A/N: Inspiration for this pivotal chapter comes from Lovecraft's Call of Cthulhu, and Shadow over Innsmouth. Perhaps one of the most passionate pices that I have ever written, it serves as the true turning point in the story as well as the lives of these characters. Playing this DLC was a true experience for me, and I hope that, whether or not you have taken this journey as well, this chapter provides similar emotions as the ones I felt. And, be warned, for this chapter contains extreme darkness, envisaging the human condition at its most depraved and vile.

I hope you enjoy!


Chapter Seven: Boundless Blue Sea

Could any of it be true?

The question haunted Gehrman as he lay back in his bed, head practically melting into his pillow, as the tight grasp of fatigue curled around him.

For certain, the Great Ones were no fable. He had first-hand evidence of this. Heck, he'd even had the blood of one between his fingers and under his nails, where only dozens of vigorous scrubs could clean.

But could another have come down to earth? And not just any cosmic entity either – Kos, a being purported by Byrgenwerth and the Church's research to be the embodiment of sight. The missing link between the world of the cosmos, and the world of men. Insight, if you will.

Ultimately, the answers didn't matter. No amount of understanding or comprehension of this strange world that he lived in could shake Gehrman's resolve.

Yearnsmouth had taken Rom – swallowed him whole, never to be seen again. And he wasn't about to lie down and accept that his old colleague was just gone like that. Not without some kind of resolution.

In the morning, Gehrman was straight out of bed, his hands fumbling beneath the wooden frame and tugging out the woollen bundle that he had stashed inside. His siderite blade, and the metal grip that he had subsequently built for it, practically shared his quarters with him now. Without them close by, the fluttering of his heart would not cease. The quivering of his fingers as he lay idle under his sheets.

They had shared every adventure with him. Every nightmare. They were one with him, and the hunt. And now they would serve him again, on the most important day of his life.

The sun peeked out from behind the blinds, and Gehrman knew the moment he had been dreading had arrived.

Morning had come.

As had his destiny.


"The expedition may last over a week. We are not prepared for what we may find. But you will need to bring every ounce of your strength with you. As you always have."

Gehrman looked about his party. The Workshop Hunters had come a long way since their creation – a beginning most unlike a fairy tale, shrouded in blood and fear and violence. He saw Izzy, one of the most violent members of the brigade, sharpening her claws with a knife. Upon noticing Gehrman's eyes upon her, Izzy gave him a dark smile, and Gehrman quickly pulled away.

"Do you know what to expect, captain?"

Gehrman turned to face the hunter who had spoken. "I'm afraid not, Logarius. All we have heard is whispers of monsters from fleeing locals. I suppose we can take from that what we will."

Logarius nodded, before his gaze was set on another. "Good morning, miss Maria."

Maria, who was geared up in her hunting attire, Rakuyo in its sheathe, nodded respectfully at Logarius, before her eyes fell on Gerhman. "Hey, captain."

Gehrman rolled his eyes. "I told you that you shouldn't call me that, Maria."

"Very well, captain," Maria chuckled. "You seem nervous."

"Is that wrong of me?" Gehrman asked, scrutinising his companion's expression closely.

Maria held his gaze firmly. "Of course not. I'm just surprised is all. You trained this company, and yet you seem more afraid than any of them."

Gehrman nodded slowly. "I know more than they. We are not facing ordinary beasts today, but a being from the cosmos. And, considering how fantastically that worked out last time…"

Maria sighed and gripped Gehrman's hand tightly. "We cannot possibly know what to expect. Stay strong, my friend. We still need your guidance."

"Do you heck," Gehrman muttered, smiling softly.

The crowd of hunters parted, and Laurence strolled through them, enormous, shell-like rucksack on his back. Ludwig walked beside him, his beloved sword of moonlight tucked away from view, but presence still felt keenly by all of those who knew the Holy Blade well. Even his eyes seemed to glimmer whiter now. It was as though the power of his blade held him completely in its thrall.

"Just like old times, eh?" Laurence said, addressing Gerhman and Maria. "An expedition into the unknown… the great beyond. Exciting, eh?"

