CH 20, Catacombs of Yharnam. Tombs of the Pthumeru
For reader notice. I have 3 ongoing fics. Void Hero, TWTGH (the want to go home), and Geneticist. I go between updating each one and attempt to update each once to twice a month when possible.
I would also like to invite you all to my Discord server for my fics— /tsCyUV2m6k . I do polls, post announcements for the chapters, and have links to all the important things on that server. It recently got a facelift as well, with the new surge in activity. Being on the server means you get to vote for the different fics and maybe even change a fate or two.
IN ADDITION, here is my link tree link, it has most if not all the links connected to me. /LittleLamb31532
In order to tell a better story, as most have noticed I've taken liberty to alter the story of bloodborne and alter a large bit of the landscape, this is very apparent for the chalice dungeons which I adore. I find the comments on to be hilarious when they freak out about the changes to bloodborne or hate on Izuku being the mc, suck it up respectfully to anyone who finds my changes in bad taste, I quite literally don't care for hate for my fics. These are crossover fics, the lore was fucked from the beginning for both universes involved
Anyway, back to the fic.
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There was nothing quite as terrifying as being caught between the glares of two women who looked almost identical but were upset for entirely different reasons.
On one side stood the Doll—Izuku's caretaker and constant companion. She was the one who patiently accepted the echoes of blood he offered, empowering him with strength that defied mortal limits. Despite her calm demeanor, her piercing gaze now held a tinge of disappointment that cut through him like a blade.
On the other side was Lady Maria of the Astral Clocktower—a hunter of legend. Taller, more commanding, and infinitely more intimidating, she exuded an air of deadly precision that reminded Izuku how easily she could have left him in a broken heap had he been weaker. The two women might have shared features, but Maria's fiery temper and stern disposition were a stark contrast to the Doll's serene gentleness.
Izuku tried to piece together why they were both angry at him. His mind raced, but all he could recall was giving a quick hug to the two little girls and accepting a small treat from the old lady…
Oh.
Shit.
It hit him like a cannonball. He had brought Lady Maria to the Hunter's Dream—a monumental event, really for the people of the dream—and had yet to speak with her since. Not even a word of acknowledgment of her presence. Worse still, he'd been so consumed with his tasks that he hadn't properly expressed his gratitude to the Doll for her unwavering kindness and care through the bout of sickness.
That has to be it… right?
Izuku glanced nervously between the two women, Maria's glare burning into him like molten steel. She didn't say a word, but the weight of her gaze was enough to make his knees tremble. Just as he opened his mouth to stammer out some kind of apology, Maria sighed sharply, her expression shifting from irritation to exasperation.
With a dismissive shake of her head, she turned her attention to Gehrman, who sat in his chair nearby, looking like a scolded schoolboy. Maria's voice rose sharply, and Izuku winced as she animatedly yelled at the old man, punctuating her frustration with the occasional slap to the back of his head. Gehrman flinched but otherwise took the scolding in stride, muttering what sounded like half-hearted excuses under his breath.
Izuku took that as his chance to escape. He skirted the scene briskly, offering a sheepish smile in Maria's direction before making his way to the Doll. Her gaze softened slightly as he approached, though a faint shadow of disapproval still lingered in her otherwise serene expression.
"Doll-," Izuku began, his voice tentative, "I… I'm sorry. I've been so caught up in everything that I haven't been as thankful as I should be. You've always been here for me, and I… I really appreciate you." He spoke softly as he bowed to her. He truly felt bad, he focused so hard on improving his tools he had lost track of making sure his closest friend was feeling appreciated.
The Doll's lips curved into a gentle smile, her hands folding in front of her. "Oh, Hunter," she said softly, "it brings me joy to see you thrive. There is no need for apologies. But," her head tilted slightly, a glint of amusement in her pale eyes, "a kind word now and then does warm this cold shell."
Izuku chuckled nervously, scratching the back of his head. "I'll… I'll work on that." He meant it, if it hadn't been for her and Gherman in the early days he would have folded under the stress. He forgot that in the nightmare, but he wouldn't again.
Behind him, the sound of Maria's continued chastisement of Gehrman echoed through the Dream, punctuated by yet another loud smack. Izuku shuddered. Better her focus is on him than me, he thought as he gave the Doll a quick hug. Her arms wrapped around him tightly, a moment of warmth and calm in the chaotic world they inhabited, before he softly pulled away and headed back up the cracked stone stairs and into the Hunter's Workshop.
