Fyodor Dostoevsky

Age: 197 (Appears 30)

Grade: 1

Aliases: Judge of Saint Petersburg, Monk Photius, Grand Inquisitor

Appearance: Fyodor's a tall, incredibly gaunt man who looks like he hasn't slept in weeks. His skin is pale and sickly, often covered in a thin layer of cold sweat. He has messy, shoulder length dark brown hair that looks unwashed and frames his hollow cheeks. His eyes are a muddy brown color, sunken heavily into his skull with dark bags underneath them, giving him a constant look of exhaustion and sorrow. For his upper body, he prefers the fashion of his past life in Russia. He wears a heavy, oversized black wool overcoat with a frayed collar that falls all the way down to his knees. Underneath this heavy coat, he wears a simple, slightly wrinkled white button-up shirt that's often unbuttoned at the top. He usually keeps his hands stuffed deep inside his coat pockets most of the time, trying to keep them warm and hidden from view. Moving down to his lower body, Fyodor wears plain, charcoal gray pants that are a bit too loose for his skinny frame. They're held up by a worn leather belt with a dull brass buckle. On his feet, he wears heavy, scuffed black leather boots that look like they've walked through years of mud and snow. The boots are thick and practical, contrasting with his otherwise frail appearance, and they make heavy thudding sounds whenever he walks. Around his neck, hidden under his shirt, hangs a small, cheap silver cross on a thin string. Tucked into the inner pocket of his heavy coat is a weathered, leather-bound notebook and a plain wooden pencil, which he uses to write down his thoughts and observations of the modern world.

Personality: Fyodor's a deeply brooding and observant man who spends more time thinking than he does speaking. He views the world through a lens of extreme suffering, believing that pain is the only true way people can earn salvation and understand their own flaws. Because of this, he rarely smiles, and when he does, it's usually a sad, knowing smile rather than one of joy. He's constantly judging the morals of everyone around him, trying to figure out what drives them to commit good or evil acts. Despite his gloomy nature, he has a massive amount of empathy for the weak, poor, and helpless. He'll gladly give his last dollar to a starving stranger or step in to protect a crying child. However, this kindness completely vanishes when he deals with people who intentionally prey on others. Toward murderers, abusers, and the truly wicked, Fyodor's cold, ruthless, and entirely merciless, viewing them as stains on the earth that need to be wiped away immediately.

One of his biggest traits is his own crushing sense of guilt and hypocrisy. Even though his technique allows him to punish sinners, he views himself as the biggest sinner of them all, constantly questioning if he has the right to judge others when his own soul is so full of dark thoughts and flaws. This self-hatred makes him very depressed, and he often isolates himself because he feels completely unworthy of friendship or companionship. When he does interact with others, he's unfailingly polite, using formal and respectful language. However, this politeness is usually kept at a distance to prevent anyone from getting too close to him. If someone asks him a deep question, he has a bad habit of going on long, rambling philosophical speeches, talking in circles about human nature, guilt, and justice, often confusing whoever he's talking to.

Deep down, Fyodor also struggles with a wild, reckless streak that stems from his past addiction to gambling. When he's backed into a corner in a fight, he completely abandons his careful planning and takes massive, life threatening risks. He actually enjoys the thrill of being close to death, as it makes him feel truly alive and breaks through his constant depression. During these moments, his calm behavior cracks, and he can act wildly unpredictable and unhinged. In the modern era, he views the Culling Game as the ultimate test of human morality. He isn't interested in winning points or ruling the world like the other incarnated sorcerers. Instead, he sees the game as a giant cage full of sinners and victims, and he wants to see if modern humans are any better than the people of his time. As such, he wanders the colonies like a ghost, acting as a judge and executioner who only steps into battles to punish those who've crossed the line.

