Fae Biology: Aging and Fading: Gradual Depletion
In Twisted Wonderland, fae live a very long time — usually between 500 and 1,000 years or even more, depending on what kind of fae they are. But they don’t get old the same way humans do. Humans get gray hair, wrinkles, weak muscles, and move slower as they reach 70 or 80. Fae look young on the outside for almost their whole life. Their skin stays smooth, their hair stays colorful, and their body stays strong-looking right up until the very end.
This happens because magic flows inside their body like blood. Magic keeps repairing their cells and keeps them looking young. So even when a fae is hundreds of years old, they can still look like a teenager or young adult.
But inside, things are slowly changing. The magic that keeps them alive and strong starts to run out little by little. This slow loss of magic is called fading.
Here’s how it usually happens:
1. They stay young-looking for a super long time
Lilia Vanrouge is about 700 years old right now. He looks like a cute, playful boy with pink hair and big eyes. But 400 years ago — during the big war between humans and fae — he already looked exactly the same. The game shows flashbacks, and he hasn’t changed at all on the outside. That means fae can look young for centuries.
2. Different kinds of fae age at different speeds
- Bat fae (like Lilia): They can live up to around 1,000 years.
- Dragon fae (like Malleus): They live even longer — maybe more than 1,000 years. Malleus is 178 years old, but in dragon fae years he’s still like a very young child (maybe human 5–10 years old LOL (or maybe 15, idk)). They grow up super slowly.
- Smaller fae (like the ones in Fairy Gala) probably don’t live as long, but the game doesn’t tell us exact numbers yet.
A very rough way people guess: 1 fae year is about like 10 human years. So Lilia at 700 is like a human around 70 — old for a human, but he still looks like a teen because of magic.
3. Fading starts quietly
The first signs are small. Their magic gets weaker. Spells don’t work as strongly. They get tired faster. Lilia says his magic is fading because he was too wild and fought too much when he was younger (lots of battles in the war, crazy spells, staying up all night playing games even now). All that extra hard work used up his magic faster than normal.
4. Later stages are more serious
- Magic becomes very weak or almost gone.
- Body gets tired all the time.
- They can’t fight or use big spells anymore.
- In the worst stage, their body starts to disappear — turning into light particles or fading away completely, like Lilia almost did in his dream in Book 7.
He only came back because Malleus and Silver poured their love and magic into him. But even that can’t fix it forever. The fading will keep going.
5. Feelings make it worse
Being lonely, sad, angry, or guilty speeds up fading. That’s why Lilia hides how bad it is — he doesn’t want to make Silver or Malleus sad. Negative feelings make the black ink (blot)(THIS BITCH) build up faster, and that hurts their magic even more.
6. Why this happens to fae
Fae live so long that they can’t have babies very often (dragon eggs take hundreds of years to hatch!). If they never got old and died, there would be too many fae and not enough magic in the world for everyone. So fading is nature’s way of keeping the balance. It’s sad, but it stops the population from growing forever.
7. What it means in the story
- Lilia knows he’s fading, so he tries to say goodbye quietly and leave without hurting his family.
- Malleus is scared of being alone forever because he will outlive almost everyone he loves. That fear is why he trapped everyone in dreams in Book 7.
- It shows that even super powerful, beautiful, long-living fae have to face the end someday. Magic makes them strong, but it can’t make them live forever without a cost.
Right now (early 2026 in the JP server), Book 8 is still going and hasn’t changed anything big about fading. It’s still the same rule: fae eventually fade, and there’s no real way to stop it completely. The only thing that helps a little is love, rest, and not pushing their magic too hard.
So even though fae look young and cool for hundreds of years, inside they’re slowly running out of the magic that keeps them alive. It’s one of the saddest and most beautiful parts of their story.
