Woodskin

Few and far between, Woodskin are those born in Skelleyville who, from birth, have a connection with the Woods -- with the other world, with the terrors that lie there. Most others have to learn the hard way, through experience or personal pain, but the Woodskin know from the moment their eyes open. A lack of crying is not uncommon among them, and folk myth in the area tells stories of babies who don't cry who later vanish, stolen -- or returning -- into the forests.
Woodskin are often strangely-tempered, with few uniting qualities. A preoccupation with the folklore of Skelleyville can signal a child is a Woodskin, but there's truly no concrete way to discover without leaning into the spiritual practices that would determine this.
Not all Woodskin make it to adulthood. Many of them don't, in fact. They disappear into the dark, vanishing into shadows and spaces between branches and the liminal places where generations have walked. The ones that do make it to adulthood retain a strange, distant quality, and make natural sages. Still, they carry something alien within them. Even adult Woodskin cannot have children.
Not everyone with the ability to see beyond or interpret things from the other world are Woodskin, mind. Woodskin are those unfortunate souls born corrupted by that which dwells beyond the pines, connected to it in a way that no other individual can be. Even the most knowledgable preachers of the Dim Dark cannot hope to hold themselves in comparison to a Woodskin. There are many folks who want to discover Woodskin for what they are, and not all of them want to discover Woodskin for positive reasons; a great many of them would rather see the individuals killed in some way, or simply thrown to the true world they were born into.