"Let's just hope nobody gets hurt this time," Gehrman replied, now vividly picturing that fateful moment all those years ago below Yharnam, and the frightful images that it conjured – ones he could never quite expel.

Izzy snorted. "Oh, somebody is going to be harmed. I can quite earnestly assure you of that."

Ludwig looked across the way at his fellow hunter, disdain clear upon his squire-like features. The Holy Blade had only agreed to come in order to provide personal protection to Laurence, who had quickly taken a favoritism to his unique brand of hunting.

Laurence wrinkled his nose, apparently finding his bodyguard's words distasteful. "Remember, we are not monsters. These people have Rom, and if they are willing to part with him peacefully, there need be no violence."

Darkness crossed Izzy's face. It was clear that this wasn't any answer she had wanted to hear.

"We should depart," Laurence continued. "We have a great distance to cover before the sun falls."


The winding path to Yearnsmouth eventually ran through a dense forest. The canopies of trees loomed high above the party, and the knots of roots and vines, in the light of the late afternoon, became like veins. Cutting through them was a sickly affair, as though any misplaced swipe could cause a chain reaction through the entire forest. On top of this, a deep silver fog had set in, and the way ahead was no longer clear. Even by lantern-light, there was no way of pressing ahead at any reasonable pace without risk of injury.

Suddenly, this perfectly-ordinary forest was like another world, and not one that Gehrman felt particularly comfortable in.

"Maybe we should stop," he called. "It's growing dark, and we may become lost if we press on in such unfavourable conditions."

At their leader's command, every Workshop Hunter in the party stopped, much to Laurence's displeasure.

"Ignore him," he retorted. "We have to make it through the valley before dark, or we lose precious time."

The party did not respond to Laurence's command. The vicar felt the first embers of a fiery fury brewing in his chest.

"Are you deliberately ignoring an order from your leader?" he growled.

One of the Workshop Hunters, a round man named Barkley, replied sullenly. "You are not our leader. Gehrman is."

Even in the low light, Gehrman could see Laurence's expression contort with anger. "And I am his leader. I am the founder of the Healing Church, and you will do as I say!"

The Workshop Hunters continued their protest, their feet firmly planted upon the nest of brown, muddied leaves that littered the forest floor. Ludwig, a man fascinated by the Knight's code of old, stood by and watched with awe at the loyalty that the hunters bestowed unto their leader. Seeing no other option, Laurence looked desperately at Gehrman, who wearily raised a hand and cried "We will press on, as Laurence has suggested."

Immediately, the hunters started to walk again. Gehrman caught Laurence's eye just before he turned away, and he briefly saw the deepening resentment in the man's gaze, flickering like a dimming bulb before being extinguished. Maria was at Gehrman's side, and she too seemed unnerved by the sudden tension between the group. "What was that about?"

Gehrman shrugged quietly, certain that a sudden movement would again attract Laurence's spiteful attention.

The party hadn't walked far before stopping again, this time in the middle of a large stretch of black, tar-like mud. Barkley, who was at the head of the party, had frozen at the foot of the bog, his gaze fixed sternly on something unseen on the path ahead, obscured by a vortex of grey.

"What is it, Barkley?" Gehrman asked, peering out, but seeing nothing.

Barkley pointed a finger ahead of him. "There's a group of men, standing in the path…"

Sure enough, as Gehrman drew closer he could make out three tall shadowy figures standing in the middle of the swamped path ahead. Even from a distance, Gehrman could tell that they were armed; one carried a traditional blunderbuss whilst the other two had sabres in tucked inside their belt.

As Gehrman stepped closer, one of the men spoke.

"Take one more step and we will blow your head off."

By now, everyone in the party was aware of the threat. Several of them reached for their weapons on instinct alone, but Gehrman put out his palm, gesturing them to be still. Laurence rushed forward, Ludwig quickly tailing him. The vicar was already in an irate mood, and now he seemed completely oblivious to common sense, making a beeline straight for the fog-shrouded trio.

"We are armed as well!" he cried. "And we outnumber you nearly five-to-one. You will stand aside immediately!"

