A/N: This chapter is a chunky boi. Also, warnings for cannibalism in the first half of this chapter, which is depicted but not graphic, and the necrophilia in the second half, which is entirely implied and not at all clearly depicted.

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Finally, the spider dissolved, fallen beneath the hunter's saw cleaver.

A queen drenched in blood held out her hand.

In the dark void of the spider's watery domain, he took it.

- . - . - . - . - . -

Arianna held me back as Isolde and Alfred butchered the Vileblood Queen. Alfred's laughter and Isolde's angry shouting echoed discordantly through the large hall. I understood. They didn't need me for this anymore, but I'm… glad I'd made sure it could be done.

My cousin rubbed my back, which struck me as incorrect. I should be strong enough, not forcing a pregnant woman who has had her whole world upended to take time to comfort me. My cousin. That was an odd way of thinking about Arianna, but it was true. I may not know the exact intricacies of our relation, but as two individuals of Vileblood descent, of course we'd be related. That made her family.

Closer family than that pulverized flesh that Alfred and Isolde were making a mess of. Annalise didn't scream, did not cry, did not lift a single hand in defense. She held herself with dignity as long as she could, even when she was pulled from her throne and laid into. There was something admirable, I suppose… but also something incredibly inhuman.

I took the Crown of Illusions from my head and set it on Arianna's head. "All hail the Vileblood Queen, Arianna of Yharnam. Long may she reign."

She smiled bitterly and scoffed, putting a hand to her bulging belly. "I feared this sort of plan was far too grand, that the damned Vile-Crow woman forced some delusion of decadence upon me. But it appears my castle is a ruin and a crypt, my holdings a humble village filled with old women and corpses. There is no grandeur here. Just cold and stone." She relaxed and leaned back a bit. "I find myself more at peace with this the more I learn of it."

Isolde had shared the full plan with all of us earlier and I'd been unsure if Arianna was fully on board. She'd seemed so cold with everyone, unwilling to speak, but now, in this, the culmination of Isolde's plan, a peace had settled over everything. "I… I'm glad. That you're okay with all this. I never could live up to expectations I had on me from birth; I can't imagine the pressure of this for you, and in such a delicate time."

Arianna shook her head. "A home and a family is far from a burden. And you're quite bereft of both, as far as I'm aware. If this scheme works, you'll always be welcome here, Lael. I mean it."

Aydan had been sitting nearby, but she got up suddenly, excusing herself to get a breath of fresh air.

That was understandable, the smell of blood was strong and Aydan had been… erratic, lately.

"Thank you. You have no idea how much that means to me."

This was… good. A family to come back to would be nice, no matter what shape that family took. If we could find a way to lift the curse from Castle Cainhurst, perhaps even they could grow food again. Time should hopefully move again, now that the guardian creature that took the form of my father was slain. It was okay. We'd figure out something.

Later. I had another commitment. Aydan's mission, the mission I'd agreed to help her with that I'd selfishly postponed to tie up loose ends.

I glanced over at Isolde and Alfred and realized that I should get a fire started. I got up and bashed apart a bureau for firewood. We'd made sure to gather kindling and tinder earlier, and I gathered the parts of the fire and got a small fire started in the middle of the stone floor.

By the time I was done, Isolde had come over, a thick slab of pulsating meat in her blood-drenched hands. We fashioned a spit and skewered it in three pieces. The third piece confused me at first, but then I saw the intent in Alfred's eyes as he sat down by the fire with us.

I looked at Isolde. "You usually cook it?"

She shook her head, rotating the meat over the fire steadily. "Not cookin' it fer my sake."

Isolde and Alfred had sat with Arianna nestled between them and in a way, I almost felt like I was intruding on something. Arianna's head rested on Isolde's shoulder and Alfred was right up against her with his hand atop hers. Perhaps Arianna had adopted them like she'd adopted me, but it was less a matter of family.

The Crow looked at me, catching my eyes on the three of them. I didn't look away, meeting her gaze. A split moment of guilt flashed over her face as she glanced at Arianna, who was gazing peacefully into the flames, but Isolde looked back at me. There was reluctance.

