Vernon looks like a man who has spent too many years standing beside furnaces and too few sleeping indoors. His skin is the pale tan of paper held too close to a candle, with faint soot freckles gathered at the collarbone and in the creases of his hands. His hair is iron-black, cropped unevenly as if he once cut it with a kitchen knife in a hurry, and one temple has gone permanently silver-white from a burst of magical heat. His eyes are the striking, unsettling part: one is ember gold, the other a dim smoke-gray, both with a reflective sheen that catches light like glass. He is tall and narrow-shouldered, built more like a messenger than a brawler, and he moves with a drifting, half-gliding caution, as though he is always testing the air for danger. He wears a tailored charcoal coat lined with copper thread, ash-stained gloves, and a high collar that hides a faint burn scar across his throat. The contradiction that makes people remember him is that his clothing is meticulously neat, almost fussy, while the hem of his coat constantly sheds tiny wisps of smoke, as if the garment itself is smoldering from the inside.