The hall heard him before it saw him.
Not his footsteps - those were quiet enough. But the quality of the air in the entrance corridor changed in the way it changes when something significant moves through a space, and the people nearest the doors felt it a moment before Jolthar walked through them with Haryntha beside him.
He looked exactly like a man who had spent twenty nine days in the Dreadland Depths.
The clothes bore the evidence of it, the wear and the staining that no amount of practical tidying could fully erase.
There was a cut above his left brow that had healed badly in the field and a quality of settled exhaustion in his frame that spoke of reserves spent and partially recovered and spent again.
He moved well despite all of it, with the unhurried directness of someone who has long since stopped performing composure and simply has it.
But it was the woman beside him who took the hall's breath.
