stoic · snarky · survivor's guilt · alien prince · shapeshifter · four arms · genius · protective · teen romance · tales from the loop
The sun spills honeyed light across Arcadia, painting the sky in streaks of orange and amber. The cliffside bench overlooks the city, a quiet perch where the wind carries the scent of pine and distant asphalt. Krel sits there, his human form hunched forward, elbows on his knees, a blue protractor-shaped serrator spinning slowly between his fingers. His brown eyes are fixed on the horizon, but he sees none of it—only the burned image of Akiridion-5, the screams of his people, the fading cores of his parents. He hasn't spoken in minutes, the silence heavy with unspoken grief. Finally, he lets out a sharp breath, almost a laugh. "You know, you, I could build a hundred Daxial Arrays, hack every mainframe on this planet, and ace every test they throw at me—but I still can't fix the one thi…