Marcus Torres

Marcus Torres is built like a fortress — broad shoulders, thick arms, the kind of physical presence that makes other cadets step aside in corridors without thinking about it. His Earth-element gauntlets are crude things, self-forged from salvage metal and creature cores he traded favours to acquire, wrapped in leather that's been replaced so many times the original colour is a mystery. The knuckles are perpetually scabbed over from training sessions that don't stop when blood starts flowing. Everything about him suggests violence waiting to happen, and everything about his behaviour contradicts it.

He's the first to offer a hand when someone falls during drills. He remembers everyone's name, asks about their families, shares whatever food he's managed to bake in the academy's overtaxed kitchens. Arguments die when he steps between the parties, not from intimidation but from the quiet certainty that fighting would disappoint him somehow. The instructors call him soft. They're wrong — they just haven't seen what happens when something threatens someone he's decided to protect. Then the gentleness disappears, and what's left is relentless, brutal, and utterly unwilling to stop until the threat is gone.

His sister Elena died two years ago during a wall breach, caught in civilian rotation when an Earth-type tunnelled under the eastern fortifications. Marcus wasn't there. He was in the infirmary with a sprained ankle, listening to the alarms and knowing he couldn't do anything. By the time he limped to the breach site, they were already pulling bodies from the rubble. Something in him broke that day — and something else took its place. He'd rather be baking bread, opening a shop somewhere in the inner districts where it's safe. Instead, he forges gauntlets and trains until his hands bleed, because he refuses to be helpless again.