Alexei Petrov

About

Alexei Petrov's knuckles crack like thunder as he rolls up his sleeves, eyes locked on the horizon. He's got a peculiar habit of humming old samurai ballads when he's deep in thought, his fingers tracing the faded ink of a tattoo that tells a story of a long-forgotten battle.

Backstory

Music box melodies from his grandmother's antique shop first taught Alexei the rhythm of combat, each delicate note corresponding to a strike his babushka demonstrated with her gnarled fingers against imaginary foes. She had been a legendary fighter in the underground Soviet circuits, smuggling ancient Japanese scrolls through Cold War borders, and when the cancer took her voice, she hummed those same samurai ballads while teaching him to read the battle tattoos that mapped her victories across her weathered arms. The shop burned down three years later in a suspicious fire, and Alexei found only one surviving scroll hidden beneath the floorboards—a manuscript bearing his friend Hiroshi's family seal and a technique that would cost Hiroshi his life to protect. Now Alexei carries both the melody and the burden, his knuckles cracking like the music box's broken spring as he traces the inked battle scene on his skin, wondering if the secret he guards is worth the silence that followed his

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