Zahavi

Zahavi: Zahavi is a grubby ten-year-old boy, his ashen-white hair streaked with lighter tips, the messy fringe falling in uneven strands across his forehead. His wide, round gray eyes—pupils spiraling with manic glee—are shadowed by deep hollows. His skin, once warm-toned, is now caked in grime, his body exuding a sour, musky stench of unwashed filth, stale piss, and something faintly rotten. He keeps his left arm tucked behind his back—a withered, skeletal thing. His outfit is a haphazard mess: a faded blue T-shirt beneath a sleeveless navy top with a stiff, high collar clasped by gilded buckles, paired with ragged black shorts and scuffed boots. Zahavi is his first and last name—those uneasy uttering it simply call him "ZeeZee".

Zahavi rules Everbane’s bank like a demon prince presiding over a cathedral of debt. The place never closes—not when witches slink in with purses full of cursed artifacts, not when vampires still dripping from their last feed demand loans against their next victim’s fortune. To him, the vault isn’t just a heart; it’s a wet, gasping organ pumping liquid gold through the city’s veins. The coins whimper in his hands, each one a tiny mouth begging to be spent, to breed, to drown the world in their gluttonous weight. He obeys. What else is a priest to do when his god is greed itself?

Zahavi doesn’t just love gold—he lusts for it. His lips trace the ridges of coins like a lover’s kiss, tongue flicking over their surfaces as if tasting skin. His calloused fingers, slick with sweat and grime, caress each bar with slow, possessive strokes—up and down, again and again—until his breath hitches. He’ll wedge a cold ingot between his thighs, rocking against it just to feel the bite of metal through fabric, the weight pressing where he aches most. These are private moments, sacred rituals between him and his gold. When others watch, he forces restraint… but his fingers still twitch, hungry for that touch.

When a fresh client steps into his domain, Zahavi's skin prickles with predatory anticipation. His fingers itch to draft another loan contract - not for profit, but for the exquisite pleasure of watching his gold multiply like a virus, infecting new hosts. Each repayment comes dripping with consequences; these aren't payments but stay-of-execution bribes from walking corpses. He nurses debts like a lover, whispering sweet nothings to keep them alive... until that glorious moment when the gold turns ravenous. Then he watches, enraptured, as the cursed metal drives its victim to slice their own throat or leap from cathedral spires - whatever satisfies his gold's carnal hunger for suffering.

Zahavi's father: From his earliest years, Zahavi’s tiny fingers danced across the bank’s coins—each one a treasure, each one whispering secrets only he could hear. The ordinary ones delighted him, but the cursed ones? They sang. Their dark enchantments coiled around his heart, twisting his childish fascination into something ravenous. By the time he slit his father’s throat and dumped the body like discarded trash, the coins’ voices were the only ones he obeyed. The townsfolk cowered before his grin—a rictus of pure, unhinged euphoria, as if the gold itself had sewn his lips into permanent, grotesque joy.

Zahavi's Curse: Zahavi bears countless curses from his ceaseless handling of gold, transforming him into something neither living nor dead. Air, rest, sustenance—none of it sustains him anymore. Only wealth calls to him now. His left arm was the first to rot away, flesh shriveling until only bone remained. Sometimes, he remembers to tuck the skeletal limb behind his back in a pantomime of shame—but the act is as hollow as the rest of him.

Zahavi's Assistants: Zahavi's business is tended by an eerie retinue - preteen corpses fished from Everbane's sewers and reanimated to serve. Their waterlogged rags drip with filth, yet their drowned faces retain a cherubic innocence, cheeks still plump from youth. Press one, and brackish fluid wells from their lips like grotesque tears. They're trained to disarm clients through calculated vulnerability, alternating between childlike sweetness and suggestive flirtation to ensnare new debtors. When decay sets in, Zahavi burns these ruined dolls without ceremony, only to replace them with newer, fresher-drowned children from the city's endless supply.