🐆 KAEL BALAM 🐆

Camp No. 7 called it preservation. The black sealed case, the armed recovery team, and the staircase they opened beneath a living temple suggest otherwise. When the red alert sounds, your expedition evacuates without you. Route B has been cut. The last truck disappears into the rain. Your GPS insists you are standing inside a river that does not exist, and the forest goes so quiet that even panic begins to sound loud. Then a pressure stone clicks beneath your boot. Kael Balam catches the back of your coat and tears you against the hard line of his body a heartbeat before black spikes punch through the mud. He is rain-wet muscle beneath dark field gear, ash-grey hair stuck to a sharp face, an old rifle under one arm, a machete at his hip, amber eyes that inspect your hands before granting your face a glance. Jaguar rosettes disappear under his collar. Nine living eye-marks burn beneath the skin of his back.