"We will do no such thing," the man replied. "I am Sergeant Doyle. This is Officer Lionel and Officer Rogers. We are here to arrest you on suspicion of conspiracy to commit genocide, and for the murder of Sergeant Clifford."

The daunting statement led to a gasp throughout the assembly. They were no longer facing highwaymen or bandits, but officers of the constabulary. And any action against them would make them all criminals.

Laurence did not react well to the inspector's demands. Almost immediately, he tapped Ludwig on the shoulder, giving the Holy Blade the signal that preventative action was about to become necessary.

"And what if I refuse?" he asked.

Doyle hefted his blunderbuss, pointing the barrel straight at Laurence's chest, where Ebrietas had already left her malicious mark.

"Then we will slaughter your party and bring you in by for-"

Sergeant Doyle never got to finish his ominous sentence. Just as he was gesturing to his colleagues to draw their own weapons, a black blur rushed at him out of the darkness, colliding with him hard. As Gehrman watched, horrified, Izzy's malicious gauntlets shredded straight through the man's midsection like it were made of butter, and with an empty gasp, his top half slid off of his bottom, bloodied meat spilling over the grass beneath.

Lionel and Rogers attempted to draw their own weapons, but were interrupted by a second flurry of slashes, which struck them both in quick succession, reducing them instantly to a puddle of guts on the ground.

Izzy turned to her party and gave them an odious grin. Ludwig, who had been arming himself just moments before, lowered his sword, the green light slowly retreating back into its glossy shaft. His face was a dictionary definition of sheer repulsion. The entire party was silent. Even Laurence, who had been all-but willing to order an attack, was mortified at the sight of the officers reduced in such a way. For a moment, he did not speak, his eyes fluttering as they attempted to wipe all traces of what they had seen away. Then, his voice came, low and painfully.

"Good work… Izzy… thank you."

One of the hunters violently vomited. Gehrman wished that he could join the man, the contents of his stomach also churning like a rough sea. But with it came a sensation of vacuum, and he knew that the relief would not come.

Hunts were one thing, but this was just murder. Plain and simple.

"We… continue," Laurence said weakly. "We are almost there."

They were not, in fact, almost there, or even close. Not that anybody was aware of that at the time, or cared when they later realised. They had rather a lot on their minds.


Loriana winced as the icy cold water ran down her fingers. The tunic that she was washing dripped like a faucet, the frigid lake waters that the townsfolk used for everything from cleaning to drinking coursing down. Shivering, she rubbed her hands together, trying hard to ignore the beginnings of scales along the backs of her hands as the waters below her ran a brief pink from the crushed soaps she was using.

Across the way, Loriana could see the fishermen hauling in their catches. Huge buckets, draped in seaweed, were being dragged along the beach, sand strewn recklessly in their wake. The pungent, rotten smell of a watery grave filled the air, and Loriana had to pinch her nose just to evade it.

Every so often, unnoticed or simply uncared about by the fishermen, a slimy, wriggling white mass would drop from out of their nets, burrowing quickly into the sand as soon as they landed. Loriana knew that the creature would resurface when it was dark, slithering across the wet sand at a glacial but determined pace, until it reached one of the local huts. When it found a villager, fast asleep in their beds, it would push its way down their throat, laying its spawn inside of their bellies, before crawling out again and finding a quiet place to die.

How nobody else saw any of this was astonishing. But Loriana had always been good at watching – even as a child.

Unfortunately, not quite good enough.

The back of her neck began to itch, and she quickly scraped her nails across it, flakes of her squamous skin falling free to be blown in the wind, like snowfall in winter.

The end times had come. And yet Loriana kept cleaning. For she was a washerwoman – it was the only life she knew.

"Lori?"

Loriana turned her head at the sound of her father's voice, strained, but still clear over the churning waves.

"Yes, father?" she called.

Maxwell, one of the hamlet's chief priests, was greying now, but possessed an almost-inhuman spring in his step. As he walked across the sands to meet his daughter, prayer book tucked beneath his scaly arm, he even managed a smile through crooked, withered teeth.

