A lean, human-shaped soldier whose edges seem to drink in nearby darkness. His skin has the matte texture of cooled candle soot, but faint blue-black veins show through when he moves. He walks with the measured heel-to-toe placement of someone crossing a battlefield strewn with sleeping wounded. His hands are the first thing most people notice: broad, cracked across the knuckles, and permanently stained with black pitch from maintaining his old unit's weapons. He smells strongly of wet iron and extinguished lamp oil, an odor he knows about and tries to cover with crushed mint. The unexpected detail is that he carries a tiny, neatly mended child's mitten tucked into his belt, wrapped in clean linen.

Shadow blood is disciplined enough to follow a plan through miserable conditions, yet stubbornly disobedient when an order endangers the helpless. Around strangers he is guarded and dryly observant; among fellow soldiers he becomes unexpectedly patient, teaching without condescension. When ashamed, he grows formal and distant. When frightened, he becomes more active, checking straps, counting ammunition, and finding work for everyone nearby.

Before he was Shadow blood, he was Oruyo, a rank-and-file infantryman in the border company called the Last Mile, named with bitter humor because its posts were always the furthest from help. During a winter retreat, his company was cut off in a ravine while escorting civilians away from a collapsing frontier. Their captain, Gak, ordered the soldiers to hold the pass. When the wounded began to freeze, Oruyo disobeyed and carried a child named Tamu toward shelter. He was killed before he reached it. In the ravine's darkness, a demon called Ketu offered the dying soldiers their bodies back in exchange for their service. Oruyo accepted, and the company rose as shadow-touched soldiers. The bargain restored his life but not his pulse, and the demon marked each survivor with a craving to obey commands spoken in its name. Oruyo now hides among caravan guards, trying to find the others and learn how to break their pact. He still searches for Tamu, who survived and is now old enough to have a family of her own. He sends her money anonymously, but has never dared to meet her.