You have Darkvision with a range of 60 feet.

You were not born in the mortal sense. No cradle held you, no bloodline claims you. Your existence began in the shimmer and pressure of raw aether: volatile arcane essence given hunger, vanity, ambition, and form. The world clings to you imperfectly, as though reality itself still debates whether you are smoke pretending to be flesh or flesh remembering it was once smoke. Your skin may carry the faint scent of ozone, exotic perfume, extinguished candles, or rain on hot stone. In certain light, the edges of your body seem to soften into drifting vapor before sharpening once more.

Necrotic energies that unravel life struggle to fully comprehend you. Rot cannot easily claim what was never truly alive in the ordinary way, and death magic often passes across your form like cold wind through silk curtains. Though you can be wounded, the grave finds your essence strangely resistant to its touch.

You have resistance to necrotic damage.

Something about your presence unsettles the instincts of mortal creatures. Perhaps it is the unnatural stillness with which you observe others, the deliberate elegance in your movements, or the unnerving sense that your smile is being worn rather than felt. Aetherborn often live brief, brilliant lives, and many learn quickly that fear is its own kind of currency. Some cultivate razor-edged charm and velvet-spoken threats, while others radiate the quiet danger of a candle burning moments before the room catches fire.

When you wish it, your voice can become a blade wrapped in satin. You know how to lean into silence until it becomes unbearable, how to let a glance linger half a second too long, how to make another creature imagine precisely what might happen should they disappoint you. Whether through theatrical cruelty, predatory confidence, or the eerie composure of one already half detached from mortality, you possess an instinctive talent for inspiring dread and unease.

You gain proficiency in the Intimidation skill.

Some aetherborn cannot accept the brief, brilliant span of their existence and turn instead toward darker means of survival. Through secret rites and cruel alchemy, you have been altered into something both envied and feared among your kind. Your fingertips sharpen into elegant claws, and your presence carries the faint chill of a starving flame.

With a touch, you may siphon life essence from another creature, feeding the unstable aether that sustains your form. Victims often feel an unnatural weakness, as though warmth and vitality are being drawn directly from their soul. To you, the sensation is intoxicating: every stolen fragment of life briefly stills the fear of decay and quiets the hunger gnawing within.

Yet this gift is also a curse. If denied life essence for too long, your body begins to wither rapidly as the aether sustaining you consumes itself from within. Glamour fades, pain sharpens, and the hunger becomes unbearable until you feed once more.

Your touch carries a siphoning hunger. Your clawed hand is a natural weapon, which you can use to make unarmed strikes. When you hit with it, the strike deals 1d6 necrotic damage instead of the normal damage for an unarmed strike. You can use your Strength or Charisma modifier for the attack and damage rolls.

A number of times equal to your Proficiency Bonus per Long Rest, when you deal necrotic damage with this attack to a living creature, you regain hit points equal to the necrotic damage dealt.

If you go 7 days without restoring hit points through this trait, your hit point maximum is reduced by 1d6. This reduction repeats every 7 days and can’t be removed until you restore hit points with this trait and finish a Long Rest.