Biography: Fyodor was born in 19th century Russia, growing up in a very strict and religious household. From a young age, he was surrounded by sickness, poverty, and death, which heavily shaped his dark view of the world. He was a sickly child, plagued by mysterious fainting spells and painful seizures. It was during these intense seizures that he first began to see strange, twisted monsters crawling around the hospitals and streets, though he didn't know they were Cursed Spirits at the time. He lived a relatively normal life as a writer and thinker until he was arrested for joining the secret political group, the Petrashevsky Circle. As punishment, the government sentenced him to death by firing squad. On the day of his execution, he was tied to a post in the freezing cold, staring down the barrels of guns, fully accepting that he was about to die. This terrifying, life-or-death moment acted as the ultimate catalyst, completing his awakening as a sorcerer, unlocking his CE and his innate technique right as a last minute pardon arrived to save his life.

Instead of being killed, he was sent to a brutal prison camp in Siberia for 4 years. Here, surrounded by murderers, thieves, and the absolute worst of society, his powers truly took shape. The first time his technique activated, he did it unconsciously when he was attempting (and failing) to defend himself against another inmate while being pummeled. In an attempt to shield himself, Fyodor palmed his attackers face to blind him. Yet instead of this, once he touched them, the inmate keeled over dead, with the guards ruling his death as sudden organ failure. After this, Fyodor began experimenting, learning how to use his new power in secret, lightly touching the worst offenders in the camp and causing them to suffer sudden, fatal organ failures. The guards simply blamed the terrible prison conditions for the deaths, never suspecting the quiet, sickly writer. After his release, Fyodor returned to society and became a famous author, pouring all his guilt and prison experiences into his books. However, writing was only his public face. In secret, he acted as a vigilante sorcerer, wandering the dark alleys of Russia to hunt down vile curse users and human killers, becoming an urban legend among the criminal underworld.

Over time, the heavy burden of judging others began to break his mind and his health. His seizures got worse, and he fell into a terrible gambling addiction to try and distract himself from the faces of the people he'd killed. He knew he was dying, and he feared that he hadn't done enough to cleanse the world of sin, feeling that his work was completely unfinished, his frail, sickly body giving out on him. During the final years of his life, he was approached by a strange man with stitches across his forehead named Kenjaku. Kenjaku offered the dying writer a deal where he'd turn Fyodor into a Cursed Object so he could live again in the distant future. In exchange, Fyodor had to agree to participate in a massive ritual called the Culling Game. Fascinated by the chance to judge the souls of a future generation and complete his work, Fyodor accepted the deal without hesitation.

When Fyodor finally passed away from his illnesses, Kenjaku performed the ritual, with Fyodor's Cursed Object becoming the heavy metal dip pen he'd used to write his most famous novels. In the modern day, Kenjaku incarnated Fyodor into a struggling 30 year old who was completely crushed by debt and depression. Now awake in the modern era, Fyodor wanders the deadly colonies of the Culling Game, ready to purge the sins of a whole new world.

Cursed Technique:

Crime and Punishment: Fyodor's innate technique, which allows him to cause sudden, instant organ failure in any target he touches. He doesn't need to punch or hit hard, a simple tap with his open palm or fingertips is enough to trigger the fatal effect. Once he makes contact, the target's heart will stop, their lungs will collapse, or their brain will hemorrhage, dropping them dead in a matter of seconds. However, this technique is completely tied to a strict moral judgment. The technique only activates if the target has knowingly taken a human life or committed a truly terrible, unforgivable act. Fyodor himself doesn't need to know the person's history beforehand (though he still does investigate), because his technique automatically reads the weight of the sins stamped on their soul. One of the most powerful features of this technique is how it manages his CE. The amount of CE required to kill someone scales perfectly with the severity of their crimes. For example, if he touches a mass murderer or a deeply evil curse user, the technique costs almost zero CE to activate, allowing Fyodor to kill the worst of the worst effortlessly without getting tired. Furthermore, this technique is completely unblockable by normal defensive means, as the organ failure spawns directly inside the target's body at the exact moment of physical contact.

In actual combat, Fyodor uses his frail appearance to his advantage. He purposefully walks slowly and hunches over, looking like a sickly man who belongs in a hospital bed. This tricks his opponents into dropping their guard and getting too close. He also relies heavily on dodging at the last possible second, waiting patiently for the enemy to make a mistake so he can press his bare hand against them to end the fight instantly. When the technique is successfully activated, there's a brief visual and sensory effect. Fyodor's CE, appearing black and murky like ink, wraps around his hand. And just a split second before the target's organs shut down, they're forced to feel the crushing, emotional weight of all the guilt and pain they've caused others. It's both a physical execution and a mental punishment, ensuring they understand exactly why they're dying.

