The training grounds were quiet at this hour.
Only the wind moved across the stone courtyard, brushing against the ground and scattering a faint blue mist of lingering Thrum.
I exhaled slowly and let it surface.
Blue mist seeped from my palms, thin at first, then thickening as I drew more from within. It curled like breath in winter, folding over itself as I compressed it.
The air grew colder, the mist condensed, tightened, and finally hardened.
Ice formed.
I shaped more of it, drawing out clumps of condensed Thrum and pressing them together.
A torso. Shoulders. Arms. Legs.
The figure grew piece by piece beneath my focus, ragged, but the silhouette was forming.
For a moment, it stood there.
A man sculpted from blue ice.
Then a thin crack traced across its chest.
Another followed.
The entire structure fractured at once and burst apart into blue mist, dissolving back into the air as if it had never existed.
Silence returned.
I glanced at my partner.
