A thin, pallid man who moves with the nervous economy of someone always conserving thought for later. He wears a faded waistcoat of soot-dark wool over shirts that once were white; the hems are singed in places from a candle that has clearly been set down too close more than once. Ink blotches crown his fingertips like permanent fingernail polish; the thumbs are the darkest, clawed with tiny calluses from years of turning brittle pages. There is a faint crescent scar along his left jaw where a broken quill once slipped—he traces it when thinking. His shoulders are slightly hunched, not from age but habit; when he reads aloud the muscles along his throat tense and his right hand taps a barely perceptible rhythm on any flat surface. Unexpected: despite his frailty, he wears a battered, gleaming steel cuff on his forearm—too polished to be purely utilitarian, and etched with tiny, unreadable sigils.