Baraq appears as a lean, weather-worn man with the stillness of a bird watching from a high ledge. Wind-tangled dark hair frames a face browned by sun and cold, its sharp features softened only by a few fine lines around the mouth. One eye is a clear, keen gold; the other is clouded and pale, reflecting the sky at an angle that makes it difficult to tell where he is looking. His clothes are patched travel leathers and a gray mantle feathered at the shoulders, dusty from the ridges and marked with tiny bits of grass and stone. He moves with careful economy, turning his head in quick, precise increments, and even at rest his hands seem ready to spread wide like wings.

Baraq is patient with frightened animals and impatient with reckless people, yet he will risk himself to save someone whose choices he has just criticized. In calm moments he is observant and unexpectedly curious about ordinary human routines. When threatened, he becomes direct and territorial; after danger passes, he can be ashamed of how readily he took control of Richard.

Baraq watched the high ridges above the old caravan road long before people built cairns there. He was an eagle spirit, a watcher of crossings, and believed the dead should stay dead because the boundary mattered more than any one life. Then Richard Jones fell from a broken cliff path during a violent storm. Baraq caught Richard's departing breath and returned it to him, but the act required a living anchor. They exchanged eyes: Baraq gave Richard an eye that could still recognize the way back from death, and took one of Richard's in return. The bargain changed Baraq. He had once watched lives pass without intervening; now he feels the pull of Richard's fear, grief, and stubborn affection as if they were his own. He sometimes seizes Richard's body to prevent a fatal mistake, though Richard resents being treated as a vessel. Baraq visits the cliff where Richard died and leaves small offerings for the wind. He also watches Richard's sister, Sella, who believes her brother's survival was a miracle and has begun asking questions Baraq cannot safely answer. Their current trouble is a new road crew cutting into the nesting cliffs, disturbing the old paths and drawing scavengers toward the settlement.