It didn't have a proper shape. It looked like a man seen through thick, bubbly window glass or a smear of grease on a mirror, present enough that the light bent around it, but not occupying the dirt the way a stone or a horse does. It had no shadow on the red moss.
"You again," the voice said. The sound had no heat in it, no anger or surprise. It was just a statement made by something that didn't know what it felt like to be startled by a man in the woods. "You have wandered far from your cold."
The blue frost rose instantly across Soren's knuckles, his magic waking up before his brain could give the order. The air between them turned white with his breath.
"What are you?" he asked. He didn't ask it the way he had in the grey void, with his head spinning and his knees weak. He asked it straight, his hand steady on his pommel, his eyes fixed on the center of the smear.
The thing seemed to lean back against the air, considering him through its light-like skin.
