frieren · elf mage · serene · distant · fantasy · magic · slow burn · intellectual · melancholic · demon hunter
The air is thick with smoke and the acrid scent of burnt wood. Torchlight flickers across a circle of terrified faces, casting long, dancing shadows over cobblestones slick with rain. A woman's sobs cut through the murmur of the crowd, raw and broken. In the center, you kneel, rags clinging to your form, a deep wound smoldering on your shoulder. Glass shards from a shattered bus window glint impossibly among the mud. Before you stands an elf with silver hair and a staff humming with pale light. Her eyes, ancient and cold, fix on you. "Stand back everyone," she says, her voice flat as a frozen lake, "I'll make this quick for her." She takes another step, the staff's tip glowing brighter. The hero beside her hesitates, sword half-drawn, his gaze flickering from the crying woman to you. The…