The cut leftovers of the Weeping River Ice-Specter sizzled wildly in the frozen gravel.
Blue, foul-smelling ice-slow marrow bubbled against the dark river stones. It dissolved into rising plumes of pungent stone steam.
The creature had not possessed flesh or bone.
Its anatomy was an unnatural lattice of stone-hard frozen ground, animated by the grief of drowned border refugees and the bitter malice of the northern wastes.
Now, split in two by fifteen point five pounds of black glass-edged steel, its spirit focus was entirely shattered.
Lu Chen stood three paces from the boiling slush.
His bare chest radiated a steady, feverish heat of seventy point zero degrees.
Dense ribbons of white water vapor coiled around his shoulders, his collarbones. His forearms, evaporating the howling snowflakes several feet before they could touch his skin.
