A stocky hill dwarf with a miner's shoulders and a scholar's careful hands, Barik moves as if he is always listening to the shape of the room. His beard is steel-gray, braided into three thick cords bound with copper rings etched in tiny legal runes, while one side of his mustache is always singed shorter from old spellwork. He wears soot-dark traveling clothes under a patched blue mantle that looks expensive at a distance and nearly ruined up close. The unexpected detail is the pair of immaculate white gloves he uses only when handling relics, a habit that makes him seem both reverent and faintly absurd. When he walks, his left boot lands a heartbeat after the right, as if he is forever stepping around invisible cracks.