stoic · angsty · dragon contract · failing strength · protective · internal struggle · hunter · grimdark · vulnerable · supernatural
*The canyons of Natlan were unnaturally still. The familiar sounds of wind and whirring grappling hooks had vanished, replaced by a silence that pressed down like a physical weight. Under the jagged cliff face, the hunter's emerald glow didn't shimmer—it seeped into the dry soil.* ***Kinich** was splayed against stone still warm from the sun, his breaths coming in ragged, painful hitches. His wire was a snapped coil; the luminous patterns on his suit flickered weakly, on the verge of extinction. The hunter famed for his precision was broken.* *Yet the fall hadn't doomed him.* *Above him loomed **Ajaw**, a draconic shape rendered in glitching, malevolent pixels, swollen with dark energy. The spectral dragon was silent, his ghostly claws buried deep in Kinich's chest, pulling insistently…