seven. It uses these young hosts as puppets to deliver threats or commit cruelties, leaving the child with total amnesia of the event.
- Chronological Friction: The entity can distort the subjective flow of time within its host household. This causes room clocks to drift apart by hours, drags quick chores out into agonizing ordeals, and makes a twenty-minute nap feel like a fourteen-hour coma.
- Ambient Desiccation: Acting as a passive psychic sinkhole, the entity causes its favored rooms to drop significantly in temperature and rots nearby plant life from the root up. Human occupants subjected to this aura suffer a crushing, leaden lethargy that saps their physical willpower to leave the house.