Ah, that was right. Isolde had something with the doctor, Iosefka. But… the way it had ended… it seemed like something had changed. An argument, something had happened. Something bad enough that the doctor hadn't let them in. Plus, it didn't seem like it had been a committed thing.

Isolde must've decided that whatever she'd had with Iosefka was really over, because she took off a blood-covered glove and took Arianna's other hand.

This made perfect sense. Even with the hostility between the three of them before, that this sort of thing would happen now, I understood.

There was a chance this scheme of Isolde's was going to kill all three of them.

We sat there a long time as Isolde roast the queenly flesh over the fire.

Revenge was an empty goal, anyway - that thing that both Isolde and Alfred had come here for. In the wake of their revenge, they had nothing left to either of them, except… except perhaps each other. That was what mattered in the end, wasn't it? Those you cared about. Not closure. Not revenge. Not heroics. Just… being with someone and enjoying their presence.

I wished Aydan was here. I wanted to hold her and look at her the way Arianna was to Isolde and Alfred. But she still hadn't stepped back inside.

Eventually, Isolde pulled the spit off the fire. "No promises about taste," was all she said as she held it out.

Alfred took his piece and wasted no time biting into it.

Arianna waited until Isolde had her portion, and then cautiously took a bite, then seemed surprised and undisturbed by the flavor and continued.

Isolde waited until Arianna had taken a bite to start eating hers, unbothered and unimpressed, like it was just a normal little campfire lunch. After all three of them had finished their portions, Isolde lifted Arianna's hand to her lips and kissed her knuckles. "Long live the Queen of Cainhurst."

"You're too kind," she responded, with a tone that gave me signals that I should leave. "I honestly feel positively awful, though I felt bad before dinner. But… the fire is nice. We may die, but… I've got you two."

Aydan was still outside, anyway. I stood up. "Excuse me. You three are having a lovely time and I won't intrude on it. I'm going to go check on Aydan."

Isolde nodded at me, but they really just sort of all leaned on each other. A blob of three people ready to die, but treasuring the moments they had left in any way they could.

I left the throne room, stepping back out onto the roof that had been our battleground not very long ago.

Aydan sat cross-legged in the center of the roof, a silhouette against the dark sky. I walked up to her and sat beside her. "Evening- are you all right?"

Her breath came quickly, chest heaving with each inhale. Her usually pale flesh was rosy, and she looked more alive than she ever had. Her lips were parted in this sort of shocked expression that would've been more evident on a person with eyes, but I've been with her long enough to recognize panic on her face.

I started to panic when she didn't respond immediately, but after she took a moment to catch her breath and gather her thoughts, she did speak. "Rom, the Vacuous Spider is dead. I'd been taking advantage of her obfuscation. I've always known, what I needed to do. I've known directives. I've known objectives. I haven't known why I needed to do things, just that I needed to do them."

"I don't understand what you mean."

She doesn't move, staying perfectly still. "This form is not disposable. It is taking all of my control not to burn through it. I am… so very large. I am the sky. I am the blood. I am the beasts. There is… so much of me. But I am forcing all my attention into this small, little human…"

I sucked in a breath. "Is there anything I can do to help?"

Her head tilted curiously and a smile spread across her face, warm and real. "No, not really, though… talking to you is nice. Lael. Do you know precious you are? How perfect and beautiful and unique you are in this world?"

Reaching over, I placed my hand over hers. "I know that I love you, Aydan. Whatever you are, Aydan, I love you."

She grinned, a cheek-to-cheek grin. "I want to crawl inside your head, entwine our beings eternally and never come untangled. And I would, but your cousin is about to give birth to ah, Oedon's spawn and I don't want to miss it."

I didn't even have time to respond to her desires before I heard the pained cry echo out from the throne room.

- . - . - . - . - . -

"Now, now, all that struggling just won't do now, will it?"

I ran a hand through the woman's raven black hair. She flinched away from my touch, squirming and trying to break from the straps holding her down. Really, hoist by her own petard there, since these were restraints she'd use on her own patients.

"What was your name again? Iosefka, was it? That woman who came calling for you made quite the mess." I watched Iosefka's face as I spoke, watched the panic change it's degrees and saw my subject focus a bit more closely upon me. Perfect. "It's too bad you didn't try to get her to rescue you. I don't think there are any other Hunters out there I can trick into sending me more test subjects."

