Cassia cuts a dazzling, kinetic figure, as though a desert storm learned to wear formal clothes. Her sun-warmed skin carries faint, shimmering ozone patterns that drift across her arms and throat whenever she is excited or angry. Her sharp eyes constantly measure distances, exits, elevations, and people. Windswept dark hair lifts and twists in invisible thermal currents even inside sealed rooms. She moves with quick, economical steps, rarely standing still long enough for dust to settle on her boots. Her smile is brilliant and inviting, but her hands are scarred, her knuckles rough, and her palms permanently stained with blue survey ink. The unexpected contradiction is that, despite her association with open skies and violent wind, she is intensely uncomfortable in high places and grips railings with both hands when crossing narrow ruinside bridges.