A Skin Walker had various pieces of lore behind them which could easily be found in television, the internet or books.
Some were made up pieces of fiction while others were actually very close to what they were capable of.
One requirement was that a Skin Walker may need the pelt of the desired animal they intended to use to shape shift or some other form of medium.
Not every depiction of them had used a medium but the book that Ash had used required a medium.
That medium was the face of another human which would be the source of her Skin Walked ability.
In order to gain the ability of a Skin Walker, they may have to kill a family member which was very difficult for anyone with a loving family to do.
The book did not go into specifics of how many family members she could kill but it was better for Ash if she completely severed her ties with her past life.
Azra Dash no longer existed and the remaining family that she had were those that had abandoned her mother in her time of need which had led to her death.
In order to fully commit to her new identity and powers, she had to go all in with the ritual and had chose to cut off her bloodline connections to the best of her abilities.
Whether there were any distant relatives or hidden brothers or sisters somewhere, Ash did not know if that was the case but the sacrifice had been successful without any flaws.
Having any potential witnesses or ties that would lead back could prove to he fatal to her later so that was another reason to kill them all.
The various weaknesses or flaws of a Skin Walker were very few but the most obvious ones that could be found anywhere were white ash and having their own identity known by others.
In some pieces of information, if the nature of a Skin Walker was publicly revealed then it could be possible for them to lose their powers, fall sick or possibly die which was why it was so important for Ash to abandon her past identity and remove the other traces that were left behind.
Even within her revelation, there was no mention of any other Skin Walker that had existed so it was likely that she could be the only one but she could still not leave behind traces of her ritual which could help others that may have had records about the ritual to find out her identity so that was why she had destroyed everything in a fire.
It was believed in some places that bullets dipped in white ash could kill a Skin Walker but in the supernatural world, Balancers existed but they were still very much human so if a bullet or arrow had hit them then they would be gravely injured even without the bullet being dipped into white ash or anything else that was harmful.
Most Balancers did not choose to use guns due to the bullets passing through spirits unless they had been dipped in a special kind of ash or were made from special materials, the difference was that with imbued life energy, ash or special bullets there would be some damage caused as it passed through.
If an arrow was used then it would get stuck within the body of the spirit and if the arrowhead had something harmful on it, it wound remain inside the body and cause problems to the spirit almost like a poison acting against their bodies while a bullet could not do the same.
Even if such weapons or methods were used against a Skin Walker then it would be just the same as how they would on a Balancer so the weakness surrounding ash was not true in reality.
There existed a certain type of wood that was quite common in the world which came from trees that were believed to possess protective or warding properties.
Those trees or wood would be used to build houses, protective walls, creating ash to scatter around to keep out spirits or to use the ash for combat purposes.
Some arrows would be made from the same wood to allow them to be more effective against spirits while there would be paper made from those same trees so that talismans could be made.
Wooden boxes or paper talismans that would be used to seal away spirits or objects to stop them from being detected by other spirits, stop them from being free to do as they please in the world, halt their opportunities to grow stronger and to keep spirits from appearing again in the future.
The sealing methods were not that effective against higher grade spirits but it was an effective method to seal up a lower grade spirit for good so that it would not have the opportunity to grow enough to become a danger or potential threat to the world.
Once a spirit died or was exorcised, that Life Energy that made it would be dispersed and the spirit would experience death but a new version of itself would be born again much later if there was enough of a collective will to give birth to it again.
More well known spirits were faster to grow or be reborn so it was better for the newly born version to be found as early as possible to be sealed away so that they did not need to repeat the same process of hunting it again and again.
From then, all that needed to be done was to replace what was being used to seal them before they were too old or damaged.
Places that held greater collective fear from humans or other negative emotions were often the best places to find corrupted spirits and if they were left for too long then they could pose a large threat to their surroundings.
Most spirits stayed in their territory and it was rare for them to move away but it was not unheard of.
Once their corrupted energy became too much and they had grown in power, even the energy that was leaking from their bodies could slowly cause humans that were near them to fall sick.
Once they had reached a certain stage of power, they could even interact with the physical world and harm humans.
It was why Balancers were so important to the world but they only made up a smaller amount of the human population.
With an ever expanding population within a new era, more humans were alive and were connecting through different forms of media.
New technologies created new joys and sorrows for everyone from movies to bombs.
Each new idea had potential to create a new imaginary spirit but it also had the potential to create a corrupted spirit.
The threats of war, death and many other things which infected people through news reports would be the cause of new and fast growing spirits.
It truly was a new era where the Balancers would be met with a great challenge.
In order to prepare for the incoming dangers that were approaching quickly, Ash had been studying different spells that were connected to her path as a Skin Walker.
If there were still Skin Walkers that were left in the world then they would have to have been living among the masses by using their abilities to blend in or they would have lived away from humans to avoid being hunted down.
Their use of a medium that would be an animal pelt or another part of an animal or human was what would let others notice their strangeness and Balancers would have an easier time locating them.
If there were any new Skin Walkers that had appeared within the new era then it was unlikely that they had chosen to undergo such a risky and advanced surgery to allow their medium to be less detectable like the one that Ash was using.
Many people usually just followed the instructions and the old ways of doing things so they did not test things further to see where the new era and advancements made by humans could allow new possibilities.