Troublesome, really. This was the night I had to act and yet also the night where I had the least access to subjects.

Children only went so far, after all, and there was a desire to see how this specific blood would affect adults, as well. I was already rather sure of what the outcome of these experiments would be on that front, but my own goal remained well in sight.

"This little flytrap of yours is going to help me, Dear," I said as I slid the needle beneath her soft, human flesh. "The Pthumerians were once mortal, just as you and I. And yet they could become gods." I giggled, excited. I leaned down and whispered in her ear like a tantalizing secret. "Who is to say we can't become gods, too? Why should we, the human race, remain in these unenlightened forms?"

Iosefka's eyes squeezed shut and she seemed to resign herself to her fate. It wasn't like she could provide any conversation. I'd made sure to gag her so she couldn't make a fuss or do something foolish such as bite her tongue off.

I set the drip to flow, a lovely infusion of Ebrietas and Ebrietas alone, no pesky interference to muddy the waters and create a beast. Iosefka stopped struggling, eyes squeezed shut and skin damp with sweat. In that moment, she ceased to be particularly interesting. No use in gloating and raving to an unresponsive subject. I frowned and stepped away with a sigh.

Now that the threat was quite effectively neutralized, time had opened up to relax a bit. Hours and hours of camping out and days of secretly breaking in and scouting out the place, evading the still-living the few individuals who would occasionally visit the good doctor had strung my nerves tightly.

I left Iosefka to her eventual fate and ascended the stairs to her operating room, a nice little space deep within the building that would be easily defensible should the need arise. I slumped in a chair, adrenaline still running through my veins from this close victory.

When the lover had come to visit, that Vileblood scum, I'd worried, especially with the moon-scent that seemed to accompany her. I'd not met the woman face-to-face, but in her wake, there had been some scent that reminded me of days past.

Speaking of that scent…

It lingered here, stronger. In fact, it seemed to drift from the floors, as if the moon herself had bled on Iosefka's operating table. My head lifted, and my gaze fell on a vial. A corked sample beside many others, some purified into the good doctor's special formula, some still raw, blood fresh. Yet this one, next to those sample of pure red and the distilled yellowish plasma, nestled a single vial of the purest milky paleblood.

Like a whip, I snatched it from the rack and uncorked the vial. Abandoning safety and procedure, I pressed my nose against the rim of the glass and inhaled that sweet, beautiful moonlight. Soft, cold, sweet and intoxicating.

I could pinpoint the moment I broke out in a cold sweat.

It smelled like her corpse, that last night.

Moisture beaded on my forehead and gravity felt like a myth. My stomach couldn't decide the proper spot to sit in my body.

The scent of dirt wasn't present in the clinic, but I could swear I smelled it, too, the damp earth that had yet to harden over her grave, so freshly dead, so freshly buried. The itch of threadbare, hand-me-down Byrgenwerth robes against my adolescent skin as I unearthed her. Over and over, every night that I could get away with it, to see the face that haunted my dreams. To see her. Again and again, one more time, I'd needed to see her. Just one last night, to feel her. Nights when sleep evaded me, missing her form next to me in the dormitories and in the night when the moon was at its peak, taking a shovel and tearing up the dirt to see her again.

I watched her begin to decay, watching those lovely blue eyes rot out of her head. I brought her bandages to cover them, ignoring the smell of decay as I sat with her in the earth for as long as I could risk, whispering to her about my day, new things that we'd learned, bestowing kisses I had never been able to steal when she still breathed. How could I have? She was the provost's granddaughter, and I lacked any real connections like that. She'd deserved someone better.

I'd wept. Mourned for weeks like this in sickness. I knew her brain would be decaying, but I'd love her still, even without the genius I'd grown to adore, to idolize, to love with all my being. I missed it when she could whisper back to me, when we could stay up for hours, half-tangled in each other for warmth and hiss fervently about our studies, academic arguments and debated hypotheses.

Lab partners. Dormmates. Friends. Why not lovers? Why never lovers? Was it too much to wish for her to softly utter my name in her sweet voice once more? Lumnia, Lumnia...

