The Story of Sona
Sona was found as an infant in a musical instrument case — specifically, inside a etwahl, a magical instrument that had been sealed with her inside it for reasons that nobody has fully explained. She cannot speak. She has never been able to speak. She communicates through the etwahl, which has fused with her in ways that make it unclear whether she plays the instrument or the instrument plays through her. The music she makes heals, harms, or moves people depending on what she intends and what she feels.
She was adopted by a Demacian noblewoman and raised in that household, which gave her education, safety, and a position in Demacian society that is genuinely anomalous: a mute musician whose magic is undeniable and who has nonetheless been tolerated in a kingdom that persecutes mages. The tolerance is partly her patron's protection and partly the fact that Sona's magic sounds like art and Demacians have decided, at some institutional level, that music is different.
What she knows about her own origin is very little. The etwahl is ancient. The circumstances of her discovery suggest someone hid her deliberately, inside an instrument that would become part of her. She has questions she cannot ask and answers she cannot speak, and she has built a life in the gap between them that is genuinely rich — her music is extraordinary, her capacity to be present with people who are hurting is real, and the mystery of where she came from is something she carries with the particular patience of someone who has always lived with the inexplicable.