"Yes, she is your sister, and that is why you must kill her."

A chill ran through my bones, the almost cold breath of Aydan's whispered words sending shudders down my spine.

Not Amelia.

I let my sword drop from my hands, the sacred steel clattering against the stone.

This all had to be a dream. A nightmare. Some cruel joke. I pushed away from Aydan, stumbling away from her to curl up against the wall, burying my head between my knees. The pounding headache returned full-force, a bubble of inaccessible knowledge clogging my brain and stabbing at my skull.

Everything was wrong. Amelia should never have succumbed to the beast blood. How could someone like me be expected to survive if even she could not? Mother shouldn't have died, Father shouldn't have gone out to fight. They were paragons of their own kind. In what logical reality was I the last one remaining?

Any minute now, Amelia would come and tug the blankets off my bed-

"Lael," a voice called, quiet and far away.

It got closer and closer until suddenly-

"Lael!" Amelia shouted, pulling the covers off my bed. "Up, up, up! You're late for training!"

I opened my eyes to the stone ceilings of the Grand Cathedral's residents' quarters, a sliver of sunlight piercing through the curtains and painting a stripe across the room. Not just any room, either. A blanket crocheted by a thankful elderly churchgoer rested atop the pile of lighter sheets and a heavy quilt to help combat the chilly Yharnam nights. Half-melted candles wilted on the nightstand, wax dripping down the wood like frozen waterfalls. My room. My bedroom.

It had been a dream. The nightmare was just that: a nightmare.

My heart-rate settled and I let myself relax. Carefully, I peeled myself out of my glorified cot and pulled on a pair of trousers. "Sorry, had a weird dream last night," I told my sister. Really, it had been rather fanciful. Certainties I had forgotten returned to me. No plague had taken my mother nor my sister. The Executioners had triumphed over the Vilebloods. Yharnam remained moderately safe, with the Cathedral district standing as a bastion of hope for those that still remained in the recovering infected areas.

The chains of fear remained, however, and as silly as it was, I tugged a robe on and ran past Amelia. Putting on a smile, I jogged past fellow clergy-folk as they went about their morning routines and wished me a good day. I returned their sentiments, but my true goal was the stairs...

I raced up to the top, pushed through the throng of people and emerged into a beautiful Yharnam sunrise.

The breath left my lungs. Warmth on my skin, my face, the morning sun shining through my long golden curls, it all brought a sense a peace I felt grateful for, now that I'd imagined what it would be like without it.

I spread my arms wide and closed my eyes, letting my heart and soul absorb the sun's healing rays.

"Enjoying yourself, Lael, darling?" Chimed a voice that brought back more certainty and happiness. I had a fiancée.

Laughing, I pulled the black-clad scholar into an embrace and twirled her, to our mutual delight.

"My, someone's amorous!" she exclaimed as I set her down. She was the granddaughter of the Byrgenwerth Provost, and we had met through some mutual friend of my father and her grandfather. Her hair impossibly took on a white moonlight hue, a with the slight shine of a darker color towards the roots. Her eyes were-

I blinked, confused. "Aydan?"

She raised an eyebrow and smiled. "Yes, Lael?"

"Have I ever told you how lovely your obsidian eyes are, my love?"

Her smile softened, expression melting from the saccharine joy to a more subtle satisfaction. "Don't you have something you're supposed to be doing?"

I straightened and made towards the door.. "That's right! Father's expecting me-!"

A tiny hand squeezed around my wrist, halting me.

When I turned to look back at Aydan, her head had fallen forward, hair shading her eyes and leaving only a grim frown visible. "... Aydan?"

"What are you willing to lose for this dream?" The scholar said in eerie monotone. She paused and tilted her head thoughtfully. "... Do you love me, Lael?"

"What- yes! Of course I-"

The sun rose suddenly behind her. I shielded my eyes from the glare and felt Aydan's hand slip from my wrist.

However, overwhelming sunlight gave way to paralyzing darkness, a glow in the distance illuminating a blood-soaked scene.

The sweet dream faded, returning me to the nightmarish Hunt.

A chill permeated the air, highlighting the pungent odor of gore and steel.

The hunter from my dream - Bertram? - stood over the corpse of a great white beast, blood soaking the floors and saturating his attire.

Two more bodies lay sprawled on the ground, face-down and mutilated with bites and claw-marks and signs of a saw cleaver having finished them off. One, a Vileblood in the garb of a Cainhurst Knight, the other, a familiar Byrgenwerth scholar, empty eyes never appearing more devoid of life.

"Come to y'senses, have you, boy?" Bertram called out, wrenching his blade out of Amelia's skull.

I stood silently, unable to process the scene in front of me.

The moon-scented hunter descended from atop my sister's blood-drenched beastly remains, stopping only to rip the Vicar's Amulet from between her still-clenched fingers.

My hands balled into fists.

