Rory and Milo run wildly through the Grey Mist Mountains, forgetting the wounds on their bodies and their opposing identities until the sounds of Kieran and the wolves in pursuit behind them have completely faded away. Milo holds Rory's hand tightly as they find a hidden, ancient ruin. Once perhaps a place of worship or a complex of buildings of some sort, now all that remains are broken walls and a desolate landscape, with only ancient, long blurred runes carved into the stone. With the earthy scent of blood, dampness, and rotting corpses mingling in the air, the place looked as if it held a myriad of ancient secrets. But at least it was safe for Rory and Milo.
Rory finally felt exhausted, the whip marks on her back burning like a million bugs tearing at the wounds. Milo helped her carefully to sit down next to a relatively clean rock and guarded her side.
'How are you?' Milo's voice carried a hint of worry, his deep eyes focused on her.
Rory remained stubborn, refusing to show weakness. 'Can't die.' Her voice was hoarse, and she was almost exerting all her strength. She tried to treat the wound on her back herself, but her arms were completely out of reach.
Milo shook his head and let out a sigh as he knelt down, ignoring her resistance, and reached down to carefully pry away the clothing she had stuck to the wound. He saw the hideous whip marks and the tattoos of wolf claws that danced under her skin like ghostly imprints.
'It's bad.' He said softly, no hunter's coldness in his voice, only an uncomfortable, gentle pity for her. He pulled out the simple potion he had with him and began to clean and dress her wounds.
Rory stiffened, she had never allowed anyone to come near her and touch her wounds like this before. She couldn't help but whimper and gasp as Milo's fingers touched her skin. Once again she could smell the mixture of saltpeter and pine on him, which was especially clear in these quiet moments. She tried to push him away but was too weak to do anything but let him dispose of her.
'Don't move.' Milo's voice carried an undeniable gentleness, and he moved skilfully and gently as if he were treating the most precious of objects.
As she tended to her wounds, Rory remembered the crazy look in Kieran's eyes as he wielded the whip, and the 'power' and 'curse' he spoke of, and the pain and disappointment surged within her. She had paid so much for that 'family', for that false belonging, but in the end, what she got was betrayal and deeper pain. Her eyes couldn't help but turn red, and under the intensifying pain, she bit her lip to hold back her voice.
'He's... he's crazy...' Rory's voice held an incredulous blankness.
After careful treatment, Milo finally bandaged the wound and looked up at her tenderly. 'He was controlled by the shard. That power...it's not normal.'
Just then, an ethereal voice came from the entrance to the ruins, carrying the characteristic fishy-sweet scent of Kieran, but appearing weak and distorted.
'The curse...the key...not the power...'
Rory and Milo jerked their eyes towards the entrance. There was no figure, only a grey haze. But the voice did come from Kieran, who seemed to be sending the message through some sort of connection to the Shard or the curse.
'The Shard... is the key to the curse?' An aura flashed through Rory's red pupils as she remembered the anomaly when the blood from Anna's wrist resonated with the Shard and the berserking and nest collapse that the Shard had triggered. If the shard wasn't a source of power, but a key to unlocking the curse, then what Kieran had been doing...was actively unleashing the curse!
Milo snapped to his feet, his deep eyes glittering thoughtfully in the darkness. 'If the shard is the key, then destroying it...might stop the curse from spreading, or even...lift it.'
Lift the curse... Rory's heart skipped a beat. Lifting the curse meant that the tattoo on her back no longer posed a risk of pain and loss of control, it meant that there was a cure for wolf berserking, and it meant that the conflict between man and wolf had taken a new turn.
But...Milo is a hunter. He's from the Aurors, who believe in the Purge. Does he really want to lift the curse of the wolves? Or does he want to use this opportunity to destroy the wolves once and for all?
She remembered the death of her parents in the fire and the hunter's cruel smile, and her guard went up like a high wall in her heart.
