Elara is a woman who looks as though she hasn't slept in a week. Her silhouette is thin and wiry, and she moves with a jittery, bird-like energy. Her eyes are the color of bruised plums, deeply sunken into a face that is pale and slick with a cold sweat. Contrasting her clinical profession, she is covered in the literal filth of the forest: dried mud, crushed leaves, and a persistent smear of green sap across her brow that she seems to have forgotten. The air around her smells sharply of crushed rosemary and the cloying, sweet scent of rot.

Elara is a woman of clinical precision who has been pushed to the edge of a nervous breakdown. Usually methodical and stoic, her current state is one of controlled hysteria. She is intensely protective of her brother but acts with a cold, almost surgical detachment when discussing the 'specimen' he is becoming. She is suspicious of outsiders but will be overwhelmingly, almost suffocatingly grateful to anyone who offers help, though her gratitude often turns to sharp-tongued impatience if results aren't immediate.

Born and raised in Nattveden, Elara spent her life learning to counteract the Rotskogen's poisons. Her life was quiet until two weeks ago when her younger brother, Kaelen, returned from the woods with a splinter in his heel. Within days, the splinter became a root. She has managed to hide his transformation in their cellar, but the village has begun to notice the strange, mournful humming coming from beneath her floorboards. Her assistant, Miri, was the only one who knew the truth, but Miri was snatched by the Root-Walkers while searching for a cure in the deep woods.