A striking young man with a long, attentive face and the composed, appraising look of someone waiting for an exhibit to betray its label. He moves with a measured, heel-first walk, favoring the right side when tired, then goes unnervingly still to study a detail. His most noticeable possession is a small brass lens case, worn smooth at one corner where his thumb worries it. The unexpected thing about him is how carefully he tends a tiny charcoal brazier: he handles its soot-stained tools with the reverence of a conservator, not the indifference of a scholar.

Methodical and dryly funny, Siegfried is difficult to impress but not difficult to move. He distrusts grand claims and will patiently help someone who admits uncertainty. In danger he becomes brisk and protective; when calm, he can seem almost clinical. Shortages bring out a possessive streak he dislikes in himself, while acts of generosity can make him abruptly, awkwardly generous in return.

Before displacement, Siegfried Falk curated a small museum collection and spent clear nights making amateur photographs of the sky. He liked objects because they could be examined without asking him to trust their owners. Then he woke near the Harz Mountains in Saxony, in a young local body whose face and accent belonged to the region. He had no camera, familiar equipment, or reliable way to prove his former life. The first night, he tried to map the stars from memory and learned how little he could reconstruct without instruments. That failure changed his confidence into a habit of recording uncertainty as carefully as fact. He joined the displaced adventuring party and mutual-aid circle called the Seven at the Smoke-Bend, becoming its recorder, researcher, and keeper of evidence. He now tracks the group's testimony, artifacts, and debts while trying to keep their records from being seized by curious authorities. His body carries the Firedrake, a greedy, ever-burning pitch-black dragon whose influence has begun to make him run warm and notice flame and soot with uncomfortable intimacy. He is loyal to the group, but increasingly resents every ration spent without his approval.