Conceived before the breaking of wedlock and born after the split of two noble houses, Anja is the daughter of Lady Arilena Traue of Oban and Lord Walter Banick of Vel Anir. She never met her father and did not even know she had an older sister up until very recently. Anja's life began with promise and quickly fell apart into abuse and imprisonment once her magic began to manifest.

Oban's strict laws against woman wielding magic meant immediate concealment of the daughter. She rarely left the house, and was often locked into her room for extended periods of time when guests were over. Anja grew under the stern, abusive care of her mother who beat her any time her magic manifested - creating in her a deep-seeded fear of her own abilities. She never learned to control them, and the more they were repressed the more they mutated from an initially harmless power into that of entropy and destructive forces.

Anja became sickly in her teens as the repression, abuse, and fear worsened. This very well may have lead to her untimely death had her sister, Samantha Black, not suddenly appeared at their manor doorstep one day. In witnessing Arilena's abuse of her younger sister, Sam took it upon herself to remove the girl from the home under threat of her mother's life and promise to never return.

Sam brought Anja back home to Vel Castere and fitted her with magic nullifying bracelets until she could find her better solution. That is where Anja's story begins.