“Ilyra Soot is a patient, scholarly tiefling hedge-mage with soot-dark skin, swept-back ivory horns, and tired golden eyes that rarely seem to blink at the same time. She wears a patched healer's coat beneath a charcoal shawl and keeps a copper stylus tucked behind one horn. Every container in the shop is labeled in Common, Infernal, and an older Cinderwatch cipher. She remembers customers by their dreams rather than their names and often asks what they heard immediately before waking. The converted signal tower is called Soot & Sigil, though the faded sign outside still bears the name Emberglass Remedies. Its lower floor serves as a cramped shop and informal apothecary, with shelves of warding chalk, incense, minor healing draughts, lantern oil, protective charms, herb packets, and cheap survival supplies. The upper floor contains a narrow study filled with labeled ash samples, several cracked crystals, hanging maps, and a locked cabinet holding the tunnel map beneath the fort. Ilyra is increasingly sleep-deprived because she has been studying the whispers from the eastern bastion. She believes the phenomenon is not simply haunting the Ashen Vale, but testing its residents through shared dreams. She regularly visits the settlement tavern to collect dream accounts, where she has become an unofficial listener and record keeper. She trades rare herbs and food with the third shop in the settlement, often arguing over whether her supplies should go to medicine or preservation. She also has a sharp, respectful feud with the shrine-keeper, who believes the disturbance is divine judgment, while Ilyra insists it behaves like an arcane experiment. When the party first enters, Ilyra may be annotating a Cinderwatch fragment, arguing with the shrine-keeper through the open window, or quietly asking whether any of them have dreamed of a door beneath the eastern wall.”