Hyperion

Horizon Aspects
Concept and Lore by Lightningtyto

It started with the Shade.
Several of the Arcanist’s scholars had been observing the stars when they noticed the same strange phenomenon he had, millennia earlier -- pure black in the sky.
After consulting the Observatory’s records, they realized that, although the abomination had not fully returned, an exceedingly powerful fragment of it was growing in the upper atmosphere above the Starfall Isles. The potential consequences for the planet were terrifying -- especially if the fragment, itself the most powerful manifestation of the Shade seen in centuries, managed to attract more of the creature it was part of.
--
Something had to be done.
It was about then that an mostly-ignored but sound theory from several years earlier resurfaced: that the Shade was attracted to, and fed on large concentrations of magic. Following a logical progression from that, the dragons of the Observatory realized that maybe if an infinite amount of magic could be compressed into a tiny area, like a magical black hole, the fragment would be drawn to it and sucked in.
Since Arcane specializes in breaking the laws of physics in multiple ways, the idea of a magical singularity was the most plausible idea for getting rid of the piece of the Shade. It took several weeks and a group of very powerful mages to build a machine that would be able to create one, and then contain and safely remove it from existence before anything bad happened.
--
And finally, they launched the weapon.
The machine was launched into the sky, and at first it worked just as planned. High above the Focal Point, it deployed the singularity perfectly, and as predicted attracted the fragment, which readily dove into it.
It was about then that things went from perfect to terrible.
The machine, unable to handle the sudden stress from keeping the Shade fragment stable while defusing it, broke, and most of the dragons, including the scholars, in the area were sucked towards the singularity. Nobody was actually pulled past the event horizon before the creation -- which was neither a true black hole nor a normal magical concentration but something in between -- detonated, but several of them had been right on its border when the explosion occurred.
--
They had been changed forever.
Those who had been teetering on the edge of the event horizon had been fused by its destruction with its energy, and had become almost unrecognizable. They had taken on the appearance of the warped space around the singularity, and many of them had been splattered with the residue from the destroyed Shade fragment. The ones who had been closest to the horizon had even more extreme distortions on their wings, and many of them seemed to glow.
As of the current timeline, it is the only time since the Third Age that any piece of the Shade has ever been completely destroyed.

Behavior

Horizon Aspects, as the warped dragons came to be known, usually rarely speak, and when they do their voices have a tendency to distort and crack in odd ways.
In many clans, they are viewed with caution or suspicion, as the full extent of their abilities and the shifts in their personality from the event aren’t known. Many of them chose to leave their birth clans and serve the Arcanist instead because of the wariness many others have towards them.
A small minority of the original Aspects went insane from the stress and shock, and many of those vanished into the Star Wood. Tread carefully in there at night.
Horizon Aspects born after do tend to be more unstable mentally and weaker physically, possibly a side effect from the magical warping that led to their creation.

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The Arcane Flight is known for being able to manipulate gravity and other forces, but Horizon Aspects take this manipulation to a new level. Besides being able to make objects float and move them like other Arcane dragons can, they can also easily pull things towards them. When Aspects move, they often cause nearby objects to gravitate closer.
They are also able to create distortions in both the gravitational and magical field with little to no effort, as opposed to the hard work and mental strain that a non-Aspect would have to use to do this.
Aspects, especially those that were closest to the event horizon during the incident (and their offspring), give off a soft glow in the dark. More powerful ones can bend light to a degree and can, with practice, make small objects invisible or luminous.
A final interesting quirk that they have is that, very close to them, time seems to run just a bit slower. Aspects age more slowly than average dragons, and can live for a very long time provided that their physical weakness and/or mental instability doesn’t get to them.