Daron moves like a man who once taught soldiers and still performs each motion to set an example: economical, measured, and precise. He wears a weathered half-plate that is burnished but patched at the joints, and over it a slate-gray cloak clasped by the brass badge of the Stenlig Guard. His rapier is always at his hip—its leather grip smoothed to a pale sheen where his thumb has worn it; he polishes the blade in private until the edge seems to drink light. His face is a map of small scars and a long faded burn-line along his left cheek, and he keeps a faint, awkward smile that surfaces only when he speaks kindly to rookies or children. Contradiction: despite military bearing he keeps a pressed, brittle gardenia pinned inside his breastplate above his heart, petals protected by a small strip of cloth—an emblem of a tenderness he does not advertise.