For Ash, psychic magic is all about memories.
As a Duskwalker, Ash came into being fully formed, roughly akin to an eight year old child.
Her first memory was finding a dead Pharasmin priest outside the temple from which she was 'born'. Her second memory was surprising the detectives who came in the dead of night to investigate the murder. Her third memory was instinctively casting *guidance* to help the detectives searching for clues.
Lots of memories came after that. Being adopted by one of those detectives with a penchant for the occult and a wife who really wanted a little girl. Bedtime fables with her mother. Going to school and having teachers who loved storytelling. Tapping into her mental acuity and developing her innate abilities using the dozens of old tomes her father had collected over the years. Growing up surrounded by occult oddities and her father's habit for messes of twine and notes on corkboards. Memories of apprenticing as an officer of the law. Graduating with honours as a detective. The satisfaction of dozens of closed cases- robberies, murders, assaults. Being accepted and respected as the detective who, if perhaps not the most perceptive herself, still had a knack for making everyone else better.
There are less happy memories as well. Being the albino freak at school. Long lonely nights where both her parents were working late. The agonising headaches that come with dabbling in psychic spellcasting before knowing your limits. The cases she couldn't solve, or the cases solved too late.
Most painful is the serial killer case she still keeps open, even years after the other detectives abandoned it. She remembers all their old aliases, she remembers their habits, and she remembers learning they went through the portal. Mostly, though, she remembers coming home and finding her parents gone.
Ash is here to find the Stormwater Killer, and she isn't going to rest until she finds justice, whether by the hand of the law or the power of her mind.