Born the unwanted first child of a fallen prophet into the murky solitude of the Blackwater Islands, Anathema was cursed from birth. She and her siblings were bartered away in their infancy, sold into strife and madness until they were quickly rescued by a follower of Sweetharbor. There they were given new names and raised under the light of Sweetharbor's God — until conflict fractured the family and cast the siblings' lives into shadow once more.

Twice-abandoned, Anathema spiraled into a madness of her own and injured herself. In the aftermath of a brain injury, she became briefly obsessed with a boy of Brecheliant. Persistent nightmares and amnesia left her in a state of intermittent psychosis; Ana attacked a boy of the Moon packs and fled, attempting to bring the Brecheliant boy with her until he grew frightened and turned back. She found herself alone once again.

Anathema wandered aimlessly until she was reunited with her sister, then called Ava, who brought her to Rivenwood where their adoptive mother had settled. For a time they stayed.

Eventually a second reunion, this time with their brother the Hierophant, compelled them to answer the call of their birthplace: Blackwater Islands. He taught Anathema of their history as they journeyed, their wayward older siblings, their birth mother's madness. The islands, too, had their own lessons to teach and gifts to give. There Anathema discovered the split halves of the meteor her mother had once kept, and the wolfbones she'd collected. The Hierophant went his own way — and when an injury took Ava away from the islands, Anathema followed. The sisters settled in Shadow Ridge.