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→Nature and Abilities: Canticle shades
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Shades are almost entirely incorporeal, able to pass through solid substances like walls.{{book ref|sfs}} The most dangerous of a shade's ability is its touch. A touch from a shade withers and blackens flesh, causing it to pull in towards the bone. Black tendrils rise on a person's skin. The skin on a face touched by a shade pulls in towards their eyes and cheeks, lips pulling towards their teeth. Their eyelids shrivel up and their eyes feel dry as their vision goes cloudy, eventually leaving their eyes milky and blind. A shade's touch causes a sensation of icy cold pain and numbness in the affected body parts. The fingers of a shade are their only corporeal component, able to grip and hold their prey. While the hands are the only tangible part of a shade, touching it at all is harmful and accidentally walking through one is deadly. A person who has been badly withered may not survive and are often rendered crippled for life. They will often sleep for long periods after they are withered and some components of their body may refuse to return to their old state if the treatment takes too long. Damaged body parts appear withered and skeletal and must be removed afterwards. Prolonged contact over a large area of a person's body can cause death. In a person's final moments, they will tremble and spasm, arching their back. Their head may crumble in on itself and their eyes may sink into their head. Upon their death, the shade will turn a person's flesh to dust and simply leave behind a blackened and ruined skeleton and their clothing. A person killed by a shade's touch will become a shade themselves at some point after their death.
The withering touch of a shade can only be reversed in a few specific ways. Application of silver powder may reverse a person's withering, either by application to the affected area or swallowing the powder itself.{{book ref|sfs}} The silver is consumed in this process as well, sparking with light and then blackening like silver used to wound a shade. This treatment also stops the freezing pain and numbness of a shade's touch, although some lingering cold remains for a few months afterwards. Unfortunately, if the withering is not treated quickly before it sets in, it becomes impossible to reverse. The blackened portions of their body will fade to grey with time however. Making use of [[Gold#Feruchemical_Use|gold Feruchemy]] can heal withering, as well as burning [[Aluminum#Allomantic_Use|aluminum]].{{wob ref|6374}} Shades can also be wounded with weapons made of silver, creating a shower of white sparks whenever they come into contact with the metal.{{book ref|sfs}} Despite a shade's incorporeal body, silver blades experience a slight tugging when they pass through a shade. Badly wounded shades may be cut nearly in half or collapse to the ground, rendered unable to attack further. However, once the silver is used it blackens and is ruined, making silver an expensive but crucial commodity on Threnody. Silver set into the ground also serves as a barrier to shades, they are driven away from it, although that silver too must periodically be replaced.{{book ref|sfs}}
On [[Canticle]] Shades sometimes appear when a person isn't killed by the Sunlight, it appears they quickly move towards the other Shades.
Shades on Canticle appear to have at least some sort of memories, and are able to talk, though it's unclear if they are truly sapient or if they simply repeat some specific things. These Shades also have the ability to craft anything, if they have seen the plans and have the appropriate materials.
As technology has developed, it appears that a type of Invested gun may have been developed that is capable of firing shades as projectiles, causing anything it hits to wither and crumble away.{{file ref|New Ascendancy broadsheet.jpg|The ''New Ascendancy'' broadsheet}}
== Trivia ==
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