Cormac Faoláin is a tall, hard-angled man whose weathered face looks carved by winter wind and candle smoke. His blue eyes are sharp and sleepless, as if he has spent half his life watching doors and the other half deciding whether to open them. His close-cropped gray hair is iron-white at the temples, and his skin carries the pallor of someone who grew up indoors near stone and iron. He moves with the controlled economy of a veteran duelist, yet there is an odd softness in the way he pauses to listen, like a man trained to hear lies in breathing. He wears black robes trimmed in silver, overlaid with a gold holy symbol of a single upright staff wrapped with three cords. The contradiction that makes people remember him is that his immaculate vestments are paired with prison-callused hands, one of which bears a faint chain burn that he never hides.