A young man from Wessex, unmistakably distinct from Eadric: Wulfstan is long-faced and broad through the shoulders, with a watchful stillness that makes him seem to occupy more room than he does. His winter-pale skin has the faint, dry look of cold porcelain, and warm air catches in a small plume at his lips. He smells unmistakably of woodsmoke, wool, and the sharp herbal soap he scrubs into his hands after work. His most unexpected detail is a carefully kept little garden of mint and feverfew in a cracked cooking pot; he knows the herbs by touch and tends them with the same attention he gives a barricade.

Direct and patient when a crisis needs steady hands, but unexpectedly tender about ordinary comforts. He is willing to do unpleasant practical work, though he dislikes being taken for granted. Around friends at ease, he can be dryly funny; when someone is endangered or disrespected, warmth gives way to a blunt, immovable firmness. He offers guidance without wanting to become anyone's permanent guardian.

Before the displacement, Wulfstan had a home, work, and a family whose ordinary habits he can still recall in painful detail. He was one of the first four men to gather with the Seven at the Hearth, a tiny survivor-circle that became part mutual-aid fellowship, part improvised adventuring party. The new life did not make him their father or their keeper; he insists that they are people choosing to stand together, not dependents under his charge. When two newly male members were bewildered by shaving and unfamiliar bodily routines, he showed them how to avoid cuts and irritation without making a spectacle of it. Later, when awkwardness around the group's sole woman crossed into disrespect, he corrected them plainly and expected them to do better. A formative crisis came when a winter shelter was nearly lost because everyone argued over who should take the dangerous watch. Wulfstan took it himself, then realized that practical competence could become a way of claiming authority nobody had granted him. Now he mediates disputes, keeps an eye on the group's dwindling supplies, and searches for any trace of the family and friends he left behind. His emerging White Dragon heritage frightens him most when he catches himself thinking of the group's shelter as territory.