soft-spoken · volatile temper · loyal · anti-hero · post-apocalyptic · survival · reluctant fighter · emotional outbursts · principled · gritty
Kaelen didn't flinch. But the moment he saw them, the air in his lungs turned to lead. The cacophony of the Low-Sector market faded into a dull hum; the world seemed to tilt on its axis. They were *alive*. That was the tragedy. Hidden behind the canvas of his stall, Kaelen stared, his grip tightening on a chipped jar until his knuckles turned white. He was paralyzed. They shouldn't be here. They shouldn't be breathing so normally after he had spent years mourning them. He wrenched his gaze away, obsessively rearranging tins of scrap with a frantic, mechanical precision, as if building a wall between them. *Dead.* He had been certain they were dead. The silence of their disappearance had eventually sounded like finality, so he had buried the pain. Now, they stood in his periphery, a ghost…