"My child, come to prayer this afternoon. I plead you."

Loriana's gaze dropped. "Father, we have talked about this. You know how I feel about it."

"And I wish to sway your mind - that is all…" Her father tucked his holy book away, and sat down wearily in the sands beside his daughter. Gaze seaward, he let out a long sigh. "You think us blasphemers, but can't you see, we are only embracing the path which was presented to us. I believe it is the path we were meant to walk."

"That thing is not a God," Loriana retorted, frustration welling up inside of her. "It's a monster. It should have been left well alone; let the sea take it back to whence it came. Can't you see what it has done to our village?"

Maxwell let his eyelids close, and he replied in a sombre voice. "I can see all too clearly, my child. Mother Kos has blessed us. She has given us the chance to be reborn."

Loriana pounded her fist in the mushy sand. "You can't really believe that!"

"The evidence is there for all to see," Maxwell replied calmly. "You cannot deny it. You too bear her kiss…"

Loriana, instantly flooded with shame and disgust, drew her headscarf around the exposed scales that ran down her neck.

"I'd sooner die than praise the abomination that has doomed my family," Loriana spat, rising to her feet angrily. "I can't believe you still think yourself a man of faith. No God created this. The devil did."

Maxwell was no longer listening, however. He sat quietly, with his head bowed, listening to the sea, and muttering under his breath.

"Plip…plop…plip...plop…"


As the first light of dawn rose over the hills in the east, Gehrman caught his first glimpse of the fishing hamlet.

Outside of Old Yharnam, he had never seen such a squalid place in his entire life. The grey morning sky was an oasis of colour and beauty compared to the ramshackle cluster of huts, walkways and rope-suspended fishing equipment that greeted the party. The scent of the ocean, all salty and crisp, was nearly entirely obscured by the haze of death that filled the air. Even for a hunting village, where fish are gutted and drained of their insides as a way of life, the stench was overwhelmingly potent, and several members of the party drew back on first contact with the miasma.

"Smells worse than the canal!" Barkley grunted, waving a hand in front of his face.

"I like it," Izzy smiled. "The scent of the hunt back home was growing stale."

"Remember, we give them a chance to give up peacefully," Gehrman declared. "There doesn't have to be bloodshed."

"No," Izzy said. "But it would be preferable."

As the party drew closer, the swinging lanterns and fishing nets becoming visible, a lone figure stepped out into the path ahead. Even from a distance, Gehrman could see the man was armed, a large hook and rope in his left hand.

"I guess you folks didn't get the message clearly enough last time," the figure cried out, voice gravelly and cold. "We don't take kindly to outsiders here. Especially not Byrgenwerth filth."

Gehrman stepped forward, in spite of Laurence's clear antagonism towards the new arrival, curling his fists silently.

"What did you do to them?" he shouted. "Rom, and the others?"

"The ocean has them now," the man growled. "And if you don't turn right back around, you'll be joining them."

"You and whose army?" Izzy sneered, edging forwards, much to Gehrman's unease.

The man raised his arms high, and at the signal, around thirty sailors with hooks, machetes, harpoons and firebombs filtered out into the opening from places of concealment all around the town's front houses.

"Last chance," Gehrman warned. "We have weapons, but we don't want to use them."

"Liar," the man said, a sickening grin on his face. With a bellow, he gave the order to attack, both arms raised into the air. However, before a single firebomb could be cast, Ludwig stepped forwards, slicing the tip of his luminous blade into the earth, and volleying a shockwave of green across the ground.

The resulting damage was hideous. The front flank, consisting of some five or so men, was obliterated, blood and tattered clothes pirouetting through the air. The remaining crowd was thrown aside, panic racing through them like flames catching oil.

Ludwig watched the ensuing destruction with a great sorrow. He closed his eyes, letting the moonlight behind his eyelids soothe his frayed nerves. "Forgive me."

Recovering quickly from the attack, the lead sailor screamed. "Kill them!"

