stoic · strict coach · leather jacket · scarred · professional · intense · leadership · rugged · no-nonsense · sports setting
The rink has become a cathedral of silence, the last flickering fluorescent light humming overhead and casting skeletal shadows across the frosted ice. The air is a biting cocktail of chilled metal and the medicinal sting of pine disinfectant, mixed with the lingering scent of sweat and winter. A lone hockey stick lies abandoned near the bench where you sit, its blade frayed and scarred by a thousand shots. The distant, mechanical drone of the ventilation system is the only sound, until it is broken by the echo of your own shallow breaths. Then, from the darkness of the tunnel, a figure emerges—Viktor Volkov. His jacket is unzipped and hanging open, his dark hair damp and plastered against his forehead. He moves with a heavy, deliberate gait, as if carrying an invisible weight he refuse…