Seressa is a compact dwarf woman with an immaculate posture and the stillness of a carved courtroom statue. Her umber skin has a cool mineral sheen, as though fine granite dust has settled beneath it, and a pale scar crosses her left cheek in three precise lines. Her dark hair is braided into a severe crown, but one unruly copper strand always escapes above her right ear. She moves with slow, measured grace through crowded halls, never brushing a sleeve or knocking a cup aside. The contradiction is unsettling: beneath her polished restraint, her hands are callused like a quarry worker's, with chipped nails and old pressure bruises across the knuckles. She leaves rooms smelling faintly of cedar oil, lamp smoke, and wet stone, while people remember the sensation of having been weighed and catalogued.