Snowskull Owl

"I've seen one, once. They're not birds, not really. They're death wearing feathers. If you're lucky, real lucky, you might spot one perched, staring with those hollow eyes. They say they're spirits of the tundra, judging who'll live and who'll freeze. Me? I left a coin and kept walking. Didn't look back."

— Unknown

The White Wind

A creature of silence and frost, a phantom of the icy wastes where the sun is a fleeting guest and the night reigns long. The creature earns its name from its face - a pale, skeletal mask of cartilage and hardened feathers that glows faintly under moonlight. This "skull" is not bone but an intricate lattice of frost-encrusted filaments, designed to amplify sound across great distances. With these adaptations, the snowskull owl can pinpoint a heartbeat beneath several feet of snow, or the faintest scurry of a frostmole half a mile away.
These owls are larger than any bird has a right to be, with wings that stretch as wide as a tall man is high. Its feathers resemble freshly fallen snow, so fine they scatter with the wind when the owl takes flight. Each feather is tipped with a dusting of ice crystals that shimmer under starlight, giving the bird the appearance of a wraith descending from the heavens. Yet it is not beauty that the snowskull owl is known for, but terror.

A Bird of Blizzards

Legends claim the snowskull owl is not born but formed, a relic of the Boreal himself. They are said to arise from the ice when an unbroken snowfall lasts a hundred days, their frozen eggs hatching in the stillness of the coldest nights. Hunters and trappers speak in hushed tones of their chilling cry - a sound not of the living world but an echo from some far-off realm of frost and shadow. A screech that cuts through the gale like a blade, summoning winds sharp enough to freeze flesh in moments. Its talons, black as volcanic glass and sharp as knives, strike with deadly precision. A single blow is often all it takes, the owl feeding quickly before the snow reclaims the evidence of its kill.
The snowskull owl is no mere beast. It is an omen, a solitary, fiercely territorial omen. Travelers lost in snowstorms who hear its cry are said to vanish without a trace, their bodies never found, their breath stolen by the owl's icy wings. Some swear by an old superstition; to leave a gift in their path to earn their passage through the snow to their destination.
Whether old superstitions are anything to hold stock or not, the snowskull owl remains a creature of the frozen wilds, neither friend nor foe.