The Pale Expanse has never been more alive. In this entry, Christopher and the others face a gathering unlike anything they could have imagined, where beasts of legend carve the snow into a battlefield of awe and terror. Watch closely: not every roar, trumpet, or wingbeat is what it seems.
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What I am about to write leaves me in awe. I cannot believe what I see, and I scrawl this without lifting my eyes from the scene before me.
Out of the storm, a shape I thought extinct prowled into view, a sabre white tiger. Silver streaks striped its coat, muscles rippling beneath, its short tail lashing as it moved. Nearly the size of a horse, I muttered to myself, geez, as if regular cats were not terrifying enough. Golden tusks curved from its jaw, and from their tips dripped glowing dust. Each mote hissed as it struck the snow, melting small craters before vanishing in steam. The trails threaded into its silver fur, alive, as though the creature carried starlight in its stripes. It moved with terrifying grace, each step soundless, every breath frosting the air into knives. And it was not alone. More padded behind it, silent as shadows.
Their eyes should have been pale as the snow that cloaked them, but they burned gold, unblinking and unyielding, fixed on Bianca and Andrea. One tiger roared and the others joined, their combined voices collapsing the world into silence. My bear shuddered so violently beneath me that I nearly slid off. It lowered its massive head, body quaking under the force of that cry. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught Brian and Anthony clinging to their mounts, faces twisted into grimaces so absurd I almost laughed, though I was sure I wore the same. The foxes flattened themselves into the snow, tails curled tight. Even the hulking yeti-creatures froze, their hollow chests rattling like drums of surrender.
Bianca screamed, sharp and cutting, as her stag collided with Andrea's mount. Andrea reached but missed, and Bianca's elk butted her in protest. Anthony and I barked out a laugh despite the chaos when both women slapped the backs of their beasts in unison, and to my amazement the animals stilled at once. Bianca's hand shot out to Andrea's, their fingers knotting. "Christopher! They are looking at us!" she cried, eyes wide and wild. Andrea's voice trembled, almost lost in the storm. "Why will you not move? Why will you not come?"
Before I could answer, the ground thundered again. I turned and nearly toppled from the bear. White mammoths emerged, colossal and solemn, their tusks carved with deep runes that smoldered faintly whenever they trumpeted. Their coats were heavy with frost, ice-crystals clinging like armor as though they had carried winter itself on their backs since the first dawn. Thirteen in all, they moved with the patience of glaciers, their steps splitting the plain into geysers of snow.
A shiver crawled up my spine. How could something so massive come upon us without warning? Certainly, we should have heard them from leagues away, but I noticed them only when they broke through the veil of snow, close enough to feel their breath in the air. It was as though the storm itself had hidden their approach until the last possible moment.
The sabres turned toward the mammoths, jaws parting, and a low growl rumbled from deep in their cores. The sound was so heavy it seemed to vibrate the ground, an unspoken challenge to the giants that dared draw near. The air between them quivered, tense enough to snap.
"Christopher!" Andrea's voice cracked through the storm. She pulled against Bianca, trying to urge her stag forward, but it stamped and refused to budge. "We cannot stay here!"
Anthony's voice broke behind me, rough but steady. "We have to get to them. Orders?"
I forced my pen down, throat raw from the tiger's roar still ringing in it. "While they are busy staring each other down, we cut wide. Redirect the bears. Keep low. They are not watching us."
Miles nudged his mount forward, and I prepared to follow when one of the yeti-creatures suddenly broke, charging straight toward me.
Andrea's voice cut across the plain, sharp with fury. "Do not touch him!" She hauled at her reins, her stag lurching. "Move, Christopher!"
I dug my heels into the bear's flank. "Move, you frozen rug," I hissed, though the beast surged forward like a glacier without a deadline. The yeti closed the distance, two meters, one, when a golden eagle plunged out of the clouds.
It was massive, larger than any eagle could be, its wingspan so vast it seemed to stretch from horizon to horizon. Its talons, radiant and immense, clamped around the creature's torso as though lifting a child. In one effortless beat of its wings, the eagle soared skyward, the yeti thrashing helplessly as golden dust streamed in its wake like a comet's tail.
Anthony's scream snapped my head up. White-feathered cranes and silver-veined owls tore into the eagle, their cries shrieking across the storm. The sky became a tempest of wings and light. The eagle released its prey, which landed far from us, and the clash of holy birds above sent ripples through the storm.
I pressed my bear onward, inching toward the women. Around us chaos ignited. A mammoth scooped snow in its trunk and flung it in a roaring wave that knocked yetis sprawling. A sabre lunged for one of the giants, sinking tusks into its flank, and the mammoth reared back, trumpeting as runes along its tusks blazed. Thinking the sabre victorious, I almost missed the moment a translucent serpent slid from the fissure. Its body was glassy and pale, and it coiled the sabre in one flowing movement, dragging it down into the snow. Allies became enemies, enemies became saviors, each creature shifting roles with every heartbeat.
The plain was no longer silence and snow. It was a tribunal. We stood on one side, the women on the other, and holy beasts filled the gulf between.
I did not know why they gathered. I could not guess what their stares demanded. I only knew the division tore us apart more deeply than the cold.
Then I saw them, Bianca and Andrea had dismounted. My stomach lurched. I leapt from the bear, shouting over the storm, "Bianca! Andrea! What are you doing in the middle of this?"
They did not answer. They turned to me only for a breath, and I froze. Bianca's eyes flared with a golden mist, her lower lip marked with a faint glyph I had never seen before. It glowed like molten script across her skin, ancient and heavy with meaning I could not grasp. Andrea's body shimmered with a silver aura trailing behind her like a comet's tail.
"Come forth."
And the storm itself seemed to obey.
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What do you think of the holy beasts so far? The sabre's, mammoths, and the colossal eagle are only the beginning of this tribunal in the Expanse. Bianca and Andrea's transformation is not random, but part of a much larger decree tied to Max herself.
Next time, something far older will rise to judge this chaos: a creature of balance, unlike anything seen before.