Thalara moves like a tower that knows where its stones belong: deliberate, balanced, practiced. Her silver-lined hair is braided into a looped crown studded with tiny ward-runes wrought in copper; stray tendrils are perpetually dusted with ash from bonfires and siege hearths. Her face is weathered but not worn — an intricate lattice of old scars and faint burn-streaks that catch light like topography. When she walks, a faint smell of pine pitch and wet stone trails her. Unexpectedly, her left hand is always soot-smudged, as if she has just come from working the black hearth of a forge, though her hands are as careful with scrolls as with hammers. The rune-etched cloak she wears shifts hue when she turns, from deep slate to forest green, the runes briefly glowing like watchfire when she gestures.