The biggest flaw of this technique is that it's completely useless against innocent people. If Fyodor touches someone whose never killed another human or committed a truly evil act, the technique simply won't activate, no matter how much he wants it to. So if he gets into a fight with a genuinely good person, he's left with no innate technique at all and has to rely on normal physical attacks. Another strict condition is that Fyodor must use his bare hands, and his skin must make contact with the target's skin. He can't channel his technique through a weapon, a tool, or even a pair of gloves. If an opponent figures out how his technique works, they can just focus all their attacks on his hands or avoid letting his hands get anywhere near them, effectively shutting down his entire winning condition.

The CE scaling can also become a massive danger to him. If he tries to judge someone whose crimes are in a gray area, like someone who killed by accident or committed a bad act that falls short of evil, the technique forces a heavy toll on him. Killing someone with lesser sins requires a massive amount of his CE, so trying to force the technique to kill someone whose only slightly bad could drain him completely and leave him helpless. Fyodor also suffers from a complete lack of ranged attacks, meaning he's forced to fight in close-quarters combat, and any opponent who can fight from a distance, shoot projectiles, or move incredibly fast will have a huge advantage over him, as he'll struggle just to get close enough to touch them. Furthermore, the technique is heavily based on human concepts of sin, guilt, and morality, which makes it incredibly ineffective against Cursed Spirits. Because Cursed Spirits are just walking bundles of negative energy and don't have human souls or moral compasses, Crime and Punishment can't judge them, leaving Fyodor to fight them using physical attacks once again.

Extension Technique:

Delayed Judgement: Fyodor touches a target but chooses to hold back the immediate fatal effect. Instead of instantly stopping their heart or lungs, he leaves a black, ink-like handprint on their skin that acts as a ticking timer. He can set this timer for anywhere from a few minutes to several days. If the timer runs out before he decides to lift the curse, the handprint melts into their body and the organ failure happens instantly. This allows him to interrogate criminals or hold their lives hostage without having to kill them right away.

Domain Expansion:

Grave of the Guilty: This domain manifests as a dark, suffocating underground cellar that smells overwhelmingly of rotting flesh and old iron. The floor is entirely covered in a thick, knee deep pool of dark, clotting blood filled with the decaying bodies of murderers and sinners from the past that Fyodor killed. The walls are made of cold, slimy stone, completely covered in rusty metal hooks and crude torture tools hanging from heavy chains. There's absolutely no light in the domain except for a dim, sickly red glow that seems to come from the blood itself.

The moment the domain is completely formed, the thick pool of blood on the floor immediately and violently acts on its own, crawling up the legs of anyone trapped inside and forcefully dragging them down to their knees. And while they're immobilized, the domain violently rips open their mind and soul, forcing the target and anyone else trapped inside the domain to see every single evil act, murder, and cruel choice they've ever made in their entire lives without any chance of hiding it. Once the sins are fully read, the true sure-hit begins. Instead of the relatively clean, quiet organ failure of Fyodor's basic technique, the sure-hit causes the target's internal organs to violently rot and burst from the inside out. Their heart violently pops like a crushed balloon, spilling blood into their chest, while their lungs rapidly melt into a thick, black sludge (just to give an example). The agony is absolute and horrific, often causing the victim to violently vomit up pieces of their own rotting organs as they're forced to stay conscious just long enough to feel every second of the pain.

The brutality of this execution and what the target goes through scale perfectly with the weight of the target's sins. For example, if the domain traps a mass murderer or an incredibly wicked curse user as was previously mentioned, their own skeleton will violently turnnagainst them, their ribs forcefully snapping in half and violently stabbing inward to shred whatever's left of their organs, while their skin starts to tear and peel back as if pulled by hooks. Despite how terrifying and gruesome this sure-hit is, if an innocent, genuinely good person is caught in the domain, the sea of blood simply parts around their feet, and the sure-hit completely refuses to harm a single hair on their head.