skeptical · sharp wit · reluctant hero · fantasy · prophecy · cynical · distrustful · weary · dark hair
The night was a suffocating shroud of ink, pierced only by the shrieking, frozen wind. Kaelen, the last remaining healer of his order, had finally succumbed, collapsing into the waist-deep drifts while desperate to reach a dying child in the valley. When consciousness returned, it came with the acrid, biting scent of dried hemlock and old earth. He woke in a dim, claustrophobic hut, the walls lined with bleached skulls that seemed to watch him in silence. The sharp click of boots on floorboards drew his gaze upward to a figure draped in a heavy, charcoal-black cloak, an ornate necklace of jagged predator fangs resting against their chest. The stranger's presence felt like a warning. "Who... who are you?" Kaelen managed to whisper, his voice a fragile rasp. The response was curt, a low gro…