(Amaia)

The land is a white stretch as far as the eye can see. The wind is harsh and fast, blowing with a haunting sound.

The snow has created sleek, predatory

shapes that ripple across the vast expanse like frozen waves.

The lack of colours and sound, save for the hiss of granular snow, racing like ghostly serpents over the hard crust. The air feels crystalline. I take a sharp intake of breath, and it feels like I have inhaled thousands of tiny needles in my lungs.

My gaze lifts to the sky which is a seamless endless slate of pale grey, erasing the horizon and dissolving all sense of distance and direction into an infinite, silent white.

"Haunting and cold," Rahria whispers from beside me, rubbing her arms with her hands. The cold is seeping into our skins and our uniforms are doing little to prevent it. 𝓯𝙧𝙚𝒆𝙬𝙚𝒃𝙣𝙤𝒗𝓮𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

"You guys should shift into your wolf and hound forms," I suggest, seeing this is the only way we can cross this or we will freeze to death.

"I will carry you on my back. That way you will stay warm too," Mintaka says.

I haven’t met his wolf a lot. I have only seen him transform during battles. This way both of us can connect.

The wind attacks like a relentless physical force that steals our breath, showing we have to act fast.

"Let’s shift," Kacir says. They all shift and Zelen turns to face me. He is so much like Zevran being his twin apart from the lush-green eyes he possesses. They are hauntingly beautiful and pull me towards him.

Shivering, I thread my fingers into his long fur, rubbing my hand along his jaw. He purrs in satisfaction.

"Hey buddy! Ready to go for a ride?" I ask and he offers a big nod, his head moving up and down.

His legs fold, lowering his body on the snow below. I pick up his weapon alongside mine before climbing on his back.

So warm and soft his fur appears underneath me that I flatten my body over his, feeling him, trying to stay warm.

Others carry their weapons in their mouths and we begin to move again.

Snow isn’t falling, it is being hurled sideways, a horizontal blast of stinging grains that scour the exposed skin of my hands. They are turning blue so I clutch Zelen’s fur hard.

The visibility is only a few feet because of the harsh conditions.

Zelen paws forward, every step is a labour, through the howl of the wind.

In the distance, we detect a few trees that brave the tree line. They are not trees at all, but twisted statues, their branches permanently bent as if frozen in a silent scream against the prevailing gale. The harsh wind and snow are the only things prevalent here.

As we near the trees, I detect something haunting. Among the frozen trees, there is something else.

Are they statues?

I narrow my eyes, trying to see through the falling snow. And then it dawns on me what they are.

A shiver and a muffled scream escape me. My body trembles from the realisation. They are frozen people. Their mouths open in a state of perpetual scream and their eyes dilate.

They are real people and then my gaze shifts to their partially visible clothes. They are wearing purple uniforms, so similar to ours.

Oh, God! They are Saratopians. They were given the purple colour.

"What happened here?" Alnitak asks through the mindlink in a horrified tone.

"Seems like they were killed or got stuck in the storm," Rahria thoughtfully says. Our gazes refuse to budge from their horrified, frozen states.

"Let’s move guys, there is nothing we can do about them. Whoever did this could still be lurking around," Kacir suggests.

This is what Istrale wants. The horror and chaos. Deaths of the innocent. It chills me and I hug Zelen in assurance. Shivering uncontrollably.

"That was terrible. I can’t get that sight out of my brain," I say through the mindlink.

"I am with you, don’t worry," Mintaka assures me.

We only travel a few meters forward, still rattled by what we have seen. The ground suddenly shakes from something large advancing. Tremors reach us and we halt in our tracks.

Thump!

Thump!

"Something is coming," my voice comes out in a warning.

The wind screams across the frozen plain, a sound so constant it has become a form of silence inside my skull. My breath crystallises in front of my face, and each exhale forms a tiny cloud.

Through the swirling snow, I see it. A mountain of matted white fur, eight meters of muscle and ancient fury.

A yeti.

Its eyes are twin chips of shimmering blue ice, devoid of pity, devoid of anything I could recognise as a feeling. When it pounds a fist the size of a boulder into the permafrost, the ground shudders, and I feel the tremor in my bones, my teeth, the very marrow of me.

Around me, my four companions become restless in the blizzard. A growl rumbles in their chests like an approaching avalanche.

