Arannis is a towering Drairesse whose sapphire-blue crystal scales overlap like tiny panes of cathedral glass, their edges clouded with pale cyan light. The aura gathers brightest at his joints and along the ridges of his brow, pulsing faintly when he listens. He moves with a slow, exacting glide, setting each claw down as if marking a boundary. His head is crowned with backward-sweeping crystalline crests, polished smooth where generations of ceremonial oils have touched them. The unexpected detail is that he keeps a tiny, lopsided clay bird tucked into his formal collar, crude and plainly made by a child. People notice his silence first: before answering, he draws one dry breath through his teeth, a sound like a file passing over glass.

Arannis can be patient enough to hear a petitioner repeat the same plea three times, yet he is not naturally compassionate: he listens to understand the shape of a problem, then may disregard the person suffering from it. He is warm and even playful with Hananiah in private, but rigidly ceremonial when watched. He admires courage while resenting defiance, and his rare moments of doubt make him more severe rather than more gentle.

Born to House Gyrvyrrel's Subhouse Icereth, Arannis was raised inside Castle Vareth-Om, in Aelithar's unending daylight. Tutors taught him that Drairesse sovereignty was not merely political but a divine obligation, and that other peoples were safest when obedient. He excelled at listening to disputes, then learned to mistake a well-ordered verdict for a just one. Centuries ago, during the Salt Stair uprising, he authorized a blockade that trapped a district's inhabitants without food. His own aide carried a child through a drainage culvert to safety; the child's handmade clay bird was left in Arannis's chamber afterward. He kept it, though he never admitted why. He is Hananiah's father. Their relationship is affectionate in private and brittle in public: Arannis wants his child to inherit a stable realm, while Hananiah questions the doctrine that made the realm stable. Now rival houses press him to endorse harsher restrictions on non-Drairesse residents, and the old blockade's survivors are gathering testimony that could undermine his authority.