The dark counterpart to a firebrynd, the khavina is typically a small black cat that has two forms; the harbinger and the guardian. Both forms of khavina are the strongest of all the known Death Elements, though their roles are entirely paradoxical and almost contradictory to each other. There is some speculation that the harbinger and the guardian are one singular entity, changing form dependant on their calling; while others think the guardian and the harbinger are two separate entities of one being, like a reflection between life and death. What is explicitly clear is that khavinas are elementals of the fethralin and deeply connected to all aspects of death.

Khavinas show incredible intelligence, occasionally being seen to study books and read letters, manipulate space and time around it and accomplish unimaginable feats of magic. Similarly to Astasian foxes and the unelmalin, khavinas seem able to open a portal to the fethralin and guide a person safely through it should they choose.

The Harbinger

The harbinger, though seldom seen in more recent centuries has, has one scarlet eye that weeps blood in its face and an inky blue eye at the end of its bony tail. Its body is composed of peeling shadow flesh which only closely resembles black fur over a hollow skeletal frame. Whenever seen, the death of someone in the immediate vicinity is imminent, though rarely by the khavina itself. There is only one isolated case of a harbinger directly meddling with unelmun affairs and that was with Ranavae, the last ever Tsejsan of Khalilja. When the guards found his body with his heart encased in a glass case, the only suggestion of how his death arose was a single bloody paw mark on the last letter Ranavae ever wrote.

Harbinger khavinas were commonly seen during the end of the second era, whether as a result of the spehirikin massacres happening across Sirin or as a portent to their deaths is unclear. Some among the spehirikin speculate that the harbinger is less the bringer of death, but more a guide to the fallen to take them to the death realms, though many unelmuns who were unable to comprehend the arcane event still remember the hysteria of Ranavae’s time and what ensued under his reign, it is perhaps because of their time spent in the Shynasekae {world of death} itself that causes their macabre appearance. This has led people to believe that the harbinger is fatefully unlucky to behold and superstition has risen out of it that all black cats are unlucky and murderous.

Only two people to date have been able to summon and follow a harbinger khavina – Aengal and Khafune, both wielders of death for a time. Among spehirikin, total power over death is an absolute rarity, and after their deaths, no one has had any power over death since.

The Guardian

The guardian khavina is an even rarer form than the harbinger khavina, only appearing when someone who should have died did not and remaining by that person’s side and is seen as a ward against death. The guardian is hard to spot as it looks exactly the same as a regular cat, completely opposite to the appearance of the harbinger. All that sets the guardian apart from normal cats are its behaviour and its eyes which are a brilliant icy blue, though any unelmuns that come across the guardian merely presume the guardian is a normal cat with a gene mutation.

Where most felines are largely independent, a guardian lives up to its name and will accompany its keeper everywhere and will even go to the trouble of concealing itself away to do so if it isn’t welcome somewhere by others. Guardians also show much more affection and gratitude to its keepers than most other cats

With so little known about the guardian, no one knows why are how the guardian chooses to keep someone from death and the Shynasakae.

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Original article: Khavinas.