A chaotic storm of grey fur and furious snarls erupts from the edge of my vision. It isn't the graceful, loping form of the Moon-Fox; this is a solid wall of muscle and feral rage. It hits the last Iron Hound with the brutal force of a falling tree, sending the soulless creature flying sideways with a sickening crunch of metal and mangled limbs. There is no finesse, no warrior's posturing. This is a brawl, a desperate and ugly fight for survival.
I lie on the cold, damp earth, clutching my bleeding side, the world a swimming haze of grey and black. The pain is a living thing, a cold fire that spreads from the iron-laced wound through my entire body, sapping my strength, freezing my will. I can only watch, a helpless spectator to the final act of a battle I have already lost.
The grey wolf is a savage fighter. It doesn't try to overpower the Iron Hound; it seems to know it can't. Instead, it moves with a brutal, street-smart efficiency. It dodges the creature's clumsy lunges, its movements low to the ground, and exploits openings with vicious snaps of its powerful jaws. It seems to know where to bite—not at the mangy hide, but at the grotesque joints where iron meets corrupted flesh. The fight ends when the wolf ducks under a swipe of iron claws and its jaws lock onto the back of the Hound's neck. There is a hideous, grinding tear of metal and sinew, and the Iron Hound collapses into a silent, lifeless heap.
The clearing falls silent again, the only sound my own ragged breathing and the soft dripping of water from the leaves. The grey wolf stands over its kill for a moment, its sides heaving, its muzzle stained with both red blood and a foul, black ichor that sizzles faintly on the ground. It worries the corpse with a final, vicious shake, as if to make sure it is truly dead, then turns its head and looks directly at me.
Its eyes are not the sapphire pools of the Moon-Fox. They are a hard, intelligent shade of storm-grey, holding no warmth, no triumph, only a deep, abiding weariness and a sharp, calculating glint. My hand instinctively tightens around the handle of my silver knife, what little strength I have left coiling in my arm. I have just been saved from one monster, but that doesn't mean this one isn't simply waiting its turn. I am an unknown, trespassing in his territory for all I know. He has every right to finish what the Hounds started.
The wolf's form begins to shimmer and shift. Bones crack and re-form with a series of sickening wet snaps that turn my stomach, and fur recedes into skin. In a few moments, where the wolf stood, a man now stands. He is tall, but leanly muscled, a stark contrast to Damien's broad, imposing frame. He looks as if he has been carved from the wilderness itself, all hard lines and sharp angles. His dark hair is long and matted, tied back from his face with a strip of leather. His bare torso is a tapestry of old scars—pale, silvery lines that speak of countless battles fought and barely won. He moves with a stiffness in his left leg, a slight limp that he tries to hide.
He pointedly ignores me. His priority is the threat, not the survivor.
His first act as a man is to limp over to the three Iron Hound corpses. He circles them, prodding at their mangled forms with the toe of his worn leather boot. He crouches by the one I killed, his gaze intense as he studies the work of my silver knife, his nostrils flaring as he takes in the scent. His expression is unreadable, a mixture of grim satisfaction and a deep, ingrained hatred. He nudges the corroded paw of the first one I fought, a low, guttural grunt rumbling in his chest. It's only after he has completed his assessment of the threat, after he has assured himself that they are truly dead and will not rise again, that he finally turns his full attention to me.
He walks over, his grey eyes sweeping over me, taking in my torn dress, my pale face, the small knife I still hold in a white-knuckled grip. I try to push myself up, to meet him from a position of less vulnerability, but a fresh wave of that icy agony from the wound on my side sends me crashing back against the mossy ground with a choked cry.
His eyes narrow. He stops a few feet away, a safe distance. He doesn't offer a hand. He doesn't offer a kind word.
"What are you?" he asks, his voice a low, rough thing, raspy from disuse. "You don't smell like a shifter. Not quite. You don't have the stink of a pack wolf. But you fight their dogs."
My mind races. Who is he? An exile? A rogue? My throat is dry, and my mind screams at me not to show weakness, not to reveal anything. Silence is my only shield. I meet his gaze, trying to project a defiance I do not feel, and say nothing.
He watches me for a long moment, his gaze sharp enough to peel skin. A flicker of something—impatience, maybe frustration—crosses his face. He scoffs, a short, humorless sound.