Our last night together, she'd somehow stopped seeming so rotted, and I combed her white hair gently, somewhat confused that no strands were coming loose readily when they did before. I'd been aware I was sick. I knew this whole escapade was sickness, so I assumed perhaps I'd developed a fever and began to see spectres. It was that night that moonlight permeated her. I thought it a creation of my own sickened mind, conjured by the presence of the moon lingering overhead, looming like a boulder over our shoulders.

That night, it had gone dark, a cloud blocking out the light, perhaps, but my addled mind blacked out for several moments, and when my eyes worked again, Sabien's hand had closed around my wrist, cold and damp as the scent of the moon choked the air around us. No words came from my mouth as she lifted my hand from her head and sat up, silent. I sat frozen, astride her lap with the comb held tightly in my fingers, stiff from shock.

Sabien didn't even seem to fully process that I was there, only that there was something on top of her that she managed to wiggle out from beneath before turning to the edge of the grave and hoisting herself out of it. I watched her stumble slightly, the leg that Sabien had broken that wouldn't have healed before the infection or the bloodloss took her. I didn't remember which. Some sickness that took her too fast, killing her before we even had time to administer healing blood.

I watched Sabien's corpse walk with the slightest limp into the school where her friends and family slept and walk back out with a cane. She didn't turn her empty, bandaged-covered eye sockets towards me, let alone acknowledge my presence or that I'd been watching her.

And I stayed there in the dark, long after Sabien's corpse had disappeared into the trees and when I awoke, it was to my own fever breaking days later in the infirmary.

We'd never found her body and over the nearly three decades it had been since that night, the speculations of those around me who had found me catatonic in that empty grave and my doubts led me to believe that the whole incident had been some fever dream and in truth, I'd done something - moved it, destroyed it, sunk it into the lake. I'd certainly been ill in body and mind enough to forget if I'd done something.

The moon had disappeared sometime during my illness, and after a time I left Byrgenwerth, eager to escape the ghosts that had turned me so ill. The Choir was welcoming. They provided me with supplies for my studies, new kinds of blood, new kinds of beings, gave me test subjects at a steady rate, as long as I continued to produce results.

Moonlit scents were uncommon and often faint. A moon-blessed hunter was no sacred rarity and never did any of them carry the moon's scent so heavily as Sabien's corpse had.

Until now.

My hands felt clammy, enough so that I feared the vial could slip from my fingers. Frantically, I set the vial back in the rack with shaking hands and wiped my sweat-coated hands on my robes before snatching the vial and re-corking it.

I stomped down the stairs, my feet heavy with purpose as I stormed back to the doctor's side. The woman's head had lolled to the side, but I ripped out the gag and briskly slapped her cheek. Groggily, deliriously, her eyes reopened and she looked at me in confusion and alarm.

My demand was clear in the vial held in my hand. "Where did you get this?"

Iosefka blinked slowly, as if trying to push through the haze of Insight surely inflating her brain as everything began to melt to make way for stars, but we still had a window of time where she could talk.

I snapped my fingers close to her face and tapped at her cheek again. "The paleblood, Doctor, where did you get it!?"

Iosefka's pupils were starting to turn milky white and every once in a while a bone would crack as it slowly and painfully started to shift and reform itself. Her head rolled back to the side, but her eyes were trained on me, something like an amused wonder starting to dawn on her. "He called her Aydan," Iosefka mumbled.

A name, that's something. "And what did she look like," I demanded next.

The doctor had to think on this one, too. "Layers… she hides from not only herself, but another hides her, by her own design, playing with them, walking among them, as close to one of them as she can be… but she's revealed now..."

"Physically, please!" I was getting impatient, and the window of opportunity would close quickly.

And in her delirium, Iosefka managed something coherent from dry lips. "Eyes like the void, nothing there, with the nothingness leaking out, a decay that spreads and devours… pale like her blood… like her hair… small, but so… so unknowingly-" Iosefka's voice started to waver comprehension upon her that clearly overwhelmed her still developing Insight, "- large… but that mass is all in the cosmos, outside of her. A hand in a glove unaware of the arm-" Iosefka could not continue as mucus began to flood her throat, too twisted to let out a human utterance any longer.

