Kharun stands like a carved cliff—broad-shouldered and immovable until he moves, at which point he becomes sudden and violent. His skin has the pale granite mottling common to his people, but a thin, jagged pale scar runs from temple to jaw on the left side of his face, where the stone pattern is interrupted by a darker, almost glassy streak. He wears his braided hair in a single heavy queue bound with iron rings taken from enemy armor; stray white hairs sparkle near his temples. When he walks he shifts weight on the balls of his feet as if ready to uproot a tree; when he smiles it feels like a sun cracking through a mountain cloud—rare but warming. Contradictorily, despite his immediate presence and hulking size, he carefully tends a tiny clay whistle tied to his belt and blows it to call his younger cousins from a distance. The whistle's sound is fragile and high; it suits nothing about him but lives there anyway.