Chapter 1: The Truth

He'd been to the deepest parts of the chalice dungeons, the highest parts of the nightmares lying above the heads of the ignorant all for answers he never got. No matter how much blood he bloodied his blade with nothing ever changed, too prideful to accept the final offer given by the only father he'd ever had he kept fighting till his own muscles broke his will.

Once more he entered the garden of pure white, he always liked this part. A small piece of tranquility amid his ever-darkening thoughts a few moments before he had to turn his head toward a once great man with one great battle left in him. He sighed, with shoulders now more slumped than one would expect he approached the tree footsteps heavy and contemplative.

"Good Hunter… You seem different than ya usual sure ways" Gehrman spoke with a little twist of a knowing scowl. He knew not to get his hopes up, they usually offered some other sayings if he broke his mask too suddenly, a few lines of new talking points before the line corrected itself and nothing would change for the better. Something clicked.

"How many hunters have you seen through this dream?" He spoke with a rather resigned tone, not one of knowing but of sad truth.

"Ah… A few dozen or so, it gets hard to keep them straight" He swept his gaze to the endless top-less forest, and Gehrman's followed. "How many of us have you seen Good Hunter?" His eyes went a little wide but his gaze remained locked on the fog before him.

"More than you'd like to know" He said in a whisper, "Did you know it would be like this for me?" He said with realization building up in his body, screaming at him as to not have seen the truth sooner.

A chuckle "Yes… but words will not change a hunter path will they?" Those words were left up in the air for a moment. "They all strive for a satisfying ending do they not?... They also all learn that no matter how many times you strike the dream down you will always wake up on those stones again" He breathed in one of the last moon-scented breaths he would ever take. His head spun to look at the newly risen Gerhman.

"Then there is truly only one way out of this moon-tainted Hell. Truly? All of my struggles in the face of gods for naught? Why must I go through near centuries of torment to be let go, to finally get an ending that might satisfy me enough so I end up back on that blood-stained table?" His knees slid in the dirt, flowers bending in pity. Gerhman got closer.

"It isn't the scythe that sends you to live the rest of your life in that sun-kissed world" The blade snapped into the handle securely, as Gerhman took another step to the finally beaten hunter. "It's that you realize that the only way you win this battle is by giving up, not going on to find an answer in your next hundred lives. That's the only way you get to experience the morning that has always eluded us, by knowing that there was no other option." The last step was taken, and with it a silence unlike any other came around them, no burning, no moon-swept wind, and no quiet hum of the moon.

He would not stare at this tortured man's feet, so he looked up into eyes that held an envy he could not place. Before he said his last words in this world of white he wondered what it would take to get Gerhman out of this, slashing, barging, usurping. None of it ever worked, not even for a moment, there would always be another hunter, another doll and the same old Gerhman sitting and waiting for the time he got to die in peace.

What would await him he thought, a city ripped apart in all senses. He didn't know and to be honest with himself he did not care, at least not at this moment. Maybe he would do something that matters, after all he would only get one chance to do it, then might his actions mean more? He looked up into Gerhmans eyes with a sorrow that only lifetimes could produce. The blade raised to take life quickly and gracefully, he would need no more words. The talking had already been done, the one thing that made him think he could make a difference taken from him just as it had been with the old man in front of him. They were no longer hunters, not since they stepped foot in this dream, just leashed animals fighting for the profit of its master.

He shook his head and opened his eyes for the final time, the pair looked at each other for a time, before he nodded his head and closed his eyes to await his new life. Gerhman knew not to keep him waiting, the last thing he wanted to be was cruel.

A diagonal half turn, a quiet whistling, and the afterlife no one wanted had started.

.

.

.

Hard, cold stone, that's the first thing he felt upon his newly awakened form along with a slowly rising warmth that made his mind clear for the first time in an untold amount of hours. The first words to come from the lips of a newly-roused hunter were quite fitting for all that he had gone through.

"Well, that was traumatic"

A/N time

I wanted a story of a hunter giving up and then trying their best in the basically post-apocalyptic city of Yarham after a hunt. But no one made one so boom world building the story. With a baseline character motivation I can conquer the world.