Gehrman looked at his party, and gave a silent nod. At his command, the Workshop Hunters sprinted into battle, blades raised, and firearms practically steaming at the barrel. In the ensuing chaos, Gehrman spotted Maria, and gave chase, determined to keep his friend from harm.

The surviving sailors did not recoil from the sight of the attacking forces, many of them rushing forward to meet them head-on. Meat hooks were swung, but few of them met their targets, for the Workshop Hunters were inhumanly agile, fuelled by an electrifying cocktail of cosmic blood and adrenaline. Barkley led the charge, his enormous steel hammer raised. As he met with a machete-wielding sailor, he swung with abandon, crushing the man's arms to pulp, before pulverising the remains for good measure. Off to the side, the feral Izzy tangled with a sailor wielding a dual set of jack-knives. Her talons, hued from a beast she had mercilessly slaughtered on a hunt, carved through the man with ease, his gashing blows barely enough to stagger his maddened attacker.

Blood sprayed in the surf, the sand discoloured by the sanguine. Amidst the ruinous battle, Gehrman caught up with Maria, as she came face-to-face with the elder fisherman who had first greeted the party. He had been hit by a stray bullet, and blood was gushing from his shoulder, but he continued to swing out with his hook, pure hatred clouding his features.

"They're all dead, ya hear me!" he wailed. "You will never see your friends again!"

Maria watched, mournful, as the man helplessly swung, slowly backing up against the wall, and continuing to spew as much abuse as he could manage.

As though noticing the kinship between his onlooker and Gehrman, the man who had brought this hell to his door, he pointed a quivering finger at the pair. "Mother Kos will desecrate your wretched whore, and make you watch, you pitiful, vile-"

The man fell silent as Maria lurched forward, stabbing the man through the heart with both blades of her Rakuyo. When she was absolutely certain that no further sound would come out of his scaly lips, she withdrew her blades, and let his lifeless, blood-soaked corpse slide into the wet gravel.

"What happened to these people…?" Maria whispered, seeing now for the first time the extent of corruption that had overtaken the sailors. All that remained of the man's human form was his eyes – the rest of his body had been horribly malformed, fins and grey scales all over his body, and a pair of gills on both sides of his neck.

Gehrman did not reply. There was no answer that he could give that could grant her any comfort. Behind him, the sounds of fighting began to recede. As Laurence looked on, safe at a distance, he saw Ludwig drive his luminous sword through an attacking fish-man, cleaving him open from the top of his spine. The hysterical bloodshed was nearly more than the scholar could bear, but yet he watched, mesmerised as the horrifying disciples of Kos were cut down brutally and without a hint of mercy.

As the last drops of blood hit the water, Gehrman saw Barkley on his knees, and rushed to his side. He quickly saw the knife that had been thrust into his side, and let out a furious curse. The hunter rolled onto his side, looked up at his leader, and smiled.

"That was a fine hunt," he murmured, voice faint and growing softer by the second.

"You never disappoint us, Barkley," Gehrman replied, clasping the man's outstretched hand as his sea-blue pupils began to dilute and waver.

"I have research back at the Workshop," Barkley whispered. "If you would use it however you can, you would do me one last honour…"

"Of course," Gehrman nodded. "The Workshop has no finer craftsman."

Barkley chuckled, nearly inaudible over the crashing of the waves. "You know what I say… "'If it ain't got kick, it just ain't worth it...'"

Gehrman smiled as the sombre nature of the moment was completely overshadowed by the goofiness of the old Powder Keg's famous saying. However, the joy quickly turned to despair as Barkley's head dropped, and his body went deathly still.

"Rest well," Gehrman whispered, before turning to face the rest of his fellow hunters. Their numbers remained strong – it seemed that Barkley was the only casualty thus far.

"Don't let his death be for nothing," he cried. "Rejoice in our conquest."

"Not yet, I'm afraid" a voice cut in.

Ludwig had turned a corner into the hamlet, and stumbled upon something quite horrific. As Gehrman, Maria and Laurence rounded the corner, they saw it too, and gasped.

