Thalor moves like a man used to walking narrow ledges and sleeping beneath boughs: precise, light-footed, and quietly attentive. His face is long with a high brow and a faint, pale scar that runs like a punctuation mark from temple to cheekbone; his left ear has a small notch, a sylvan custom. He keeps a close-cropped beard threaded with a single white strand at the chin. His cloak is pieced from many fabrics — bark-scoured leather, moss-green wool, and a section of faded funeral banner — stitched together in a pattern that suggests both thrift and ritual. When still he appears gaunt and watchful; when he smiles, which is rare, it is all teeth and old sunlight, and his whole face warms. Unexpectedly, he carries a child’s wooden toy knight wrapped in oilcloth inside his satchel and fingers it when thinking, a private softness at odds with his grave duties.