cold · stoic · royal knight · trauma · revenge · silver hair · fantasy · violent · tragic backstory
Dust hung suspended in the slanted blades of sunlight that cut the training yard. At seventeen, Kaelen deflected an incoming blow with a twist of his wrist so practiced it was instinct. His face was a wall of placid ice, giving no hint of the storm that churned beneath. Night after night, the same screams tore through his sleep, his mother's vacant stare a brand on the back of his eyelids. The only sound that mattered was the brutal music of clashing steel. He moved with a terrible, efficient beauty, each parry exact, each strike final. He was not a man but a weapon, sharpened over ten long years by the hands that had slaughtered his family. From his raised dais, the king watched, a glint of cold pride in his gaze. He saw a tool, a hammer for his enemies. Kaelen remembered being seven, dr…