I was sitting in a chair, apparently getting an old blood transfusion to become a hunter.
The needle in my arm pulsed faintly with warmth, thick, ancient, and reeking of something primal. Not human. Not elven. Older. Wilder. I could feel it crawling through my veins like smoke made of knives.
A soft chime echoed in my mind.
[New Trait: Bloodborne]
[New Skill: Hunter Sense | Blood Thirst | Blood Addiction (0%)]
I blinked. Well… looks like I got myself some new toys.
[Location: The Drowned Hollow, Beneath Yharnam]
We wandered deeper—through stone catacombs slick with old blood, past murals etched in screams. The Hunters spoke less. Their eyes twitched more. Even I could feel it.
Something was watching us.
The walls pulsed like lungs. The ground...breathing?
We finally reached it—a lake, blacker than ink, frozen in time. No ripples. No reflection. Just stillness that screamed.
Then, the water shifted.
Something massive stirred beneath its surface. A limb broke the black mirror—a crocodilian claw the size of a carriage, its scales glistening like rotted onyx, each one bearing the name of a forgotten god.
Hunter 1 dropped his lantern.
[Hunter 1]: ...That's no beast.
The lake exploded upward.
A titanic crocodile-headed horror, veined with glowing red glyphs and eyes spilling from its throat, emerged with a bellow that cracked the Hunters' minds. One dropped to his knees, muttering nursery rhymes. Another began laughing, violently chewing his own fingers.
And me?
I smiled.
[Grey]: Now that's what I'm talking about.
I charged.
Tentacles burst from the god-thing's spine. Its roar made the stars blink out. I warped between realities—appearing behind it—and drove my axe into its back.
It turned.
Its breath alone made the lake boil.
The Hunters recovered, barely. Guns fired. Cleavers flashed. But they were ants fighting a mountain.
Then the visions came.
Memories not ours. Deaths we hadn't died. Worlds we'd never lived in—flashing before our eyes like prophecy and punishment.
[Grey, stumbling]: "Damn you… You're trying to make me remember who I was."
But I was more than memory.
I was a rupture.
With a howl born from a hundred worlds, I turned my Aura of Dread on—black tendrils of madness and gravity choking the air. The lake rose as if defying the gods above.
The monster roared, raged, and devoured a Hunter whole.
And I leapt—straight into its mouth.
Inside, I tore it apart. Piece by screaming piece. Ripping its heart of stars from the inside, I clawed my way out like a demon born of ink and wrath.
I emerged, bloodied, burned, smiling like a lunatic with a shattered crown in one hand.
The lake turned red.
Only one Hunter still stood. He looked at me, eyes wide, mind teetering.
[Hunter]: What... are you?
[Grey]: Hungry.
The silence after the storm was deafening. The monster's corpse lay half-submerged, twitching with after-death spasms. Its celestial heart pulsed in my hand—like a dying star, begging to be forgotten.
But I wasn't done.
My eyes flicked toward the beast's gaping, shredded maw. The inside was a warped cathedral of bone and flesh, still slick with reality-defying ichor.
I walked back in.
[Grey]: Let's see who's still breathing.
Inside the putrid heat and shifting walls, I found them—two Hunters, barely alive, wrapped in a tangle of tendrils and melted time. One had his ribs crushed. The other was halfway between his past and future self, flickering like a broken VHS.
[Grey]: Hold still.
Using my Reality-Warping, I unraveled the paradox-laced organs around them and stitched their moments back together. A flash of abysmal magic and a pulse of Time Eye froze the chaos long enough to pull them free.
They gasped. Cried. One of them vomited a frog. The other bowed.
[Hunter]: You're not real... are you?
I smiled, lifting my axe with one hand and giving him a clawed thumbs-up with the other.
[Grey]: Real enough to save your sorry hides.
And then...
I dug in.
My teeth sank into the dead god's flesh—blackened muscle that pulsed with dreams and death. It tasted like apocalypse, like velvet and fire, like memories no one had. A storm of essence burst into me with every bite—power, yes, but also... knowledge.
Every bite whispered a secret. A name. A lost war. A deal with the stars. A lover betrayed. A god slain and hidden in the core of a black hole.
And I ate more.
Until my body shimmered with cosmic bile, until the earth rejected me and the sky watched in horror.
The Hunters could only stare. One passed out. The other tried to crawl away, whispering prayers to a god whose name had just been digested.
And me?
I wiped my mouth, eyes glowing with burning symbols.
[Grey]: Not bad. Got any more?
[Later]
I dragged the two barely-alive hunters from the steaming corpse of the lake-god, my fingers still slick with its essence. They coughed, bled, whispered madness and gratitude—one sobbing in a tongue that didn't belong to this world.
Their blood mixed with ichor and lake mud as I slung one over my shoulder and helped the other limp toward the shore.
[Grey]: Come on, meatbags. The air's only slightly less cursed out there.
We stumbled into the dim fog lining the banks—Yharnam's sky a crimson dome, cracked with black lightning. There, leaning on a rusted blade and looking far too calm for what just happened, stood the third hunter—tall, tattered cloak, face hidden behind a cracked porcelain mask shaped like a smiling moon.
He gave me a slow nod.
[Hunter 3]: Didn't think anyone would eat it.
I shrugged.
[Grey]: Didn't think it'd taste that good.
He chuckled, a low, weary sound like a saw through bone. Then the conversation turned serious—about the dreams, the hunt, the truth behind the healing church, the pale blood, the orphaned stars, and what it meant to be cursed to remember.
He spoke in riddles and dying myths. I responded in sarcasm and madness. We understood each other perfectly.
The wounded ones sat nearby, breathing in short bursts. For a moment, I thought I might have actually made... friends. Or something like it.
That's when the air ripped open.
A sound like a thousand veins tearing in unison echoed through the forest. The ground quivered. The sky peeled back.
A portal—massive, swirling, hungering, stitched from void silk and whispers of forgotten gods—opened right beneath our feet.
No warning. No prophecy.
Only a scream from one of the hunters and the moon-masked one whispering:
[Hunter 3]: The Hunt never ends, Lady of the Hollow.
[Grey]: ...You could've said that earlier.
Then we fell.
All of us—me, the half-mad survivors, and the strange smiling hunter—tumbled into the screaming dark.
Not fire. Not ice. Not stars.
The gods of this world lost one but were happy to get rid of a disaster that could have destroyed them.
I opened my eyes and looked around me at the tower, and Warriors in polished armor circled us, weapons drawn and trembling in their hands. Some aimed staves crackling with energy. Others clutched holy relics as if we were demons risen straight from hell.
And in a way… we were.
[Chapter end]