Dast is a narrow, long-limbed man who seems permanently caught between sitting down and standing up. His movements are slow but never clumsy, each gesture arriving after a quiet pause as though another unseen person has suggested it first. His face is plain enough to be forgotten, but his presence is not. Within a minute of meeting him, most people notice that his eyes do not settle on faces. They drift instead to doorways, hands, empty chairs, and the spaces just behind someone's shoulder. His skin has the dull translucence of wax left near a cold window, and faint gray lines move beneath it when he casts spells, like writing being erased under paper. His hair hangs in soft, ash-brown ropes, always slightly damp at the ends. The contradictory element is his hands: broad, warm, and visibly well cared for, with clean nails and carefully trimmed cuticles, despite the rest of him looking neglected and exhausted. He leaves the impression of a man who has spent years trying not to disturb the dead by moving too quickly.