She had no sword in hand, when she took her stance. I grit my teeth and poured all of my domain into her, but slowed was not stopped. She swung, and the light was blinding. Something… not broke, but it was wounded. Damaged. As I screamed the night fled, and I found myself kneeling over grounds rent asunder by our fight. Returned to Creation. The heroine was panting. Shit, I thought. What the fuck was that? I was feeling like myself again, but I was also feeling my heart beat. Like it actually mattered, like I was human again.

- Book 4, Chapter 11: Ballon

“The Saint of Swords appears to have, for lack of a better term, cut Winter itself,” Hierophant said.
...
“I dislike using a metaphor, but so be it,” he said. “Think of your mantle as a cape. Much like your body itself, it is a fixed object in the eyes of Creation.”
...
“The main difference being that your body is a shape, while your mantle is a pattern of power,” he said. “That power is, of course, finite. Not in the sense that using it spends it, but along the lines that the cape remains a cape – it does not grow or lessen, as a living thing would.”

“So she cut the cape,” I guessed.

“Essentially,” he admitted. “You might say she cut out a corner of the cape. The pattern itself being fixed, the rest of the power thinned itself as a whole to recreate that corner.”

My fingers clenched.

“Are you saying I have less to call on, now?” I said.

“Well, yes,” Masego frowned. “Which I believed impossible, as power does not simply disappear, but evidently in this case it has. It is not unprecedented for heroes to violate Creational laws that apply to everyone else, but this is rather blatant even by their standards.”

- Book 4, Chapter 12: Cambré