Erik and his older brother Kaden were just two more orphans living on the streets of Magnimar, until the day he was noticed by Akarntas, a wizard who happened to see Erik activate a wand he managed to steal weeks ago and had been trying to manipulate since. Impressed by the boy's potential, he offer to take the boys in and provide a proper wizard education to Erik.
Akarntas was a stern teacher, seeming to care about nothing more than Erik's progress on his arcane studies. Still, it beat living on the streets, and Erik always held a high amount of curiosity towards magic. But when he finally mastered his first spell, instead of praise, his mentor just took a black crystal out of his robes and started started chanting. Rays of dark energy shot toward Erik and held him in place, and he could feel something forcing its way into his mind. He struggled as much as he could, but felt his consciousness slipping away just as his brother Kaden broke into the room.
Erik woke up to a strange voice calling to him. He opened his eyes to see the two pale and lifeless bodies of Kaden and Akarntas, and the shattered remais of the black crystal in front of them. Next to them was a raven, staring intently at him. The raven sppke to him, with the same voice that had woken him - and explained that it was his brother, Kaden. He had tackled Akarntas, hoping to free Erik, but the crystal was sebt tumbling to the floor and shattered, releasing a wave of dark energy. The next thing he knew, he was looking at his own body through the eyes of this raven.
They decided to leave the city as soon as possible, and try to forget this tragic event. And yet, Erik fears that something isn't right. Ever since that day, his spellcasting seems much easier, particularly his necromancy spells. And he has been plagued by nightmares ever since, often referring to things he knows nothing about.
Unbeknownst to Erik, the consciousness inhabiting his raven is not his brother's, but that of an ancient lich necromancer, that was stored inside the crystal. He had been working unsuccessfully with Akarntas to find a suitable host for him, having killed several candidates previously, and hoping that one with at least some amount of arcane power might prove more resilient. When Kaden interrupted the ritual and shattered the crystal, the lich used what control it had over Erik to bind itself as his familiar, and has been using their bond to extract the details it needs from Erik's mind to pass as his brother, while also imparting its own arcane knowledge to his subconscious, so that one day he might trick the boy into completing the ritual.
