The lavender haze did not disappear. It shifted, reorganizing itself in what looked less like light passing through space and more like light that belonged to the place itself.
When the motion finally stopped, Beorn found himself standing on ice.
He felt no cold directly. Whatever form he occupied here, it was not a body the temperature could touch.
Still, the environment carried the evidence everywhere around him.
Frost spread across the surface beneath his feet in sharp white fractures. The air above the ice carried the indifference of brutal cold. Even the stars seemed harder.
He looked up automatically, checking the sky the same way he checked ledgers before breakfast or inspected machinery before ignition.
Then he stopped.
The sky was whole.
It took him several seconds to understand what he was seeing and why it felt wrong.
