There was a sky, though grey and with no obvious source of light hanging, and ground to walk on. Which was where it got unusual, because it wasn’t earth our feet were on. Or even stone. It was some sort of hard black material that felt like softer obsidian. I could handle that much, truth be told, but the shifting shapes of the same material around us were where I drew the line.

...

My sword carved into its side, shattering its way through the spine. There was a shiver of power, and if I’d been half a second slower I’d be dead. I stumbled back onto the ice, unseeing. The forward half of my body was just… gone. Winter was sluggish to react, as if shocked by the depth of what it had to reform. My eyes came back just in time to see a silver blade about to punch right through my forehead.

...

The ground shifted. Blocks collided against the Revenant, ripped out of the floor, and within that ever-growing cage it was forced into the air. There was another shiver, the shell disappearing as if by writ of some ancient god, but more filled the gap.

...

I closed it with a flick of the wrist. Masego made his way to my side, panting, as the elf kept wrecking his ritual above us. That wasn’t going to last much longer, it was going through blocks quicker than they gathered now that most the surface was gone.

- Book 4, Chapter 41: Akua's Plan

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Her foot circled back, her body twisted, and the Saint of Swords swung her blade halfway through the neck she’d already cut before a familiar shiver of power began. I knew that feeling. Last time I’d felt it my entire face and the forward half of my body had ended up vaporized because I’d been too close, and whatever this was the Revenant had been able to use it again on the massive pile of blocks Hierophant had tried to bury it under. Come on, I thought, and gathered the Night to pit it against the shiver. There was maybe a tenth of a heartbeat where the forces were even, and then to my horror the Revenant’s working plowed right through. All the Night I’d sunk into the area went into smoke, fully and instantly and harshly enough it felt like someone had ripped off a chunk of my skin.

...

I still caught a glimpse of the heroine’s face and saw that all the way to the bridge of her nose the flesh of her face looked like a blanket of acid had been laid over it. It was the same with the entire flank of her body that’d been facing the Revenant most fully, though strangely her clothes were untouched. In the moment where the Night had fought the shiver I’d learned one thing for certain, that it was in fact an aspect, and taste of the nature of that power. Looking at the Saint’s tabard and tunic I frowned: they were, I thought, looking too pristine.  And with the harsh taste of the power I’d fought still resounding, I suspected I’d put my finger on the face of that aspect: it related, one way or another, to ‘purification’.

- Book 5, Chapter 38: Pinnacle