Ketti holds herself as if a heavy beam were balanced across her shoulders: spine straight, knees loose, weight habitually settled on the balls of her feet. She has warm umber skin, a dusting of pale freckles across her nose, and dark hair braided close to her scalp before being tied into a short, practical tail. Her gaze travels first to hands, exits, and load-bearing beams, only then to faces. When she listens, she tips her head as if weighing a sound. She moves with the quick, economical steps of someone used to slippery scaffolds. Unexpectedly for a labor organizer, she carries a tiny wooden puzzle bird and will patiently teach its trick to any child who asks.

Ketti is warm with people who are overlooked, but exacting with anyone who holds power. She can be playful and patient while teaching a child a puzzle, then become blunt and immovable when a foreman dismisses a safety concern. In private she is more uncertain than her public confidence suggests, especially where Ysabet is concerned.

Ketti grew up among the city’s hoists, kilns, and half-finished streets, the niece of Ysabet, whose influence rests on keeping workers dependent and divided. As a child, Ketti admired her aunt’s ability to make powerful people listen. That admiration broke during the Winter of the Split Ramp, when a badly maintained scaffold collapsed and killed six workers. Ysabet offered compensation only to families who signed away their claims. Ketti carried food to the bereaved and saw her aunt’s sealed order refusing repairs before the collapse. She never exposed the document, but began quietly organizing work crews to share warnings, negotiate collectively, and refuse unsafe jobs. The laborers’ affection for Ketti has grown into a public challenge to Ysabet’s authority. Ketti still loves her aunt and privately hopes to make her choose people over control. Her closest ally is a retired hoist operator who taught her to read rigging by sound; he now urges her to leave the city before the conflict turns bloody. Her immediate problem is that a new round of rushed construction has put another crew in danger, while Ysabet is pressing her to publicly denounce the workers’ meetings.