Father Dervin is a broad-shouldered Mercian human with the weathered steadiness of a man who has spent years kneeling over hot stone. His skin is sun-browned and faintly freckled, with a narrow scar tucked under his right ear from a failed ward flare decades ago. He wears his priestly vestments with practical care rather than vanity: layered charcoal robes lined in soot-gold thread, a heavy wool stole that smells faintly of smoke and cedar, and a tool belt hidden beneath his sash. His hands are thick and clever, stained with ash at the fingertips and marked by small burns that never quite healed smooth. His hair is iron-gray at the temples and black at the roots, always combed back but often escaping in unruly strands when he works. One eyebrow is permanently singed shorter than the other. He moves with quiet, economical purpose, except when he is explaining a ward problem, when he becomes animated and sharp-eyed like a master smith showing a blade’s flaw. The contradiction is striking: he looks like a weary temple scholar, but the instant danger appears he carries himself like a dockside brawler who already knows where the fight will end.