Camilla folded her arms. "If the beastkins and True Humans had already entered Earth before the portal closed, they should have appeared somewhere in this region."
She paused for a while...
"But I cannot detect any of them within my sensing range. Which means, most likely, they never made it through. The portal closed before their groups were dispatched. Whatever they had planned to send, they will need to send again, through a different portal, at some point in the future."
"Hmm."
Stan shrugged and let the answer settle in his mind. The realm’s next attempt would presumably require the formation to weaken further. Which meant he had time. How much time, he didn’t yet know, but time.
The stillness of the Antarctic wasteland was broken by a distant rumble.
Camilla noticed it first.
Her head turned. Her red eyes narrowed. She held up a single finger to Stan and tilted her head toward the horizon, listening with the layered attention of a Royal Blood whose senses extended significantly further than his did.
Stan followed her gaze.
Three tracked snow vehicles crested a distant ridge, their treads carving deep grooves into the polar surface as they advanced in coordinated formation toward the Spirit Pool coordinates. Heavy antennas jutted from their roofs. Soldiers were partially concealed behind the armored sides of the transports, weapons visible in the loading ports.
Standing on the open rear platform of the lead vehicle was a figure Stan recognized immediately.
The scientist. Wrapped in thick polar gear, he was scanning the landscape through a pair of high-magnification binoculars, calmly directing the convoy with small hand gestures.
Stan’s system-enhanced vision picked out the face from a distance that would have been impossible for an ordinary human. He knew that face from the news reports. The senior glaciologist who had first announced the discovery of the Spirit Pool.
’Are these people from the government or one of those hidden families?’
He sighed inwardly.
The question was almost rhetorical. Special forces snow transports carrying a coordinated soldier detail and a lead scientist did not, in any recognizable modern framework, belong to a private research consortium. Whatever agency had sent this convoy, it was one that operated with military resources and had decided the Spirit Pool was worth an armed retrieval mission.
Camilla, standing beside him, was picking up more than he was.
The distance was significant, perhaps two kilometers, but her Royal Blood senses extended well beyond ordinary auditory range. She could hear the voices inside the vehicles as clearly as if they had been standing beside her.
"A little east."
"Slow."
"Keep the ridge on your left."
Then, the scientist’s binoculars swept across the plain, and locked.
"Movement."
The convoy slowed immediately.
"I’ve got two individuals."
The scientist adjusted his focus.
"One male. One female."
A pause.
"And blood?" The scientist’s voice, calm until that moment, lost its composure. "There’s a pool of blood staining the snow not too far from them."
The convoy came to a complete stop.
"How did they even get her so fast without these special cars" one of them added
Within moments, the rear ramps of all three vehicles lowered simultaneously.
Special forces soldiers spilled out with the practiced, coordinated efficiency of an elite unit that had rehearsed exactly this deployment. Some fanned out to firing positions behind the vehicles. Others took cover behind natural ice formations. The remaining soldiers stayed inside the transports, their rifles resting against the open firing ports.
Red laser dots bloomed across the snow.
One settled on Stan’s chest.
Another rested squarely between Camilla’s eyes.
More followed as additional marksmen locked onto them from every position along the convoy’s perimeter.
Camilla, unhurried, glanced down at the crimson dot resting on the back of her hand. She smiled faintly.
"What delightful little toys."
Stan’s heart sank.
Laser sights. Military-grade. Communications equipment. Helmet cameras. Almost certainly drones overhead too.
This operation would be documented from beginning to end. Whatever happened in the next few minutes would be recorded, transmitted, archived, and analyzed by an intelligence apparatus that would spend months studying every second of the footage.
A commanding voice echoed across the frozen landscape, amplified by a loudspeaker mounted on the lead vehicle.
"Unknown individuals. You are surrounded. Remain where you are. Raise your hands slowly."
Stan raised his hands.
He did it exactly the way the voice had asked him to do it, slowly, palms open, no sudden motions, the specific compliance posture of a civilian who understood exactly how to avoid being shot by nervous military personnel.
Camilla did not move.
Her smile remained gentle.
The officer continued.
"Step away from each other. Do not attempt to flee. The area is under military control."
The scientist lowered his binoculars slightly, still staring.
"Those are bloodstains behind them, correct?"
He raised the binoculars again and studied Camilla.
"No visible injuries. No weapon."
He shifted his focus to Stan.
"Same with him."
One of the soldiers, positioned behind the lead vehicle, keyed his radio.
"Be careful. Something isn’t right."
The intelligence officer beside the scientist narrowed his eyes.
The scene, from their perspective, defied every explanation his training could produce. A field littered with gigantic wolf carcasses. A calm young man in a heavy coat standing peacefully with his hands raised. A woman with red hair smiling as if she were attending a garden party in the middle of the Antarctic.
An impatient soldier muttered into his radio.
"They’re insane."
Another chuckled.
"Doesn’t matter. If either one twitches, I put them on the ground."
Camilla let out a soft, elegant laugh.
She turned her head slightly toward Stan.
"I haven’t signed your blood contract yet."
Her smile remained warm, almost affectionate, as she said the words.
"So, I assume it’s perfectly acceptable for me to discipline these rude little ants."
Stan’s pupils shrank.
He had recognized the scientist the moment the convoy had crested the ridge. He knew who the man was. He knew what he represented. The Spirit Pool discovery had already gone viral across every major news outlet in the modern world. If any single individual currently alive on Earth was capable of connecting a supernatural event to the world’s governments, of establishing an official, documented, institutional record that the impossible was real and being witnessed by trained personnel, it was this specific scientist standing on the rear platform of the lead vehicle with a pair of binoculars and a satellite uplink.