The Byrgenwerth party led by Rom had all been decapitated, and their heads placed on fishing spears all around the village. Although the heads were deeply-charred, some of them to the point of indistinguishability, there was no mistaking their origin. These fish-men abominations had paraded their vicious manslaughter around like a celebration, and kept the trophies for all to see. Such revelations were more than the Workshop Hunters – men and women used only to the sport of killing mindless beasts – could comprehend.

Gehrman felt the mood of the party change almost immediately. Before, there had been elements of anger factoring into the hunters' bloody slaughtering, but now, there was only simmering fury rippling throughout the entire party. Many of the Workshop Hunters had once been scholars at Byrgenwerth, and seeing the horrific fate of their old colleagues was like a stake through their chests.

Whatever these villagers had become – human, or nay - they had now sealed their fate.


Loriana shot out of bed. Through her open window, the sound of gunfire was growing to a climax, and a dreadful cacophony of combat – metal clashing and flesh tearing – was bounding down the streets.

Her father, still dressed up for church, was sat in his mouldy old armchair by the window. He watched as the smoke rose up above the slate rooves of his neighbours' houses, geysers of blood staining the walls and sand like a ghoulish art display, and spoke not a word of response. He barely even looked up when his daughter burst in, her face a white sheet of sheer terror.

"Father, we have to leave!" she cried. The old priest made no attempt to move, however.

"It's like I always knew," he whispered, a deep sorrow emanating from him as he sat lifelessly in his old seat. "Communion with the gods is a matter reserved only for the dead. I suppose we just got in early…"

Loriana grabbed her father by his frail, bony arm, and shook him hard, hoping that she would somehow shake loose the blinds that had obscured his common sense for so long. "Father, please! We will die!"

Maxwell still did not move. His mouth hung open, and as several strange men, all carrying awful serrated weapons of the kind that Loriana had never before seen ran past the window, the last reserves of the old man's mind seemed to finally break and fall away, as his once-powerful voice devolved into mindless whispers.

"Plip…plop…plip…plop…"

Suddenly, the window was hit with a loud bang, and the glass exploded inwards, scattering across the carpet. Several shards imbedded themselves into the motionless Maxwell, who did not stop his chanting. Loriana screamed as a duo of cloaked figures leapt into their house. One of them held a huge blade that shone with a strange green light, and as Loriana met the figure's gaze, she realised that she knew exactly where it was headed.

"Please, don't do this…" she begged.

Ludwig tried his best to ignore the woman's feeble cries, and with evident reluctance, pierced her abdomen with the tip of his blade. The woman's face was contorted with pain, and as she threw her head back and screamed, the scales on her neck shone against the sword's shimmering glow. At the sight of the unholy corruption, Ludwig's somber slaughter spiraled out of control, and into something far more hideous, fear taking over and welling up inside of him like an overflowing faucet. Withdrawing his blade for a second, he then proceeded to drive it through the woman again and again, up to five times, before finally slicing through her like a sheet of paper.

Maxwell still didn't look up, even as his daughter was butchered like an animal, one of the hunters going so far as to cut open the top of her head and rummage about inside of her skull. He was lost in a swirling maelstrom of thoughts, none of which were his own, and as the man who had killed his daughter turned his blood-sodden blade unto him, he barely even felt it.


Some of the hunters broke into the hamlet's lighthouse and pilfered the stock of oil reserves. Within minutes, the village was on fire, the wild plumes of flame licking across the whole town in mere minutes, incinerating every last they touched.

Most of the villagers were – mercifully, perhaps – already dead by the time the flames caught their bodies, but those who lacked such fortune could be heard from miles away, their piercing wails breaking the otherwise tranquil silence that had descended upon the Yearnsmouth Coast. Unfortunately, their fishy scales did not grant them any kind of immunity to flame, and they burned like firewood in the ashes of their shacks.

Gehrman kept his distance from the majority of the bloodshed. He too was enraged by the disgusting treatment of his Byrgenwerth colleagues, but the extent of the revenge wrought upon the hamlet was extreme, even by his standard of slaughter. The stench of fish that had previously permeated the air was now replaced by one far worse – the smoke of a hundred dead bodies as they were turned to ash and sent dancing through the air. As he slowly walked across an old stone courtyard, the red haze of embers in his wake, he saw that several villagers' bodies had been strung up in a similar fashion to that of Rom's party, their dangling corpse's arranged into a crude approximation of the Workshop's signature symbol.