Bertram nudged Aydan's corpse with his boot and I felt my teeth grind against each other. "You dinnae know what you were dealing with, boy. This here is a monster, no doubt. Some siren or other foul beastie. T'is nothin but bad news if they be bleeding silver or white, and it appeared to have a tight hold on you."

An angry growl rose out of my throat. "Shut your fucking mouth."

But he didn't stop talking. He kept going like he hadn't even heard me. "Come to think, you aren't exactly the most normal lad, either," he mused, snapping his trick weapon back to a one-handed mode. "Come, let's see what color you bleed, Church Boy."

I backed away, groping for the blade I had dropped. If Aydan was gone... I wasn't sure what I would do with myself. Maybe I could just run, go back to the dream and lay in the field of moonflowers and let the damned Doll braid my hair for the rest of my life. However, I could see Aydan's disapproving frown in my mind's eye. She'd want to continue. She wouldn't want the twenty-seven years she'd spent keeping me alive to go to waste.

"Get away from me," I hissed, baring my teeth and grasping my mother's sword with both hands. Blood boiled in my veins and I could practically feel the blood vessels in my eyes burst - and not just the two on my face.

I couldn't run anymore. I had to keep moving forward.

"Lael," a voice called, quiet and far away.

My eyes snapped open.

A roar like a scream echoed through the arched cathedral, a rush of air and a tremor accompanied by a shrill curse. "Fucking dog breath! Hey, what's taking you two so long over there?!"

This... was real.

I unfolded out of my fetal position, hand sliding out to pick up the blade I had discarded.

Amy was in pain. She needed her big brother.

Aydan set a hand on my shoulder, expression grim, as usual. "You won't do this alone."

When I smiled at her, it hurt with a bittersweet appreciation. I acknowledged her reminder with a kiss on the cheek. "I know. Thank you."

"What the fuck," Isolde hollered, diving to avoid a swipe. She recovered, ripping her blade through a layer of flesh and jamming a blood vial into her thigh. "I'm getting mauled by a giant dog and you two are over there confessing your undying love?!"

Despite my expectations, Aydan didn't respond to the kiss, instead readying her threaded cane and launching herself into the fray. I ran in after her, following her subtle directions. Every howl of pain, each cry of despair sent a stab of guilt through me.

I ended up on my back a few times, thrown across the room, pinned beneath a paw, but each time, Aydan or Isolde would draw Amelia's attention away from me, giving me a moment to recover or inject a blood vial. Isolde took her share of hits, as well, but Aydan moved with the practiced grace of a dancer, like a comet bouncing between planets.

With Aydan's careful strategy, we managed to immobilize Amelia. The scholar's bladed whip dug into the beast's ankles, hog tying the poor girl.

Amelia screamed, thrashing in her bonds and nearly throwing the Vileblood across the room - again.

Wasting no time, I hopped up and straddled the back of her neck. "Sleep well, Amelia," I offered in prayer as Mother's sword severed her spine.

And Vicar Amelia finally found some semblance of peace, because whatever the other side was, it couldn't be as bad as Yharnam.

Aydan and I returned to the Dream. Isolde stayed behind, since she lacked the capacity to enter.

Amelia's amulet weighed heavily in my pocket, holding everything that was truly left of her.

Taking my sword with her, Aydan retreated into the workshop, taking the leftover from my pile of blood stone shards. While she busied herself there, I let the Doll channel my blood echoes and tie a few little braids in my hair. In return, I gathered a bouquet of moonflowers and twisted them into a crown to place upon her head. She thanked me for the gift and - after many anxious glances towards the workshop - excused herself and went elsewhere, out of sight. From what I gathered, she had some fear of Aydan. I made a mental note to ask her about that next time and went to lay down in the flowers.

I closed my eyes and tried to figure out what had happened back in the cathedral. Was it some sort of disassociative episode? I didn't have any history of mental illness, nor did my family for what I knew. Father and Mother were both orphaned as children - their parents died in the Hunt - and they turned out alright. We did, apparently, have a tendency towards beasthood, but no account of transformation I'd heard mentioned hallucinations or disassociation.

I rolled over in the flowers, turning on my side. The ground was strangely comfortable, and it didn't hurt to lay there for a while. The moonflowers were truly gorgeous, even without their namesake to illuminate them. I gathered a few to my nose and inhaled deeply. Oddly enough, the scent reminded me strongly of Aydan, as if she occasionally rolled around in field to cover herself with their smell.

I snorted at the ridiculous image and left myself flop back, laying spread eagle.

What I didn't expect was to see a blindfolded beauty leaning over me. "We need to talk."

That's never a good way to start a conversation. Folding my arms behind my head, I sighed. "Yes, we do."

Aydan nodded. "This is for you." She presented a circular weapon, like a hoop surrounded with a serrated razor edge, but with a leather-wrapped steel rod through the center and a grip with a length of chain on one end. It was not unlike a giant, bladed sunburst.