Kacir’s hound, smaller and faster, is a blur of tawny fur at the edge of my vision, while Zevran, the largest of them, stands his ground directly ahead, meeting the yeti’s gaze with a feral snarl that vibrates in the air between us.

I grip my sword. The handle thrums against my palm with a barely contained energy I could feel in my blood.

I jump down from Zelen. Blue-white sparks crackle along its edge, dancing across the snow around me in brief, strobing flashes. It is like a cold electric charge, a promise of light in this endless, howling white.

"Get ready."

The yeti moves.

The horrifying contradiction of speed and mass. One heartbeat it is a statue, a mountain peak wrapped in fur. The next, one is among us.

A colossal arm sweeps out, at Rahria’s wolf. She twists mid-air, jaws snapping toward the massive forearm, but the backhand catches her square in the ribs. Thankfully, it’s just a graze as her wolf is hurled sideways.

"Rahria!" The name tears from my throat.

"I am good, just a scratch," her voice comes through the mindlink making us all sigh in relief.

The yeti opens its maw and roars. It isn’t just a sound. It is a force, a physical weight that presses against my chest, and my eardrums.

Kacir’s hound jumps forward, along with Zevran.

The air itself turns to ice. A cone of absolute frost, visible as a shimmering wall of crystallised cold, erupts from its mouth and catches Kacir’s hound mid-leap, luckily only its hind leg. The ice seems to freeze his leg over. It shakes it, getting rid of the ice shattering it into a dozen glittering pieces.

Zelen and Zevran have both leapt and snuck their jaws into the Yeti’s arms. He shakes them, trying to hurl them away.

My stomach lurches and I lunge, pouring everything into the blade—my will, my terror, and my screaming fury.

My sword blazes with electric light, a stark, brilliant blue. I drive it deep into the yeti’s thigh, just above the massive, fur-clad knee, where the muscles are the thickest.

The effect is immediate and violent. Electricity screams into the creature, a million volts of concentrated lightning, channelling through steel and into his flesh. The yeti’s entire leg seizes, the muscles contract hard and I hear them tear.

A grunt of shock and pain rumbles from its chest, so deep I feel it through the ground. Black smoke and the stench of burnt hair, acrid and foul, rise from the wound.

For one precious second, it staggers, its massive frame swaying.

"Now, Zelen! Now!" I scream, wrenching my blade free. Sparks shower the snow around me, hissing as they die.

Zelen needs no second command. He launches himself at the yeti’s throat, a missile of fang and claw, a blur of black rage. I saw his jaws open, saw them close on Yeti’s fur.

The yeti, though powerful, is stunned at the attack. Zevran snarls and bites harder against its arm while Zelen keep his maw at Yeti’s throat. The Yeti grabs Zelen with his free injured hand.

I raise my sword again, but I am too small. I see Zelen’s hind legs kick uselessly at the air. The yeti’s raging blue eyes are fixed on him.

Then I see Kacir and Rahria.

They have circled behind the beast during the chaos like silent shadows, invisible against the snow. They are waiting. Their eyes met mine for a single heartbeat, and I saw understanding there.

The yeti, distracted by the pain and attacks in its leg, tries to lift Zelen higher. It raises its arm, exposing the softer fur of its armpit, the place where the thick pelt is thinnest, where the skin is vulnerable.

This is the moment.

"Guys, NOW!" I scream the command through the mindlink.

They explode from the snow, faster than I have ever seen them move. They leap—not at the leg, not at the back, but impossibly high.

Their powerful hind legs propel them upward like a spring. Their jaws open wide, sinking their teeth deep into that vulnerable spot, into the tender flesh where the arm meets the torso.

The yeti painfully howls.

It is a sound that shakes the very ice beneath our feet. A sound of genuine, primal agony that drills into my ears and makes my vision blur at the edges.

Its grip on Zelen spasms and loosens. Zelen tumbles to the ground in a heap of fur and laboured breathing, gasping, but alive.

The yeti tries to spin, trying to reach them, trying to tear him off. But they hold on, their jaws locked, his bodies swinging wildly as the giant thrashes. Blood, dark and steaming in the cold, pours down the yeti’s side.

It’s time.

I don’t hesitate. I run forward, my boots sinking in the snow, my blade crackling with renewed fury. The yeti is wounded now. It is distracted and is bleeding.

And then I jump with my sword stretched forward and I plunge it deep into its beating heart.

His eyes meet mine in fury for seconds before closing as it drops to the ground, dead.