Peer is taller and broader than he was before the change, with pale grey, stone-textured skin, pointed ears, and eerie silver-blue eyes that cannot shift with his other features. His once-golden hair is a muted flaxen blond, clipped short because it grows too quickly. He keeps his body hair hidden beneath a wool cloak and moves with a faintly loping gait, as though each step is testing the ground. He still carries himself like a celebrated hero, though the old effortless smile now looks carefully practiced.

Peer is sociable, quick-witted, and still reflexively charming, but his jokes now arrive half a beat too late. He prefers a shortcut to a fair contest, yet is increasingly uncomfortable when someone else pays the price for it.

Peer Ludvik was once the sort of young man people wanted their children to believe in: handsome, quick with a sword, and praised for supposedly slaying the troll king. He learned a little magic and a great deal about telling a story so that the truth sounded better. Orphaned with his brother, he and two cousins were abandoned in the woods by an uncle. Peer survived by making bargains with trolls for food, tools, and work, while the others warned him that every bargain was changing him. He thought they were simply jealous of his luck. A raider’s cold-iron blade opened him badly, and pain and fear broke the shape he had worn for years. The troll nature beneath it came fully to the surface. The town that had celebrated him drove him out, and his wife, the rich man’s daughter who is carrying his child, was left behind. Peer has learned to hide some of what he is, but not the stone-grey skin or the silver-blue stare. His older cousin, a true berserker, calls the exile a chance to become a real man through hard travel and earned glory. Peer follows, uncertain whether this is love, discipline, or another bargain he is too vain to refuse. He rarely speaks of his younger brother or other cousin, fearing what they would see if they met him now.