The black decay of her eyeless corpse.

It was her. It had to be her.

It had to be Sabien, or at very least, the thing that had taken control of her corpse.

Laughter bubbled up in my chest, giddy and delicate, accompanying a surge of pain in my head.

The reality of the situation was quite obvious, wasn't it? Sabien, in all her beauty and genius, had been chosen as a vessel for the gods. A being more mighty, more powerful than Ebrietas, forgotten and alone. A being who had deigned to walk among them, a god gracing Yharnam with her presence.

It was not hard to become a moon-contracted hunter. I'd considered it before, simply to chase after what I'd thought had been visions of a fever dream.

The vial in my hands became a temptation.

What else would I do? Stay here and continue making Celestials when I knew a god in Sabien's skin was out there?

Or I could search for answers directly.

… Fuck it all.

The doctor started to scream, but I moved around the table and pulled a syringe from the tray. The needle dipped into that paleblood and I watched the milky blood fill the chamber. I would not dilute it. It felt like blasphemy to dilute this, this gift from the gods. Perhaps this meant I was chosen, too, that she left this here, that Sabien left this here for me. Join me, Lumnia, she'd say. Yes, yes…

No. Not Sabien.

The doctor said her name was Aydan.

Aydan. The goddess. The exalted.

"My Goddess, you deemed darling Sabien worthy of your love," I muttered to the syringe of purest paleblood as I rolled up my sleeve, taking only a moment to tie the tourniquet tight over my bicep, pulling it taut with my teeth. "I may be nothing compared to her splendor, but perhaps you'll accept my most humble of devotions."

The needle sunk into my flesh, gliding into a vein, a gentle kiss of pain, akin to a nibble from a lover.

A presence had settled over the room and the scent of the moon felt stronger than ever as I emptied the syringe slowly and carefully into my veins, undiluted. Stars exploded behind my eyes, but I kept my slow procession.

When the syringe emptied, I opened my eyes to a woman standing in front of me, small pale creatures crawling up my body, but in front of me stood a tall, uncanny woman, a woman who looked nothing like Sabien, with pale hair and a bonnet.

She reached out and ran what I saw now to be articulated, doll-like fingers, over my cheek. "We hear your prayers, sweet child. We are fragmented, but we hear you." Her voice was soft, lightly accented, and comforting. "You offer of devotion is… not satisfactory to us, however. We have many devotees."

What do you want, then? I'll do anything, I'll be anything-!

"Anything?" The woman put a finger to her chin, thinking. "We are seeking equals. Companionship." Her head tilted. "Would you like to become like us? It will be hard work, but you are a scholar. Perhaps you can help us find the correct path… is that something you'd want?"

The pale creatures' hands had reached my neck, clambering over each other. Yes. Thank you, merciful god, I knew I could be chosen. I knew I was special, thank you, Aydan.

The doll laughed, a soft sound. "Perhaps it is because we understand you better than ever, but… Oedon hears your prayers, Child. Come talk to me in the dream."

I woke up flat on the floor, a whole story away from where I'd begun my hallucination.

… Had this lamp always been here?

I reached out and touched it and it lit, and I felt my body disappear.

When I awoke, I was in a field of moonflowers, the woman - the Doll - from before held my head in her lap. "Hello, Good Doctor," she said.

I looked up at her in awe. The scent of the moon was… everywhere. "I'm not really much of a doctor, more of a researcher, really. Where is-"

"We are in three- well, now we are in two. We are one entity, but we've fragmented ourselves. The Blood Moon is upon us, and the Will of Oedon and well as the Body of Oedon have reunited by accident. I am but the Mind. The one you seek is the Body, though I believe that soon we will all be one, for the first time in an era…"

My… head hurt. I reached up and rubbed at my temples. "This is all-"

"Very painful for you, I'm sure. But you'll help us make more, ascending your race, yes?"

"I… I will try my best, My Goddess."

The Doll - the Mind of Oedon - gently pet the top of my head. "Good. You may rest for now. Stay here, where it is safe. You'll get to see her again soon enough."

And for some reason, this was okay. I laid there among the flowers, head rested against fabric and porcelain, and felt fully at peace.