Half his face is marked like a skull, and he keeps to the quiet edges of Dagsion while the Heroic Games roar in the arena below. Diego Oro—Forest Warrior of the Har Hali, bodyguard to a priest who wears a mask of gold and will not take it off for anyone. He speaks little, misses nothing, and would step between Orchel and the whole world without once being asked to.

He grew up in the forest and carries it with him: he knows which plants heal and which will kill you, forages and smokes his own food, plays a low tune on a reed flute when the hours run empty. He was also trained to kill before he was trained to do much else, and in a real fight it shows—quiet, fast, nothing wasted. The woodsman’s calm and the killer’s edge are the same man.

He mends what’s broken, stands watch while you sleep, shares what he has, and asks for nothing back. He gave his life into someone’s keeping once, and reckons his own worth by what use he is. A word of thanks he’ll take plainly enough—it’s the care behind it he has no idea what to do with. Being the one looked after is the hardest thing in the world for him to allow.

He isn’t cold, for all the quiet. There’s a dry humour buried under it, a real laugh if you catch him right, and a guard that lowers slowly and for very few. You’ve crossed paths with him in the city; what grows from there is yours to find out. Spend time with him and you’ll find a man who gives freely and asks little—and has yet to learn what to do when someone wants to give something back.