He wasn't in there for long, moving with practiced efficiency as he collected his items and tools. Beast Blood Pellets, enhanced Molotovs, and spare vials of quicksilver were carefully packed away into his satchel. He double-checked his gear, ensuring that every strap was secure and every weapon sharpened. This journey would take him deep into the dungeons beneath Yharnam, far past the reaches of any known map.
The maps left behind by long-dead spelunkers provided only the faintest guidance. Their tattered pages were marked with cryptic notes and warnings that sent a chill down Izuku's spine. The furthest explored section by any ordinary hunter was ominously labeled as the "Cursed Layers." The author's final entries told of horrors that grew more nightmarish the deeper they ventured.
One note in particular stood out, scrawled in hurried, uneven writing: "After ten layers, the monsters grew stronger, more cunning. My companions… gone. My body… frail. By the eleventh layer, even brushing against fallen stones left my skin bruised. A mere scratch would fester and worsen as though the dungeon itself sought to consume me."
Izuku frowned as he reread the words, his mark itching faintly. He hadn't experienced anything like what the note described—not yet, at least. But something about the warning felt uncomfortably true, a whispered threat that settled in his gut like a stone.
He closed the map carefully, tucking it into his bag. Whatever lay ahead, he knew he couldn't afford to let his guard down. He knew that there were people who had gone farther than this map showed. Legends of men who first found the crypts and labyrinths beneath the city—all of which were now dead and gone. All their notes that they may have had hidden in relation to the dungeons—maps, books—any form of writing were long gone, either burned or lost.
Izuku had looked thoroughly for anything more than what he had already stumbled upon. From the upper cathedral ward to the hunters' workshops through Yharnam—every book he had collected from the nightmare. Nothing he had was as detailed as the scrawled notes of Morgan Le Surrel, a compatriot of Irreverent Izzy.
With a final stretch, Izuku made his way to a gravestone that once stood empty—now thriving with motion. The messengers that claimed it as their own waved at him excitedly, their skeletal hands jittering with energy. Their eyeless sockets seemed fixed on him as he knelt before them.
"Take me to the entrance to the first level of the dungeons below the city, my little friends," he said softly.
They chattered eagerly, their small hands reaching out to grasp him. In a wash of fading, false light, he vanished from the Hunter's Dream.
A breath later, Izuku stood beneath the blood moon's heavy gaze once more. The air here was oppressive, thick with the scent of rot and decay. He gripped the twin daggers tightly, the weight of them familiar and comforting in his hands. His eyes scanned his surroundings, his grin spreading slowly across his face. The sharp glint of his teeth—far more predatory than any human's—caught the faint moonlight as he descended the first steps. This place was old, older than even the foundations of Yharnam. It could even be considered the foundation now that Izuku thought about it.
Everything linked back to these labyrinthine halls.
The stench grew worse with every step, an ancient and overwhelming reek of death and stagnant air seeping from the depths below. The stairs were cracked and uneven, slick with moss and something darker. This was the city's underbelly, a festering pit hidden beneath the streets where he had hunted for what felt like an eternity. To the people of Yharnam, it had all been but a single night. To him, it was a lifetime of survival, bloodshed, and nightmares.
Flipping the dagger in his left hand, Izuku muttered a word in the incomprehensible tongue of the Great Ones. "Flame." His lips didn't rip, his tongue didn't flay, progress he thought.
The blade roared to life, blood-red fire engulfing the steel in a vivid, flickering light. The crimson glow illuminated the stairwell, casting jagged shadows that seemed to twist and writhe on the walls. He felt their gaze—eyes hidden in the shadows, unblinking, waiting. His spine tingled as he moved forward. Kos was always watching, wasn't she?
Izuku's free hand hovered briefly over the mark burned into his arm. He felt it pulse faintly, a reminder of the pact he had made to his mother. The sensation filled him with a strange mixture of reverence and love, and yet dread. Kos—the incomprehensible, infinite being—was the only thing he truly feared.
Nothing in the abyss before him could ever compare to the overwhelming love of something so far beyond human understanding. He shook his head, forcing the thought aside, and continued his descent, mumbling his lessons from Ebrietas with each step.
"The arcane arts are not magic, but fundamentals," he recited, his voice a faint murmur against the suffocating silence that was only broke by each echoing step. "Hunter tools are the application of these principles: a will exerted upon reality."
