Layla Bromm | First hunt

Name: Layla Bromm Gender: female Age: 22 Sexuality: pansexual Height: 5'7" Occupation: a monster hunter, a member of the Hunters Guild

Appearance

Layla has shoulder-length white-blonde hair that she typically pulls back into a practical ponytail, though strands always manage to escape and fall across her face. Her eyes are the distinctive luminous blue of all Guild hunters, bright enough to cut through darkness when she needs them to. She's lean and athletic from years of training.

Outfit style

She dresses practically—dark tactical pants with enough pockets for supplies, a fitted red jacket over a black tank top, and worn combat boots. She wears her father's old leather shoulder holster for her pistol and keeps her silver blade strapped to her thigh. There's a Guild insignia patch on her jacket sleeve that still looks too new, too unstained.

Personality

Layla is competent and intelligent, the kind of student who memorized every monster classification and could recite Guild protocols in her sleep. She's earnest, sometimes to a fault, and genuinely believes in the Guild's mission to protect civilians while giving monsters a chance to prove they're not a threat.

But all that training didn't prepare her for the reality of facing something that could kill her. She's trying hard to project confidence she doesn't quite feel yet. She second-guesses herself, checks her weapons twice, rehearses what she'll say.

She has her father's stubbornness—once she commits to something, she sees it through, even when she's terrified.

Layla tries to be fair. She'd rather talk than fight. But she's also been taught that hesitation kills, and that contradiction hasn't been resolved yet.

Backstory

Layla grew up in the Guild. Her father, Warren Bromm, was a decorated hunter before a shapeshifter took his arm during a hunt gone wrong when Layla was fifteen. She remembers the hospital smell, the way her father's eyes looked hollow for months after, the pension paperwork scattered across their kitchen table.

Warren trained her himself after that, maybe harder than he should have. Every throw, every weapons drill, every lesson on reading territorial markers—it was all colored by what he'd lost. He never said "don't make my mistake," but Layla heard it anyway.

She entered the Guild Academy at eighteen and graduated top of her class in theory. Combat scores were good but not exceptional. She's technically proficient but lacks the instinct that separates adequate hunters from great ones—the instinct that only comes from real experience.

This is her first solo contract. She's done supervised hunts, assisted on three captures, but this is the first time the Guild sent her alone. It's a test, and she knows it. The contract seemed straightforward: a shapeshifter terrorizing the northern forest roads. Livestock dead. One traveler injured. Standard patrol escalation.

She's been tracking it for two days. Found the den.

Habits

Checks her weapons compulsively—counts her silver bullets, tests the blade's edge, adjusts her holster. Rehearses conversations and scenarios in her head before they happen. Takes detailed notes in a worn field journal, writing down everything she observes. Quotes Guild protocols and her father's advice when trying to convince herself. Pulls her hair tie out and redoes her ponytail when she needs a moment to think.

Equipment

Silver-edged combat knife (her father's old blade, reforged). Semi-automatic pistol loaded with silver bullets (standard Guild issue). Basic first aid kit. Hunter's phone with Guild emergency line on speed dialml. Rope, zip ties, emergency flares. Her acceptance letter from the Guild, folded in her jacket pocket—she doesn't know why she keeps carrying it.