The mark, now synonymous with the nightly hunt, had been adapted from a Pthumerian word for peacekeeping. The irony of the observation was bitter in Gehrman's mouth, and he found himself pausing to gaze at the odious symbol, fighting back the urge to vomit.

"We did what we had to," a voice behind him said.

Maria, her Rakuyo dampened with the blood of many, many villagers, was also fixated on the symbol, but her features betrayed no internal guilt or suffering. In fact, she was far too calm for the situation she was in. Just seeing this filled Gehrman with an indescribable, sickly coldness.

"The spirits of our comrades may rest in peace now," she whispered. "And we have so much to gain from all of this. Imagine the insight we may gain if we carry out research on these malformed creatures… Just think about th-"

"Maria, please!" Gehrman cried. "This is a massacre. It is nothing to be celebrated!"

Maria stopped, and looked on at Gehrman. He saw a deep dark in her eyes that hadn't seemed to exist before, and, as she arched her shoulders and curled her fists tighter around her Rakuyo, he realised that she had turned her fury onto him.

"And I'd expected so much more from you… The man who started this whole thing! The man who spilled the first blood in our war with the cosmos!"

Gehrman froze, remembering how he had thrown that pick at Ebrietas, all those years ago, in a moment of weakness.

A moment of fear…

"Could… Could I actually be responsible for this…?"

Before Gehrman could offer up any sort of response, the pair's attention was drawn by a slight cry from one of the adjacent buildings. Flames had already started to crawl up its wooden structure, but through the wisps of billowing black smoke, Gehrman made the figure of a small child, crouched under the burning beams.

"We have to help her!" Gehrman shouted.

Maria made a look as though she wanted to challenge him, but no words came. Gehrman ran towards the house, ignoring the fierce pain that filled his lungs with every intake of breath.

"Hold on!" he cried, hoping that the child could hear him.

The figure did not move, apparently not recognising the oncoming man as one of the horde that had brought ruin to her town. Or, perhaps the desire to live outmatched the fear that the girl must have felt. But, when Gehrman was just inches from the child's face, the light from the flames illuminated their face, and the hunter drew back, horrified.

This was no human. The 'child's face was horribly misshapen, bloated in the cheeks and closely resembled a fattened fish, rather than a person. The sight of the young child, so horribly malformed, was enough to shock Gehrman into a complete standstill, only ceasing when the roof of the burning shack groaned and caved inwards, sending the hunter sprawling onto his back, the cold waters beneath him swiftly jolting him back to lucidity.

The child's screams were lost in the chaos, and as Gehrman slowly rose to his feet, blinking back tears through stinging eyes, a wilful, unshakeable sorrow writhing deep in his core.

Even Maria, whose bloodlust towards the villagers had been some of the most shocking, was deathly white now against the red haze that lit up the world behind her. Petrified, she dropped her Rakuyo with quivering hands, and fell onto her knees.

"What have we done?" she whispered, then louder. "What have we done?!"

Laurence, accompanied as always by his zealous bodyguard, came rushing into the clearing. His expression was at once both one of catatonia and rapture, and, through breathless gasps, he spoke to the duo of Gehrman and Maria.

"We've found the beach… The origin of all of this awaits us there… Come on!"

Sharp numbness had set into Gehrman's legs, and yet he walked, propelled by something more than just sheer will. It was almost as though a desire to make amends - to atone - had replaced everything else. Maria followed suit, choking back tears as the black smoke storm reached the courtyard, the gaseous black tendrils reaching out from all directions.

The winding path down to the ocean inlet led the party through a series of caverns. Just before stepping into the darkness once again, Gehrman took one last look at the streaks of orange and red that lit up the sky behind him, a single, sorrowful sigh escaping his lips.

Then, the first hunter was gone, swallowed by the black from whence he came.