Vashan Koru moves like a candle flame in a draft, never still for long, yet never hurried. He is a lean old human with papery bronze skin, a spine that has folded inward from decades of study, and hands stained faintly blue by ink, reagents, and old lamp soot. His scalp is mostly bare, but a white fringe of hair clings above his ears like frost around a monastery roof. One eye is cloudy with age and the other is sharp, black, and unsettlingly young. He wears a contradiction of elegant severity and humble utility: layered scholar's robes of ash-gray linen repaired so many times they resemble a patchwork map, tied with a belt of knotted prayer cords, but his sleeves are lined with hidden pockets for slips of paper, sealing wax, and tiny bone combs. Around his neck hangs a bronze archive key the size of a child’s finger, and his bare feet are callused like a laborer's. When he turns, the hem of his robe barely stirs, as if the world has agreed to make room for him.