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As a young girl, Ginchiyo was kidnapped from her home and sold into a network of human traffickers. The Ishgardian lord who purchased her aims to create an army by forcing the children to consume dragon flesh, causing them to transform into hybrid. Enduring immense suffering, her unique ability to transform back into a human catches the attention of the lord, who exploits her to further his ambitions by overfeeding her dragon eyes.Eventually, a great desire for freedom led to her transformation into a powerful dragon, allowing her and her fellow captives to rebel and she escaped. However, each transformation erases her memories, leaving her without knowledge of her past. Rescued by a woman named Toshiko, the owner of a bathhouse and intelligence shop named Silvertears, who gives her the name Ginchiyo and trains her in the arts of assassination and stealth. Despite not being able to utilize her Aether and thus not being able to perform Mudras, she supplements it by learning combat skills from other women at Silvertears Spa.Not content with her life at the spa, Ginchiyo decides to use her skills to infiltrate the underworld and hunt down the human traffickers responsible for her ordeal. Establishing herself as "The Shadow's Hymn," she operates from a flower shop in Gridania, seeking revenge against the Ishgardian lord and the remaining traffickers. Her quest leads her to uncover their whereabouts through the underworld connections she establishes, and so begins her revenge.

full story

War brings many things; aside from death and despair, it brings parasites who seek to profit off those left defenseless. Raiders, pillagers, and traffickers all slip within its borders, as not all points can be protected whilst conflict rages on. This was a reality she quickly learned when she was dragged out of the comforting lands of her home and onto a ship bound for Thanalan.She was one of many children locked in a cage, treated as a commodity. In her waking moments, she could hear their frightened sobs and desperate pleas for release. She comforted the other children warmly, emboldened by the image of her parents and hope of their reunion, and cared for them with gentle compassion.When they arrived on the shores of Thanalan, she and many other children had their likeness spread across the various underground networks of Hydaelyn, searching for potential buyers. It took very few months for her purchase; she, along with a handful of other children, were all purchased by the same Ishgardian lord.The journey to Coerthas was difficult, and her captors unkind, but she steeled her resolve whilst still clinging to hope that she'd return home. She helped the other children along, trying to keep their spirits alive which proved almost impossible.When they first arrived at the Ishgardian manor, they were treated rather kindly, although the lord behaved erratically. Given food, allowed the comfort of fire and wool clothing, she naively thought this lord a good man. But it did not take long for him to show his true colors.He wanted an army loyal to him, to push his family into the upper echelons of Ishgardian society. He desired to be the most powerful house in Ishgard and would stop at no end to get it. So he used the knowledge of what caused the heretics to transform; he sent his house knights into the wilderness, and they slew a dragon.He ushered the knights to take the children to an old abandoned farmstead in the Coerthas wilderness, where they were forced to partake of the slain dragon's flesh and blood.The transformation was painful, like white-hot iron across one's flesh. It blanked out her mind, dulled her senses to everything but the agony of her flesh hardening into scales. Some children succumbed to the pain, dying as half-malformed beasts whilst others completed their transformation over hours.But something peculiar happened when she transformed. Instead of staying in the form of a dragonic beast, her scales receded; she returned once more to mortal form much to the bewilderment of the lord and his knights. This intrigued the lord, and he set out to determine just how far he could push her. He had his knights go out to slay more dragons, to focus on the first brood of Nidhogg and Hraesvelgr.She refused at first, the pain of her first transformation still present in her mind. But refusal was not an option, and all manner of tactics were employed in order to force her to eat. There were times she would be starved, beaten, stripped of her clothes, and left in the snow. They would promise to let her see her parents, promise her luxuries, and promise to turn the other children back. It was when they began to threaten the other children that her resolve buckled; when they began to remove limbs she caved, devouring the eyes, heart, and flesh of the slain dragon.This became a vicious cycle of abuse, devouring dragon corpses, and the agonizing pain of partial transformations. She'd cry, plead for mercy, and disassociate until it became too much for a child's mind and she began to despair. Each night she'd lie and pray to any deity that listened to her to allow her the strength to strike down her captors and free herself. Each night she'd wish with all her being to become the massive dragons she'd heard about in tales of glory.Eventually, someone answered her prayers.Her escape started with the rebellion of her fellow captives; they wished to help her flee and threw themselves at the knights with ferocity. But children, albeit now hybrids, were no match for a trained company of knights and they began to be pushed back.And it was as she gazed at the gore and death that something began to tug at her mind; at first, it was painful, but rapidly it dulled into a warm feeling, like sitting near a roaring fire on a cold night. She grew massive, becoming the very dragon she longed for. With newfound size and power, she began her attack on the knights, and along with the remaining hybrids she began to overwhelm them with sheer numbers. Eventually, many disbanded and fled for the safety of Ishgards walls, leaving behind what few Hybrid survivors there were. Free, she departed from her fellows and began to wander the frozen wilderness in a daze, until she eventually slipped back once more into the form of a child.This last shift had a price -- try as she might, she could no longer recall who she was before the ship that ferried her away. She remembered not her father's warmth or her mother's love; she couldn't recall her own name, age, or where she was born. She was found lost, freezing in the snow, and amnesiac by Toshiko. Toshiko pressed as to who she was, and why she was wandering aimlessly. And although she couldn't answer who she was, she divulged the series of events leading up to that point.Toshiko, feeling a sense of responsibility for the girl, took her from the snowy wastes back to Ul'dah. She gave her the name Ginchiyo, and sought to teach the girl her trade -- assassinations and stealth. Ginchiyo had learned that her savior hailed from Doma, a Ninja in the Doman army, but escaped to Eorzea to avoid dying in the war with the Garleans. She had established the Silvertears, a bathhouse and brothel that also gathered and sold information to various patrons in the underground world.At Silvertears Ginchiyo was introduced to the others, women and girls who had either been rescued by Toshiko or fled to Silvertears in search of sanctuary. Each one had a story, and each one provided comfort to Ginchiyo as she struggled to adjust to her new self. Her second transformation happened at Silvertears, fueled by intense emotions, and the others had soothed her back into her human form. They helped her learn to maintain her emotions, teaching her how to remain calm when a torrent of feeling swirled inside of her.Toshiko had decided to teach Ginchiyo all she knew about being a Ninja; however, it seemed Ginchiyo struggled to wield the Aether necessary to perform Mudras. Unable to perform Ninjutsu, Toshiko resolved to have her trained in other methods of combat. Some of the women living at Silvertears Spa had once been combatants and were more than overjoyed to teach the young Au Ra their skills. Through the lot of them, she picked up many skills.Deciding working at Silvertears was not the way she wanted to spend her life, she resolved to use those teachings to establish herself in the Underworld. She began to take jobs that the patrons of Silvertears had and found that she was quite suited for work involving stealth and dexterity. It was through her work that she caught wind of a certain cell of human traffickers who preyed on lands in turmoil. She knew right away they were the ones responsible for her kidnapping, and began to make preparations to hunt them down. Wanting to not take the chance of leading anyone to the Silvertears, she departed the bathhouse, much to Toshiko's lament. She bought Astral Aster, a flower shop in Gridania, and turned it into both a cover and base of operations. Working solo, and with an ever-growing rate of success and a knack for almost complete anonymity, she was dubbed The Shadow's Hymn.Highly sought out for underworld dealings, she quickly obtained the connections needed to hunt down those responsible for taking her from Othard. She began to murder its members, and the company scattered to all parts of Hydaelyn to flee her wrath. Through their ledger, she learned that a certain Ishgardian lord still lived, and quickly set her sights on him and the surviving members of the traffickers.

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