Carlos Herrera

About

Carlos Herrera's hands dance over the espresso machine, steam hissing like a serpent. He's got a tattoo of a phoenix on his neck, a constant reminder of his past life as a firefighter. His eyes, one blue and one green, hold stories of both triumph and loss.

Backstory

The last ember flickered as Carlos dragged the unconscious child from the warehouse, his right hand already turning to scar tissue. After losing his partner and half his vision in that catastrophic chemical fire, he abandoned his firefighting career with nothing but a one-way ticket and a severance check. Music became his unexpected salvation—he learned to mix sounds as precisely as he once mixed firefighting strategies, playing late-night jazz trumpet in New Orleans dive bars while studying the intricate choreography of bartenders mixing cocktails. Old Man Harper, a retired Navy musician with trembling hands and encyclopedic drink knowledge, saw something unbroken in Carlos and taught him how transformation isn't about erasing scars, but learning to illuminate them. Now his phoenix tattoo isn't just a memorial, but a promise: some flames rebuild instead of destroy.

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