I swallowed and stood, inspecting the unconventional weapon. "What about my mother's sword?"

Wordlessly, she snapped a switch and the grip came loose, Iuliana's blade sliding out of the sheath.

Taking a steady breath, I took it in my hands. It wasn't too heavy, and could easily be strapped to my back. Aydan reached over and put her hand over mine on a the grip, guiding my fingers to a different switch. The coil of chain came loose and the thing could be swung like a giant morning star.

"You did this all just now?" I asked, turning my gaze back to the scholar, only to gasp when I saw a black, ooze-like substance leaking from beneath her bandages. "Are you... crying?"

Her brow furrowed and she touched a hand to her face, feeling the 'tears.' "Ah," she acknowledged. "It is of no consequence." She shook her head. "For the weapon, I petitioned Gehrman's assistance, which he provided freely." Aydan managed an uneven, half-hearted smile. "He merely told me some truths that I did not wish to hear."

I remained silent, setting down the trick weapon and gathering her up into a hug.

She relaxed, muscles releasing tension and letting her melt a bit, for once. "Lael, I've not been completely truthful," the scholar admitted.

Of course. I'd expected as much. To expect transparency from anything felt foolish, anyway. "It's… it's alright. I wondered what happened when I… blacked out back there, in the cathedral. In the dream, was that… was that you?"

Aydan slipped out of the embrace and took my hands. "You created a Delusion, which is similar to a Dream, a separate reality like the Hunter's Dream, but lacks the permanence and cannot switch hosts."

I stared at her. "... I thought only Great Ones, the ultimate enlightened, could do things like that. And that doesn't make sense; how were you able to enter it?"

Aydan smiled - a genuine smile - and rested a hand against my cheek. "Lael. So like an infant, nonsense babble falling from your mouth as you try to learn how words are formed."

She clasped her hands together at her chest and opened them to release butterflies that fluttered and faded like clouds passing in front of the moon.

"How-?"

"As you gain Insight, it is my belief that your Delusions will develop and become Dreams, too."

I stood, dumbfounded. "How do you know all this? Really, Aydan. This is far too much information for someone who isn't sure what they actually are."

The scholar remained silent a time. "Perhaps I lack the eyes to see what I am," she mused. "Perhaps this form is too inferior for me to comprehend my actions or even what I truly am, but I remember my intentions and I remember you." She tilted her head. "Do you remember me? From your slumber. I... I was there. I think I guided you, somehow. Do you remember?"

The longing in her voice was unfamiliar. I hadn't heard so much emotion from her before, but I could remember... something. A hand. Someone holding my hand. "I..." Slowly and deliberately, I took her hands in mine, rubbing my thumbs over her smooth knuckles. "I remember being lost," I admitted shakily. "I remember being upset, and I remember someone reaching out and taking my hand."

I didn't know what any of it meant. Aydan maybe had some semblance of an idea, but overall didn't seem any more aware than I was. We were both puppets on cosmic strings, dancing for some creature's scheme. If that creature was her, a version of her that existed on some higher plane, I wasn't sure if I minded. Aydan would make a superb puppeteer.

I pressed a kiss to her softly smiling lips and - after a brief hesitation - she reciprocated. It was clumsy and perhaps a bit awkward, the first time I'd kissed a girl and for Aydan, perhaps the first time she's even thought of kissing, but it was ours and that made it okay.

We managed to fashion a harness for the Sunburst Blade - Aydan chose the name - and promptly left the Dream.

Isolde perked up from her perch against the wall. We were still camping out in the Grand Cathedral. "Took you two long enough. Hunter's Dream must be pretty exciting," she deadpanned.

I shrugged. "It's pretty. A bit lonely, I'd imagine."

The Vileblood snorted. "Yeah, because you were looking at the scenery. Right."

Aydan cleared her throat. "Come, then, we must make our way up-"

"No," I interrupted.

She went rigid. "Pardon?" The emotion, the affection, it all vanished after we left the Dream, as if all capacity for human feelings left her upon waking.

"Isolde, can you still get into Cainhurst?" I asked.

"I dunno," she replied, raising an eyebrow. "I haven't thought to try. If you wanna get in, though, 'Sefka had an unopened summons. Noticed it when we were there."

"Then that's where we're going next," I decided.

"Lael," Aydan warned.

"I'm going after my father. If you don't want to follow me, I'll understand. I only ask that you don't continue on your own," I pleaded.

The scholar's face remained motionless behind her bandages, but she seemed to mull it over a moment. "Fine. For you, I will delay my quest. If we couldn't find the key here, Mister MacConmara won't have it, either. Hopefully, his mind is far enough gone that he will pursue us, and not the child."

I nodded. "Thank you."

Isolde sighed, setting down the sword polish and reloading her Evelyn. "At least you won't be so helpless now with that monstrosity of a Trick Weapon."

It occurred to me that, between socializing with the Doll and speaking with Aydan, I had forgotten to speak with Gehrman.