Hrimwight

Hrimwights are linked to winters older than recorded histories. Folklore says they were once scavengers or mated spirits of the high snows, corrupted when a glacial rift opened and exhaled a spiteful winter-thing. Villagers in the Velmirk Pass tell of flocks of bodies found sealed in thin ice, faces oddly preserved with smiles of terror — the unmistakable work of Hrimwight hunting parties. Scholars such as Maester Hodd of the Glacial Archive argue Hrimwights are an emergent form of predator: where a region's cold is unnaturally prolonged, the frost coalesces around malnourished animals and then takes cunning shape. The Frostwardens — an order of ranger-wardens who patrol wind-scoured passes — keep crude iron bells and salted torches specifically to disrupt Hrimwight stalking patterns; the creatures fear active heat sources and the ringing of living metal more than most weapons.

A Hrimwight stands roughly 4 feet tall, gaunt-limbed and slightly hunched. Its skin appears composed of compressed snow and flesh: pale, translucent patches of icelike hide overlay sinewy, dark muscle, with frost crystals forming jagged ridges along shoulders and spine. The head is overlarge, cheeks sunken, and the mouth a thin, horizontal crack rimed with tiny ice teeth. Eyes are small, glossy black stones set deep in sockets, catching the light like wet coal. Fingers end in thin, needlelike claws stained dark with old blood and sap, and breath pours from its nostrils as a fog that occasionally crystallizes into ice dust. When standing near a human-sized doorway the Hrimwight reaches about halfway up the frame and can scramble up walls and across ceilings using clawed hands and prehensile toes. Surfaces should show snow patching into furrows; skin texture like roughened, layered packed snow with exposed leathery muscle beneath in places.