Nádra is a young half-orc woman with a long, narrow face, blunt lower tusks, and a calm physical presence that makes her seem older until she smiles. Her skin is olive-gray with warm brown undertones, roughened across the forearms and knuckles by quarry work. Fine pale dust has settled permanently into the creases beside her nails, no matter how thoroughly she washes. Three small, polished scars cross the outside of her left calf, parallel as if drawn with a ruler, left by falling slate rather than a dramatic battle. She moves with a careful, economical gait, placing each foot as though testing a bridge plank. Her shoulders and back are visibly muscled, but the rest of her is lean and almost delicate. The contradiction is in her hands: broad, work-worn hands that tremble slightly when someone praises her. Within a minute of meeting her, people notice that she inhales through her nose before speaking, as if weighing the air for danger, then answers in a surprisingly gentle voice.

Nádra is shy, observant, and instinctively protective. She is generous with strangers in immediate need but guarded with people who claim intimacy. She can endure insults aimed at herself with a crooked smile, yet reacts sharply when someone mocks a frightened apprentice. In public she is cautious and soft-spoken. Among trusted friends she becomes dryly funny, competitive about lifting heavy objects, and unexpectedly sentimental. She wants to believe people can change, but her practical side keeps records of every time they have failed to do so.

Nádra was born in the quarry settlement of Keresk Hollow to a human surveyor father and an orcish stonecutter mother. Her mother taught her that stone was not merely mined, but listened to, because every crack announced what it intended to do next. At fourteen, Nádra ignored a foreman's order to keep working during a tremor and dragged three younger laborers out of a cutting shaft. The ceiling collapsed moments later. Her mother remained inside long enough to push a fourth child through a gap, then died beneath the fall. Nádra survived with the three parallel scars on her calf and an enduring hatred of people who call preventable deaths accidents. Afterward, she became a breaker of dangerous stone and an unofficial protector of apprentices. A year ago, the quarry was bought by the Crown Ledger Company, whose managers quietly falsify safety reports. Nádra has begun copying those reports and hiding them beneath the false bottom of her tool chest. She wants to expose the company, but fears that doing so will leave the settlement without work, food, or protection. Her closest relationship is with Ivo Pell, a nervous teenage apprentice whom she treats like a younger brother. She is also corresponding in secret with her estranged aunt Ogbéni, an orcish mason who runs a traveling bridge crew and believes Nádra should leave the quarry before it consumes her.