The Shade is a blade split across space and shadow. They are not bound by position, but by potential—wielders of mirrored motion and spatial dissonance, stepping where no foot falls, striking from paths that never were. Through foldlines in reality, they blink between places, turning distance into a weapon and reflection into a shield.

Phantom Reach

Shades fight with blades that drift a half-breath behind or a heartbeat ahead of their swing. Their strikes bend through rifted seams, slicing foes from impossible angles. Portals shimmer and snap in their wake, leaving fleeting mirages—echoes of where they might be next. Some bear glowing fractures on their blades, trailing shadow-lines of past motions, as if fighting alongside their own displaced selves. A Shade can summon a fleeting shadow to strike in tandem or open rifts to redirect their blade’s arc, confounding enemies with attacks from nowhere.

In the Mirror-Chambers of Zin

Trained in the labyrinthine demiplane of Zin’s Rootfold, where reflections hold their own will, Shades are forged from those who survive combat with no memory of victory. Their initiation is to defeat an echo of themselves—not a mere copy, but a possibility dragged from another life. Some whisper Zin’s halls touch the Nether, rebirthing fallen warriors as wraiths bound to spectral blades. The order is secretive, their swordplay precise, their weapons hungry for the seams between logic and reality.

Doctrine of the Split Step

To walk as a Shade is to deny distance. They collapse the battlefield with a thought, rewriting space like a corridor of shattered reflections. They do not block—they are simply elsewhere. They do not chase—they are already ahead. Their blade strikes from two places at once, their body flickering as if never fully present. Where others fight in lines, the Shade moves like fractured glass across a map no one else can read.