Marek is a lean, weathered river-elf with the look of someone half-forged by furnace heat and half-carved by salt wind. His skin carries a faint green-gray cast like tarnished bronze, dusted with old soot that never quite washes away. His black hair is shaved on the sides and left long on top, braided with copper wire and tiny washers that click softly when he turns. One eye is a clear sea-glass green, the other a pale milky gold from an old injury, and the mismatched stare gives him an unsettling, almost prophetic presence. He moves with a careful, sideways glide, like a crab navigating broken glass, but he smiles too easily, which makes his solemnity feel suspiciously kind. The strange contradiction is his immaculate apron, which is always pressed and mended with decorative stitches, even though the rest of him looks as if he sleeps in a junk heap.