Vaelir moves with the slow, deliberate grace of one who has watched many things fall into darkness. He wears a long, charcoal-grey duster of soft, worn leather threaded with faint silvery runes that glimmer when the moon or flame touches them. His face is narrow and pale as ash, high-cheekboned, with a faint net of almost-black veins visible at the temples — an unmistakable mark of the shadow-blood that pulses through him. One sleeve of his coat is always cuffed and pinned with a rusted brass clasp; the other is deliberately frayed at the cuff, as if he wants one arm to look ragged. He walks with a slight limp in his left leg (a thin silver filigree brace hides the wound), and when he talks he often tilts his head so a lock of hair — streaked with silver — falls across his eye. Unexpectedly, his right eye glows a dim violet in deep shadow, while in sunlight it looks ordinary green. The overall impression is of someone who belongs to two worlds at once: courtly scholar and back-alley survivor.