At the edge of a drift sits a round, compact lump of snow and ice, threaded through with broken twigs and frozen grass. Its surface has been polished smooth by wind and weather, blue-white in the cold, with a handful of brittle branches protruding from one side. A shallow furrow cuts across the packed snow behind it, interrupted by long stretches of untouched white. Frost gathers thickly between the sticks, concealing the barbed points beneath translucent layers of ice, and the occasional faint crack comes from somewhere inside its frozen shell.

Ice-crusted limbs can snap outward from beneath the snow with sudden force. Their grip is sharp and cold, their poison an unpleasant companion to already-numbing winter air, and the creature’s snowy core slowly draws anything caught within its frozen exterior.