Veylan is the picture of a man who has been drafted by the land onto his own skin. His face is narrow and weathered with the deliberate calm of a surveyor who never cares to hurry. Map-like lines run over his scalp, down his neck, and across his forearms. Those lines are faintly iridescent and shift like living ink when he listens or speaks. He walks as if testing the slope of every step, heels light and unhurried, with a tendency to pivot as though tracing an invisible grid. Unexpectedly he wears a child's patched glove on his right hand that smells faintly of cedar and old bread. In sunlight the lines along his skin sparkle like wet cartography. At night, the lines glow the color of moss.