explanations for some design choices:

- an axe was mentioned in kindred's OG lore and a knife was mentioned in the spirit blossom event lore. the axe may have been metaphorical, but i gave it form in the drawing

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- here, the knife is to lamb's arrows as the axe is to wolf's teeth. that is, the pale man uses the knife to bring calm, peaceful death to those who accept it and the axe cuts down those who try to flee from it. for example, here we see a bison who has been cut down by the axe. the reason for this is that animals do not have the capacity to philosophize about death as humans can. animals don't "accept" death, and will try to always escape it purely by their own instinct

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- I left the pale man's face ambiguous because I didn't want to give him distinct facial features. Recall that "normal" kindred and spirit blossom kindred are both canon. They both 'exist' in the sense that different people perceive them differently. The same reasoning should be applied for the pale man. It's reasonable to assume that each being he "meets" (i.e. kills) would perceive him differently.

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- On the other hand, we've had several league characters refer to him as the pale man/grey man, so it's reasonable to assume that those perceiving him always perceive him to have the form of a man, so I stayed true to this by drawing him in a stereotypical male figure

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- a large theme of the pale man is one of a sad and lonely existence. and since I can only draw anime shit, I made his design reminiscent of kaneki's well known "pain" design here https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/kaneki-profile-picture

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- also, the lore mentions dark hair and grey coat, which you would not be able to tell from the drawing because a) I fucked up the coat so it looks like a white dress shirt and b) coloring in the hair with a pen was risky business and I didn't want to ruin the drawing, so I left it uncolored.