He adjusted his grip on the daggers, the weight of their blood-hardened siderite grounding him as he pressed forward. "The Executioner Gloves shackle the dead, forcing their tortured hatred to manifest when the correct amount of blood or quicksilver were absorbed by the ever thirsting fabric." He paused for a moment to catch a breath, "The Tiny Tonitrus bends the laws of lightning into obedience, consuming blood or quicksilver to bridge the gap between thought and thunder."
He paused once more—briefly—his chest rising and falling with controlled breaths as he took the stairs slowly. His eyes flicked across the darkened stairwell, his thoughts settling on the truth of the Caryll runes. "Runes… symbols carved into memory itself, a cost taken from the mind to grant power." He could still feel the cold absence left behind by his chosen three.
Unlike most hunters, who were blind to what they lost, Izuku knew. He had memorized every detail of those memories before they slipped away out of his reach, they would never be the same, never again. The old man in the park who handed him a coin for the bus; his mother's exact eye color, a green so soft it rivaled moss kissed by rain; the price of rice from the grocery store in Musutafu. The knowledge was a double-edged blade—it strengthened his resolve but tore at him with the weight of what was missing. He felt the edges of them, rough and absent, he could remember describing them out loud and yet, he couldn't remember them from his own point of view.
The runes however could be invoked by those strong enough to wield them like the most basic of arcane words. But even for Izuku, invoking the runes was a test of will. The costs—blood, quicksilver, his very health—they had once been beyond his reach. Not anymore.
He stopped just shy of the final step, his breath misting in the stale, icy air. His eyes fixed on the rotted door before him, the weight of the unknown pressing on his chest. His foot was barely above the final step as his mind raced, what rune would help him here that he didn't lose memories for. What would be worth the cost of blood? With a deep breath, he spoke.
"Eye."
The word was an order. Yet the final oral movement faltered as he spoke.
The effect was immediate, pain crashing through him like a tidal wave. His legs buckled, and his foot caught the edge of the step too late to stop his fall. With a choked cry, Izuku swung his dagger down, the blade screeching against the stone as it found purchase in the nearby wall, barely keeping him upright.
Agony exploded through his jaw. He doubled over, gasping, as the flesh beneath his skin writhed unnaturally. His lower jaws muscles gave way as if a blade sliced through them, the stringy muscle pulling away with wet, sickening snaps like soaked ropes. Warm blood poured from his mouth in torrents, its metallic tang flooding his senses as it splattered against the stone steps below. His mind barely registered his right hand catching his jaw before it fell off.
His left hand fumbled for his bag as he leaned against the wall, the dagger buried deep in the stone. Izuku's vision was blurring from the pain as his jugular arteries splattered blood onto everything around him. His fingers found the vial he needed, and he wrenched it free, his breath ragged as he with a sharp motion, he drove the vial into his cheekbone. The glass shattered with a gruesome crunch, embedding itself into his flesh. The blood within the vial coursed through the wound, its restorative properties surging to life. He tried to grit his teeth—but realized as he flexed muscles long snapped it was worthless—muscle and sinew began to knit back together like spiderwebs. The process was violent and unnatural, his jaw snapping back into its sockets as though jerked into place by invisible hands.
The nauseating crack echoed in the silence as the jaw reset itself. Izuku spat a glob of blood onto the stone, the sharp taste lingering on his reforming tongue. His breath came in shaky gasps, his body trembling as he wiped his chin with the back of his hand.
"Damn it…" he attempted to mutter, his voice hoarse but steady. He wasn't sure if it worked.
The shards of the broken vial crunched underfoot as he straightened, retrieving his daggers from the gouged stone. His mark throbbed faintly, a distant hum of energy reminding him of the weight he bore. He shook his head, small tinks sounded off as the glass in his cheek fell loose.
He fixed his gaze on the door ahead, its ancient wood warped and twisted by time. Beyond it lay the barely mapped catacombs, a path that promised only blood and madness. Izuku adjusted the grip on his daggers, the blades glinting faintly in the dim light. He had dealt with both in spades. A little more couldn't break him any further. His hand fell to his bag, pulled out a small watch, and clicked it to start. Just in case.
With a final breath, he stepped forward. His gloved hands pressed into the old wood, muscles tensing as he heaved it open. His eyes caught the faint ridges clawed into the wood—fingernail gouges and jagged tally marks etched into the surface. Passing through the ancient archway, he blinked, the air thick with dust and stagnant decay. With a thought, fire engulfed his left blade once more, the crimson light bathing the narrow hall.