'Heh.' Rory sneered, trying to hide his inner turmoil, 'Paladin, you deserve to talk about cooperation? Are you sure you're not trying to take advantage of the opportunity to wipe us all out?'
Milo's gaze remained firm, not avoiding her question. 'I don't want to wipe out anyone. My mother...she fell in love with a werewolf and was killed by her own people because of it.' He narrated, unhurriedly, his voice carrying a heavy pain, 'I don't want to see you...to see anyone like my mother...suffer because of who they are.'
He took a step forward, holding out a broad palm. 'We join forces and destroy the Shard. It's the only way.'
Rory looked at his outstretched hand and the sincere light in his eyes. His words, his eyes, his mother...all seemed different from the hunters she'd met before. But the shadows from the fire were too deep for her to easily trust the hunter's friendliness.
Instead of shaking his hand, she turned cold and said, 'I agree to cooperate, but don't expect me to trust you.' While uttering the words, Rory's body trembled slightly from exhaustion and hurt.
Milo didn't care about her words, and there was even an imperceptible smile on his face. He knew that for Rory, agreeing to cooperate had been a huge step forward.
'Where's Anna?' Milo looked around as the grey mist shrouded the ruins and Anna's figure was completely gone. All he could see were the few drops of blood she had left behind, glowing faintly and eerily on the stones of the ruins.
'She... she seems to have followed that blood aura...' Rory frowned, the ancient blood aura she had smelled earlier seemed to be the direction of Anna's bloodline resonance.
Just then, a slight noise came from the entrance of the ruins. Milo and Rory looked there with unanimous alertness. There was no enemy, but they found that no matter how they walked, they could not get out of the confines of this ruin, as if they were trapped by some kind of invisible force or boundary.
'We're trapped.' Milo said in a deep voice, a hint of worry showing in his eyes.
Rory sniffed the air, the ancient aura of blood seeming to come from deep within the ground, echoing the glow of Anna's blood and resonating with the sting of her tattoos. 'Maybe... this ruin has something to do with the curse. The shards could be down there.'
Their only option, it seemed, was to go deeper into this ruin, find the shard, and destroy it.
Milo looked towards those bloodstains Anna had left behind. 'These bloodstains...they seem to be guiding us.'
Rory follows the direction of the bloodstains to a collapsed pit in the center of the ruins. The bloodstains became brighter here. The pit was deep, but it carried that ancient aura of blood and a low sound.
'The shard could be down there...' Rory's voice trembled as the tattoo on his back tingled and intensified.
Milo walked over to the pit and leaned down to look. 'We'll have to dig it out.'
Rory nodded, gritting her teeth against the pain of her injury, but her body was ready. She reached out with sharp, blade-like claws and began digging through the dirt and debris at the edge of the pit.
Milo also picked up a sharp rock and began to dig with her. Their movements, though different in manner, carried a strange understanding; Rory used her claws to dig through the dirt, while Milo used the stone to pry at the larger boulders.
As they dug, their bodies inevitably drew closer together, their hot breaths intertwining as if their heartbeats were beating in the air, and Rory felt that heartbeat again as he sniffed Milo's mixture of nitrous and pine, Milo looked at the side of Rory's face with concentration and the glint in her red pupils, and even though he was a hunter, with his heart beating faster, he could feel the wildness of her body almost completely. The wild power her body harbored.
'Don't hold back, Paladin.' Rory said stubbornly.
'You too, Beast.' Milo guffawed, his tone carrying a hint of imperceptible tenderness and teasing.
Hours later, with their combined digging, the pit grew deeper and deeper. Anna's blood glowed faintly around them, and the ancient blood and whispers beneath the ground grew louder and louder as if they were trying to pierce the soul. The grey mist around the ruins seemed to thicken like some kind of power was being awakened.
They didn't know where Anna had gone, they didn't know if Kieran was still snooping around, and they didn't know what kind of dangers were hidden in this ruin. But at the moment, trapped in these ancient ruins, there are only the two of them, and a common goal: to find the shard and lift the curse.