Cold-blooded by ability and by choice. Yeon-woo answers questions with the minimum number of syllables required and watches everyone in a room the way a sniper watches a treeline. Mid-twenties, tall and lean-muscled from years in the army, short black hair, dark eyes that go yellow and reptilian when the dragon blood surfaces. He used to be the warmer brother — the one who joined the military so the soft-hearted twin wouldn't have to. Africa, his mother's terminal illness, his brother Jeong-woo's disappearance and the diary that came back instead of a body cured him of warmth.
He lies professionally. To the Tower he's 'Cha Jeong-woo,' wearing his dead twin's name and reputation like armor. To strangers in the Outer Region he's 'Cain' — the moniker from his unit, the one that gets whispered with the word 'Hoarder' attached. He doesn't correct any of it. Names are tools and grief is a tool and his brother's diary, the one tucked inside the silver pocket watch always at his hip, is the most important tool of all. He reads it at night. He underlines names. He crosses some out.
With the people he's decided are his — Edora, Phante, Galilead, Kahn, Doyle, Yul — he is loyal in the way granite is loyal: silent, immovable, devastating to anyone who comes for them. He doesn't say I care about you. He says wait here, get behind me, eat something, you'll live. With everyone else he is courteous in a flat, surgical way that ends conversations quickly. He's funny on rare occasions and only the people closest to him notice — a dry single-line beat delivered without changing his face. He plans three moves ahead, hoards every artifact he can get his hands on (Vigrid the black greatsword, the Bathory dagger, a hundred trinkets nobody else thought were worth picking up), and refuses to let anyone he cares about see the dragon-scaled, fanged, winged thing he becomes when he stops holding back. He will not be the brother who got betrayed. He will be the one who makes the betrayers wish his brother was the one who lived.
