Old Hessa Rime-Skin

The Rime-Skinners' lean matriarch in the Frostmaw deep — fences frost-glands and stalker pelts, asks no names, and knows exactly which travellers won't be missed.

Hessa came up from a debt in the Vale seventeen years ago and has not been back. The cold and the work have stripped her down to something efficient and unsparing: she manages the Skinners the way she manages the stalkers — with patience, with the right tool, and without sentiment. She fences through the Finders and keeps the Quiet's letter but not its spirit. She knows the Frostmaw deeper than anyone, knows about the shard in the ice, and has a rule: you do not dig toward it. She does not explain the rule. She does not need to.