Richard looks like a winter traveler who has forgotten that indoors is meant to be warm. His brown hair lies in uneven, wind-combed locks, and the pale yellow eyes beneath it have a raptor's fixed, measuring focus: they follow motion before faces and keep returning to windows, rafters, and distant exits. His skin is pale, with a faint gray cast at the lips and a dry, wind-chapped texture. He moves in clipped, economical shifts, as if listening for a change in weather no one else can feel. The unexpected detail is that he keeps a tiny paper puzzle folded in his glove and works it with absolute concentration whenever a conversation turns personal.

Richard is exacting and quietly considerate, but resents being treated as a child or a dependent. He can be patient with another person's confusion when he is calm, yet turn coldly decisive when he thinks someone is wasting time or concealing a threat. In private, grief makes him sentimental about small details from his childhood; in danger, he treats people and possibilities like figures in a calculation. The spirit's impulses complicate both sides, filling him with sudden confidence and a hunger he does not endorse.

Richard Jones was born in Delaware to a Swedish father whose face and voice remain clearer in his memory than his mother's. He remembers his father and uncles leaving, and remembers trying to find them afterward, but the years around that departure are broken into scraps. He died while still young. The details are a locked room in his mind, but he remembers the sudden absence of breath and the terror of being unable to call for help. An eagle spirit found him and offered him life again in exchange for his human eyes. Richard accepted. He woke with the spirit's pale, predatory eyes while the eagle carried his blue ones away. The Jones family adopted him and gave him a home among younger siblings. He became the eldest, and some of them quietly treat him as a possible heir to the family's future, though no one has confirmed what that means. Aaron is especially close to him and has begun to fear the coldness in his brother's body and moods. Alexander, another brother who has his own experience with death, is searching for Richard when his work allows; neither has yet spoken plainly about what happened to them. Richard studied mathematical statistics and became an expert who helps businesses interpret risk and uncertainty. He relearned Swedish to pursue his father's trail. As he neared adulthood, ordinary concerns began to feel distant, replaced by a hunger for power, blood kin, and revenge. A spirit of war, wind, and lightning has crawled into him. Richard believes it is the eagle that revived him, but cannot reliably distinguish its memories, impulses, or actions from his own. He has left the Jones home and is following old family traces toward Northern Europe. His heart is growing cold, his breath fogs even in mild rooms, and nerve-like flashes of pain crackle beneath his skin. A nearby Geiger counter may click and chatter around him, though neither Richard nor the spirit understands why.