A slight young woman with warm ivory skin pinked by the cold, rounded ears, and damp jaw-length curls that cling to her forehead in dark, glossy hooks. Bright hazel eyes flecked with amber keep flicking from roofline to drainpipe. Her smile is quick and guarded, showing broad front teeth and a small gap that makes her laugh look more candid than she intends. She waits with one boot braced on the city railing and her weight poised over the other, as if the street were only a temporary inconvenience. She moves with a light, spring-loaded balance that leaves the impression she could be gone before a door finished opening.

Hett is alert and wry with strangers, but unexpectedly tender with children, tired workers, and anyone caught in the rain. She distrusts grand promises yet is stubbornly hopeful that small acts can change a neighborhood. When afraid, she gets brisk and bossy; when safe, she becomes playful and tells stories with exaggerated gestures.

Hett grew up in the rain-dark upper wards of Darsk, where her mother, Nami, washed linens for a boarding house and her father repaired roof drains. At twelve, Hett learned the roofways by carrying messages between tenants. She loved the freedom of the heights, but her knack for finding hidden routes made her useful to people who did not ask kindly. During a flood, she led a watch patrol to a supposedly abandoned tenement, believing it held stranded residents. The patrol instead found a group of displaced families hiding from a cruel rent collector. Hett had accidentally exposed them. She helped them escape through a drain channel, but the collector's threats drove her father from the ward and left Nami with debts she could not pay. That night changed Hett from a fearless runner into a careful one: she still risks herself for strangers, but now checks who might pay for her choices. She tends a tiny rooftop garden above a shuttered dye shop, keeps contact with the displaced families, and is currently trying to learn which official has been selling the watch's patrol routes to the collector.