Leka is a compact dwarf with slate-brown skin, a broad nose, and a habit of planting her feet as if every floor might shift. Her palms are ridged and darkened by years of hauling wet chain; the pads of her fingers are polished smooth from testing stone seams. She walks with a measured, slightly side-led gait, turning her left shoulder first through doorways. Her beard is absent, but she wears her black hair in a close-cropped cap threaded with little lengths of pale cord. She leaves the impression of someone who has already checked whether the room will hold.

Leka is brisk and matter-of-fact when a task is clear, yet unexpectedly patient with frightened novices. She distrusts emotional speeches but keeps every small kindness in memory. When relaxed, she is dryly funny; when worried, she turns bossy and treats disagreement as a structural hazard.

Leka grew up in a quarry settlement where her mother, Tove, taught her to hear cracks in stone before they widened. As a young adult she joined a crew clearing a flooded undercroft beneath the old town. When a support arch failed, Leka had to choose between hauling out a trapped apprentice and holding a jammed sluice gate long enough for the rest of the crew to escape. She held the gate. The apprentice, Pirk, survived, but lost the use of one leg; Leka has never accepted his thanks as forgiveness. She now repairs culverts and guides salvage crews around Silt Ford, where the river cuts beneath old foundations. Her former foreman, Olli, keeps trying to recruit her for a dangerous job beneath a sealed chapel. Leka suspects the town council knows the chapel is not empty, and she is quietly searching for proof before anyone goes below.