"Fine. Don't talk," he grunts, running a hand through his matted hair. "Stay ignorant. See how long that keeps you alive. But those things will be back. They always come back."
He gestures with his chin at the corpses. "Those aren't natural beasts. Don't make the mistake of thinking they are. They're constructs. Bloodhounds forged from iron and hate. They have one purpose." He pauses, his grey eyes locking onto mine with a new intensity. "To hunt things like you. Things of wild magic."
A chill unrelated to my wound creeps down my spine. Wild magic.
"There's an entity—a god, a demon, I don't know what it is," the stranger continues, his voice low and bitter. "Calls himself 'The Forgemaster.' He thinks magic like yours, like ours,"—he gestures vaguely at himself—"is a flaw in the world. An unpredictable variable that needs to be wiped clean. He makes these dogs to sniff it out and exterminate it."
He kicks at a piece of broken iron on the ground. "I've been on their menu for years. Ever since my old pack decided I was too much trouble and threw me out." He says the word "pack" like it's a curse.
A flicker of recognition passes through me. Another exile. Another outcast. Just like me. But this shred of kinship is immediately subsumed by my suspicion. Why is he telling me this?
As if reading my mind, he adds, "Knowing your enemy is the first rule of survival out here. You should be glad I'm telling you."
He takes another step closer, his eyes finally landing on the deep, black gashes on my side, on the blood-soaked fabric of my dress. His brow furrows. He sees the grey, necrotic tinge of the skin around the wound. He sees the way I'm shivering, the cold from the wound spreading through me.
He lets out a long, frustrated sigh, a sound of pure, weary annoyance, as if my injury is a personal inconvenience to him.
"Damn it," he mutters under his breath. He hesitates for a moment, clearly weighing his options. His eyes dart to the path I took into the clearing, then back to my face. The cold, calculating look returns. "You're a mess. But you killed one of them on your own, and you disabled another. That's… not useless."
He seems to come to a decision. "You're more use to me alive than dead. A dead witch just brings more of them to sniff around the corpse."
He kneels beside me, and I flinch, raising my knife despite the searing pain it causes. He just rolls his eyes, unimpressed by my show of defiance. He unslings a small, worn leather pouch from his belt. From it, he pulls out a small, clay pot filled with a thick, dark-green paste that smells sharply of pine sap and something else, something metallic and bitter. A crude poultice.
"This is going to hurt," he says, not as a warning, but as a simple statement of fact.
He doesn't wait for my permission. He grips the tattered edge of my dress by the wound and rips it away, exposing the four ugly, iron-poisoned gashes. His touch is rough, impersonal, and efficient. I hiss in a sharp breath, both from the pain and the sheer audacity of the act. He ignores me, scooping a thick gob of the green paste with two fingers and, without any gentleness, slathering it directly onto the wound.
Agony, white-hot and blinding, explodes through my side. It feels like he's pouring fire and ice directly into my flesh. I scream, a raw, strangled sound, my back arching off the ground.
"Stop moving," he grunts, placing a heavy, restraining hand on my shoulder, holding me down. "Or I'll let you bleed out."
But as the initial searing pain begins to subside, it's replaced by a deep, penetrating warmth that fights back against the unnatural cold of the iron poison. The shivering in my limbs lessens. The greyish tint of my skin seems to recede. The poultice is working. It's agonizing, but it's saving my life.
He holds his hand on my shoulder for a moment longer, ensuring I won't thrash again. His focus is intense, his expression that of a craftsman fixing a broken tool. As the poultice continues to work, his gaze drifts from the wound up to my face, to assess my condition.
And then his storm-grey eyes lock onto the scar on my cheek.
His entire body goes rigid. The pragmatic, detached focus in his eyes vanishes, replaced by a sudden, violent flicker of something else. Something dark and intensely personal. An old, bitter recognition. His hand on my shoulder tightens, his grip turning painful.
His voice, when he speaks, is no longer rough and impersonal. It is a low, dangerous growl, laced with the venom of a long-nurtured hatred.
"That's Damien's mark, isn't it?"
The question hangs in the air, heavy and sharp as a guillotine's blade.
"Arrogant bastard still signs his work the same way. I know that mark well. He gave one just like it to my father... right before he destroyed him."