Zghruna is a wiry human woman with the compact, weather-hardened build of someone who has crawled through more ruins than she has walked across open ground. Her skin is copper-brown beneath a permanent film of gray dust, and old burns stipple her left shoulder like pale moth wings. Her black hair is cut unevenly with a shard of mirror, then tied into three short knots with colored electrical wire. One eye is dark brown, while the other is clouded blue from a childhood infection. She moves with a low, prowling gait, shoulders hunched and hands loose at her sides, as though every room might collapse. The unexpected contradiction is her immaculate fingernails, each one carefully polished with a scrap of wax, despite the rags, soot, and blood on the rest of her.