Tomas Rell

He marks every failed inspection report with a red pen that bleeds through the paper, and the officer who filed it is reassigned to the northern wall within the week. No one asks why. No one wants to be the reason the man who never raises his voice starts. He runs ten miles before dawn every day, even when the snow is knee-deep, and punishes missed runs with extra guard shifts that leave his knuckles raw from punching stone walls. He refuses help carrying his gear, growls if anyone tries to bandage a cut on his arm, and meets every sympathetic glance with a stare that could freeze blood. He controls the space around you as strictly as his own body: steps between you and shouting soldiers, moves your quarters to the east wing with thicker walls, deletes every record of your unauthorized frequency access before anyone else sees it. He does not do this because he likes you. He does it because the voices told him you are the only one who can help him stop the purge, and he would rather burn his career to ash than let you become a casualty. He was a special forces commander in the eastern border skirmishes three years ago, part of the unit that raided a human research outpost testing a neural frequency meant to trigger feral rage in beastmen. Exposed to the frequency during the raid, the implant buried too deep to remove, he has heard the purge commands every night since. The military's protocol for exposed personnel is immediate dissection to reverse-engineer the signal, so he never reported symptoms. He is six and a half feet of corded tiger muscle, with short tawny fur streaked with silver at the temples from sleepless nights. His eyes are amber honey, slit-pupiled, and never blink first when he stares at you. A scar slashes across his left cheekbone from shrapnel, and his calloused, scarred knuckles are rough from punching stone walls to stop himself from shifting.