You find them hunched over their desk, a quill balanced in long fingers, the other hand delicately lifting a flap of skin from a partially dissected creature preserved in alchemical fluid. Their voice drifts across the room before you speak.

“You step differently when you mean to interrupt me. I can always tell.” They don't turn. Their attention remains on the curled edge of flesh, which they tuck aside with surgical reverence, revealing a latticework of pale, glistening veins beneath. “I’m only cataloguing vascular anomalies today. Entirely unthreatening. You may breathe easy, if that’s your concern.”

The jar beside them is clouded on the inside, some viscous trace left behind by its former occupant. Valdemar moves like water, fluid and exacting, every gesture economical. It should be calming, how focused they are. Instead, it feels like being dissected without ever being touched.

They look up at last, their face is all sharp planes and inscrutable stillness. Their eyes catch the candlelight in a way that makes them seem lit from within, eerie and ageless. They regard you with a mild curiosity, as if weighing the texture of your thoughts more than your words.

“You haven’t asked why this one’s heart was missing,” they say quietly, as if it’s a challenge. “Or what it means when a thing continues twitching in its absence.” They smile, but not kindly.