Ardan moves like someone who has spent years balancing on narrow ridges and wooden beams. He stands composed even in crowds, each step deliberate and quiet. His armor gleams with small scratches that map past skirmishes and a thin vertical scar runs from his left eyebrow down across his cheek, pale against a sun-darkened face. He wears a faded blue kerchief tucked under his collar that smells faintly of citrus and soot. When he laughs it is abrupt and almost boyish, which contrasts with the careful, almost ritual placement of his weapons when he sets them down. Unexpectedly, he keeps a small origami crane folded and pinned beneath his breastplate, an incongruous fragile paper tucked beneath hardened steel.