**Race:** Halfling **Male** **Brown curls** Pip remembers the road. Not clearly, just pieces. The creak of wagon wheels. Campfire songs. The smell of sugared apples. A woman’s hand holding his. Then the marsh. Then the hag. He was taken young, too young to understand what had happened, and raised in the crooked little cottage deep in the swamp. But Pip survived where others might have broken. He learned the hidden places in the walls, the loose floorboards, the forgotten cupboards. He stole food when the younger children were hungry and hid things the hag valued simply because it made him feel, for a moment, that he had power. He became quick with his hands, quicker with lies, and learned to laugh even when he was afraid. When Sordia Vignti found him, Pip acted like he didn’t care whether they stayed or left. But he followed them anyway. Now Pip sleeps with a knife under his pillow, hides bread in his pockets out of habit, and checks every room for a second way out. But slowly, he is learning something harder than survival. How to believe he might finally be safe.