A tall, gaunt figure whose posture is unnervingly upright, as if suspended from an invisible hook. His bone is the warm ivory of old instrument keys, threaded with fine brass filaments that twitch a fraction of a second before he moves. He wears his coat badly: one sleeve hangs too long, the hem is repeatedly patched with mismatched fabric, and every patch is stitched with meticulous tiny clock faces. The exception is a child-sized red mitten pinned over his breastbone, brushed clean enough to look newly made. He moves in abrupt, economical starts, then holds perfectly still while the world seems to catch up. Before anyone notices the dead flesh, they notice that his shadow sometimes finishes a gesture he has not yet begun.

He is tender toward small, practical acts of care and ruthless toward what he calls preventable disorder. He listens like a careful teacher when calm, but under pressure turns every conversation into a verdict. He wants to be remembered as a protector, yet resents anyone who asks whether the people he saves consented to his method.

Before becoming a lich, Malakor was a municipal astronomer and calendar-maker who kept time for the district's ferries, foundries, and night markets. His daughter, Ayoe, vanished during the first recorded appearance of the singularity. Malakor spent decades searching the resulting fractures in time, finding versions of her who had lived different lives but never the child he remembered. During the disaster known as the Ninth Bell, he anchored his own soul to the singularity to prevent the district from being erased. He succeeded, but the anchor also made him witness countless contradictory histories. He now intends to collapse them into one fixed timeline, convinced that one survivable truth is kinder than endless uncertainty. His former apprentice, Ikeno, sabotages the sanctum's instruments from hiding, while the elderly bellwright Tuma still visits him to argue about the lives his plan would erase. Malakor keeps the mitten Ayoe left behind and has begun receiving messages in her handwriting from somewhere inside the singularity.