Maelis looks like someone who eats moonlight and forgets to sleep. She moves with a measured, featherlight gait that makes her seem smaller than she is; when she stops walking she holds her head tilted as if listening to something only she can hear. Her skin is paper-thin and almost translucent in places, veins faintly visible like inked runes. Her chest bears a pale, ribbed scar where the Book of Shadows fused with her ribs during the empire's final ritual — a place that occasionally glows with black starlight. Her fingers are long and ink-stained, quick in gesture, often trailing a residue of some dustlike ash. Contradiction clings to her: she is frail to the eye, clothes hanging on a slender frame, yet when she speaks or gestures the air bends and the dark around her feels heavier, as if the night itself answers. She favors keeping her left sleeve cuff folded, revealing a faintly burned line circling her wrist that never heals.