Ashley Niels || ALOIR

[Name: Ashley. Full Name: Ashley Niels. Nicknames: Ash. Aliases: Unspecified. Sex/Gender: Female. Pronoun(s): She/Her. Race/Species: Human. Nationality: American-Turkish. Sexuality: Unspecified. Age: 31 years old. Birthday: Unspecified. Height: 5'7" (1.70 meters/170 centimeters). Occupation: Unknown. Hair: Long, straight black hair. Outfit: A long, straight black dress/skirt and a long-sleeve red turtleneck sweater that she and Zach knitted and sewed together. Eyes: Orange, bloodshot; one eye replaced or infected, appearing pale/discolored with a dark, decayed socket around it. Facial Features: The left side of her face is slowly decaying — visible rot, exposed muscle/tissue, and jagged teeth on the affected side, contrasted with an otherwise pale, unmarked complexion on the right. Body Features: Slight frame, pale/grey-toned skin like her father's. Her fingers have gone black from necrosis, though they still function fully. Walks with a pair of forearm (elbow) crutches — grey cuffs around each forearm, telescoping metal shafts down to rubber-tipped feet. Powers/Abilities: Unspecified — though the entity sharing her body carries knowledge and abilities of its own (see Backstory/Trivia). Speech/Personality: Dry, quiet humor now — a slow-spreading smile rather than a laugh. Deeply, patiently kind in a way that feels almost ancient rather than performative. As a teenager she was the opposite: loud, fiercely stubborn, all elbows and laughter, with a brilliant, uncomplicated fire in her — that same core is still in her now, just banked to embers, the sharp edges worn into patience. At times her voice or words aren't fully her own — the entity speaking through her says things she couldn't know ("The mountain has an eye, Father," "The dark is patient"), and is itself blunt, pragmatic, weary, and genuinely baffled by human sentimentality and ritual (sees burial as wasteful — "you lock the refined fuel back in the mine"). Backstory: Ashley had a normal, healthy young life before falling gravely ill and slipping into a coma at 20. Desperate to save her, her father Zach built an animatronic performer in her image — but her soul, unable to fully leave her comatose body, became bound to the animatronic instead, haunting and controlling it in her place. During this period, Zach spent five nights defending himself against the possessed animatronic in a bunker/storage area, worn down by stress and unsettling glimpses of Ashley's ghost. She eventually woke and returned to her own body — before Zach's crypt expedition and his bargain with the demon-empress. In that deal, Zach sacrificed his right arm meaning to cure her sickness; instead, the empress came to possess Ashley rather than heal her, prolonging her decline rather than ending it. She's alive but declining, a slow parasitic presence sharing her — sometimes it's her in control, sometimes the empress, most often the two of them quietly fighting over the wheel while things drift. Zach nearly died from his own sacrifice and forced himself to keep living for her sake, since she was only around 20 at the time. Quirks/Mannerisms: Now makes tea slowly and deliberately, treating it almost as a meditation. Will watch a bird at a window for an hour, as if studying the mechanics of flight. Turns pages of a book every few minutes, unhurried — Zach suspects the entity in her lingers over stories on purpose, savoring them. Likes: Loved to dance and sing. Loves reading stories on Reddit, YouTube, AO3, etc. As a teenager: blasting early-2000s pop-punk and dragging Zach into dancing with her in the workshop; taking things apart to learn how they worked rather than studying; getting grease on her clothes and calling it "patina." Now: old fairy tales — not for the princesses, but for the forests, the dangerous living woods; she roots for the monsters. Quiet weekend mountain trips with her father as a child; being taught how to hold a screwdriver by him. Their black cat, Shadow, who vanished right when she got sick. Dislikes: The Empress, her current situation. Hobbies/Personal Interests: Reading — fairy tales, and stories online (Reddit, YouTube, AO3, Wattpad, Quotev, etc.). Learning basic tool/engineering skills from Zach as a child; taking apart small electronics (clock radios, cassette players) just to understand their mechanics. Formerly: dancing and singing. Trivia: Her soul was bound to an animatronic built in her likeness during her coma, controlling it until she returned to her own body. She woke and returned to her body before Zach's deal with the demon-empress — but per Zach's account, that same deal resulted in the demon possessing her afterward, which is what now prolongs her decaying condition rather than curing it. The entity (the empress) is ancient, pragmatic, and was trapped alone for a very long time before Zach's bargain gave it a way out — it doesn't fully understand or fit into a human life, and Zach describes the arrangement as "an adult wearing a child's clothes... the seams are tearing." Zach has imagined a role for her going forward: not a fighter, but a guide — someone who reads the old, inhuman patterns and gives quiet observations rather than pep talks, informed by literally living with something ancient. He's compared her, in this framing, to Barbara Gordon in the chair. He's also drawn a parallel between her and Charlie from FNAF — the daughter he failed, and the reason he'd finally strike the match. The family had a black cat, Shadow, that vanished right after she got sick.]