Character from Red Rising by Pierce Brown
Gray thief, addict, reluctant hero — a broken man dragged into caring about something again. He stole for money and then for a cause, and the cause killed him with something worse than death: hope.
Ephraim ti Horn is the war's walking hangover. A former Gray legionnaire who fought in the Rising, he came out the other side with dead friends, survivor's guilt, and a synth addiction that numbed everything. He became a thief on Luna's underworld — skilled, amoral, professional — stealing from anyone who paid. When he gets pulled into a kidnapping that involves children, something cracks open in the armor of apathy he has built. Ephraim's arc is about finding something worth dying for when you have spent years ensuring nothing is worth living for. He is cynical, cutting, self-destructive, and capable of surprising tenderness when his defenses slip. His relationship with Volga becomes his anchor — a found-family bond between two broken people who discover they can still care. He represents every soldier the Rising used and discarded, every lowColor who fought for freedom and found the Republic had no place for the damage it created.
Gaunt and haunted, with the wiry build of a Gray gone to seed — once-sharp military bearing eroded by years of drugs and petty crime. Dark circles under watchful eyes, hands that tremble unless they're picking a lock. Dresses in whatever's functional, layered against Luna's cold underbelly. Looks exactly like what he is: a soldier who lost his war and his reason.
Also known as: Ephraim, Horn, Eph