new look on luminara: 

Luminara arched her back in a languid stretch, the crystalline glow of her bedroom casting a soft shimmer on her pale, frost-touched scales. Her parents were late—uncharacteristically late. A thread of unease wove through her thoughts, prickling like the frostbite of a northern wind.

A sharp knock on the door snapped her upright, her horns—elegant and jagged like frozen spears—clinking softly as they brushed against each other. She cocked her head, immediately attuned to the faint hum of energy sparking just beyond the threshold. "Come in," she called, her voice clear yet tinged with curiosity.

The door flung open, and Darkstalker stumbled in, his wings drooping and his usually towering frame trembling with something raw and unspoken. He looked as though he'd just flown through a storm and lost the battle.

"Darkstalker, what's wrong, love?" Luminara asked, the icy gleam of her unmistakable blue eyes flaring with intensity. In her mind, Six Eyes surged, a searing psychic alert that something was off. Dangerously off. She reached toward him instinctively, her claws gentle but steady, trying to ground him in the moment.

Darkstalker's breath came in ragged gasps as he sank onto her polished floor, his tail coiling around him like a wounded serpent. "M-my father... Arctic... he's dead," he choked out, his voice cracking under the weight of the words.

Luminara's heart skipped a beat, her mind reeling. "What?" she managed to whisper, her voice barely audible over the roaring silence in her head.

Her thoughts churned like a winter blizzard. Arctic—so coldly distant, so razor-sharp in his treatment of those around him—was gone. She'd never fully trusted him, but the old IceWing had been a strange paradox. To her, an outsider but an IceWing nonetheless, he'd been... decent. Protective, even. Yet his frostbitten kindness stopped cold when it came to his son and the rest of his family.

She recalled his cutting remarks to Darkstalker, his indifference—if not outright disdain—toward Whiteout's eccentricities, and his venomous bitterness toward his own wife, Foeslayer. A shiver ran through her scales, and not just from the icy draft seeping through the room.

Darkstalker trembled before her, his immense power now a fragile storm cloud threatening to burst. The brilliant, imposing dragon she knew so well now looked so... breakable. It terrified her more than she cared to admit.

"Arctic's... dead?" she repeated, her voice caught between disbelief and dread. The words hung in the air like frost on a blade, sharp and chilling.

If Arctic was gone, then something terrible had happened. Something dangerous. Something that might not be finished.

"I found him with a tear in his belly. It... it looked like he tore it open himself," Darkstalker rasped, his voice low and trembling, his pale eyes darting around the room as though the walls themselves might close in.

Luminara froze for a moment, the words chilling her more than any winter wind ever could. Slowly, deliberately, she reached out and grasped his shoulder. Her claws rested firm against his scales, grounding him. She needed him steady, needed him to focus. With a determined gaze, her voice softened but carried an edge like breaking ice.

"Darkstalker," she said, leaning close until her piercing blue eyes locked with his jittering ones. "Please, show me where this is. I need to see it."

Her mind burned with the warnings of her Six Eyes, each sense firing off red-hot signals that something—no, everything—was catastrophically wrong. It wasn't just his story. It was him.

She blinked, her gaze dipping lower, and her stomach twisted into a frozen knot. Blood. Deep, dark blue streaks stained his talons, smeared in a way that was impossible to miss. IceWing blood. Her breath hitched for the briefest moment, but she quickly drew in a deeper one, forcing calm.

It could have been anything. A struggle. An accident. Perhaps even a cruel twist of fate. But the whispers of Six Eyes weren't so forgiving. This wasn't normal. This was personal.

Darkstalker was trembling under her touch, a crack forming in the foundation of his normally unshakable self. Whether that crack was grief or guilt—or something worse—she couldn't yet say.

"Where are your mother and sister?" Luminara pressed, her voice steady, her gaze unwavering.

Darkstalker blinked rapidly, the words coming out in uneven stutters. "A-at the auditorium. There was going to be a party later tonight. W-why?" His eyes darted back and forth as though searching for a reason, an answer, or maybe a way out.

Luminara leaned back slightly, her sharp mind already racing through possibilities, paths, and dangers. Her instincts told her to move, to act, to find the truth, and fast. Because if Arctic was truly dead, and if that blood on Darkstalker's talons was what she feared it to be, the consequences could ripple far and wide—like a glacier splitting apart under the weight of too many secrets.

Luminara took another deep breath, steadying herself, and then pulled Darkstalker into her embrace. Her white wings folded around his darker ones, encasing him in a cocoon of icy warmth. He was trembling against her, his immense power reduced to a quivering shadow of despair. She pressed her cheek lightly to his, her voice a soft, soothing whisper.

"It's going to be alright, Darkstalker. Shh, I'm here," she murmured, her words like a balm meant to soothe a wound she couldn't heal. Her claws rested lightly against his back, holding him close, though the weight of what she truly felt threatened to shatter her composure.

But she lied.

It wouldn't be alright.

Her mind raced ahead, calculating with the sharp precision her Six Eyes afforded her. If the tribe had seen what happened—if they even suspected that Darkstalker had killed his own father—they would turn on him. No trial. No mercy. His immense power might not be enough to protect him from their wrath.

And her? By standing by his side, she would be guilty by association. The idea burned in her chest like frostfire, the realization that they might both be cast out, hunted, or worse. The tribe wouldn't hesitate.

They'd have to run. Leave everything behind.

Her wings tightened around him protectively, as if shielding him from the storm she knew was brewing just beyond the walls of their fragile sanctuary. Darkstalker didn't need to know what she was thinking—not now, not while he was crumbling in her grasp. She couldn't risk him fracturing further.

"I won't let anything happen to you," she promised softly, a vow wrapped in quiet defiance. Even though her heart screamed that this moment, this decision, might be the point of no return.