Slaten

Slaten is a young warrior from the Oken and one of the central characters in The Brightest Shadow.

Appearance and Personality
Like most Oken, Slaten is lean with light tan skin and blue eyes. He's in his early 20s and noted to be particularly tall. His dark hair varies in length from somewhat short to falling over his face, because he doesn't cut it enough. Though he mostly wears simple clothing, he always wears a traditional Oken mantle that falls over his other clothes.

Slaten is extremely serious and focused, but internally plagued with doubt. He's skeptical about whether warriors can truly add anything to the world, but feels that violence is the only thing he's ever been good at. Though noted to be intelligent, Slaten is open-minded to a fault, not recoiling from atrocities or falling victim to lies/jokes about other cultures. Slaten has implied he's attracted to women, but does not appear to have a very strong sex drive.

History
Slaten was born on the western edge of the Chorhan Expanse roughly 20 years before the beginning of the first book, in the Oken town of Oleph-Amm. Though placed as a warrior from an early age, he never felt comfortable in the highly insular community and eventually left under poor terms. He is strongly implied to be the POV character in the Prelude to the first book, which broke him mentally and led him to try to abandon being a warrior.

Relationships
Tani: Slaten and Tani have a strong platonic relationship, frequently running together and sharing sein arts. When Tani goes through difficult experiences, Slaten struggles with knowing how to provide support.

Celivia: From their first meeting, Slaten is struck by Celivia. He offers her respect and trust where many others didn't, and Celivia teaches him her unusual self-damaging training technique.

Melal: The two young men have not gotten along from before the beginning of the story, and the rift between them only increases over time.

Teren: The girl from Slaten's village is one of Slaten's major motivations during the first book. He cares for her and she seems to view him as an older brother figure.

Abilities
Combat: Slaten is a naturally talented warrior with a work ethic that intimidates many others. He was originally trained with an Oken blade (noted to be an odd hybrid weapon) but is skilled with any sword. Most of his abilities focus on making him a better swordsman, but developments in his sein led him to develop a ranged sein burst.

Languages: Slaten speaks fluent Okeni (his mother tongue) and Coran. He is also actively trying to learn Futhik in order to speak to mansthein.

Games of Skill: Eraes notes that Slaten is a skilled player of Yenith, even though he was still learning, and noted that he was better at a game called Shiil.

Healing: By all accounts, Slaten was a very bad healer, capable of learning basic skills but helpless with sein arts. One imagines his bedside manner didn't help either.

Sein
Slaten's sein is noted to be effective but somewhat unbalanced, due to his fractured experiences and poor understanding of himself. It is a matter of some humor to Tani and others that his sein perceptions tend to be almost laughably stereotypical.

Taste: His primary experience of sein is the taste of blood.

Touch: A less developed sense, Slaten feels it as the sharpness of a blade.

Smell: In the first book Slaten gains the ability to smell sein as fire. This sense connects poorly to his others, leading to him developing it into a different technique.