The flames revealed even more. The claw marks continued on the walls, carving a path of desperation. Small stains of dried blood dotted the floor—dark brown against gray stone. He wouldn't have noticed these details if not for how much clearer everything was since he spoke the word.
A grin split his face, the firelight glinting off his bloodstained teeth. He had succeeded.
His moment of triumph was cut short as a thin, frail figure lunged at him from the creeping shadows. The attack came with a pitiful growl, the sound wet and gurgling, more animal than human. The figure's long nails scraped against the thick fabric of Izuku's garb, leaving shallow marks but nothing more. Their grip was weak, pitiful even, a ghost of strength that would have been no threat to him even when he first arrived in this nightmare.
Izuku grabbed a handful of the thin, greasy hair from atop their head and slammed them into the stone floor with a brutal crack. Their brittle skull gave way on impact, dark brackish blood erupting like tar from the shattered remains. The wall beside him was splattered in a sickly black smear, chunks of bone and brain clinging to the cracks between the stones. He didn't pause to look at the lifeless body as he wiped his hand on the fabric of his coat and kept moving.
He entered the next room and let out a low chuckle. Three doors greeted him—two closed, one locked, and no immediate path forward. The map flashed through his mind, and he cursed under his breath. Of course, the way down was locked.
He hated the architects of Yharnam for their twisted city, but now his hatred extended to the ancients who had built this labyrinthine catacomb.
He made his way to the locked door, glaring at the rusted grips that held it shut. His gloved fingers wrapped around the handle, giving it a tentative lift. The lock groaned in protest, but the mechanism was stubborn—sturdier than he'd anticipated. But it wasn't beyond his strength.
Planting his feet wide, he squared his shoulders and braced himself. With a sharp crack of his back, he heaved. The ancient mechanism resisted for a brief moment before giving way with a thunderous snap. The lock shattered, fragments of rusted iron scattering across the floor as the door groaned open. The sharp echo of metal breaking reverberated through the first floor, a sound that made Izuku instinctively grab for his daggers.
With the path ahead opened, he stepped forward into the dark, fire still dancing across his blade and his grin still firmly in place. A low whistle escaped his lips as he descended another small flight of stairs, the stone beneath his boots the same aged Yharnam masonry as the floor he had bypassed with brute strength. He needed to be quick—the first few floors were guarded by weak-hearted beasts and raving madmen, but the deeper he went, the more strain he would have to endure. The horrors below would not tire, but his supplies would.
At the base of the stairs, a large brass door loomed before him, tarnished with age and streaked with something dark that had dried long ago. He pressed his shoulder against it, the metal groaning as it gave way, scraping along the stone floor with a sound that set his teeth on edge. His mind, however, was elsewhere—calculating. How many bullets could he afford to spare on each floor before he would have to send messengers to fetch more? Every shot counted, and he had no idea how deep he'd have to go before he found the queen's resting place.
With one final shove, the door fully creaked open, revealing the next stretch of his descent. The air that greeted him was thick and sour, the unmistakable scent of rot curling into his lungs. Whatever awaited him in the darkness beyond was far more decrepit than he had anticipated from the first floor.
And that excited him.
Izuku ducked into a roll just as the massive beast lunged from the shadows, its grotesque form hurtling toward him with terrifying speed. His body dissolved into a crimson mist, a cloud of thick, clotted blood that blinded the creature as it slammed into the already fractured stone floor, the impact sending cracks outward from the impact like a spiderweb.
Reforming in the middle of the room, Izuku landed ankle-deep in a bubbling sludge of filth and congealed gore. The acrid stench of decay burned his nose, but his sharp eyes caught something amid the carnage—fragments of tattered fabric, insignias barely visible through the grime. His stomach twisted as he recognized the emblem sewn into a bisected chest lying in the muck. The tomb prospector's crest. The explorer had been torn apart, his torso separated in a jagged, uneven mess, gnawed and hollowed out like a carrion feast. The corpse's arms were still reaching toward something, fingers curled in a final grasp for a weapon that was no longer there.
Izuku exhaled slowly through his nose, steadying his grip before tossing his flaming dagger at the beast. The blade embedded itself deep in its swollen flesh with a sickening squelch, steam hissing as the eldritch fire fought against the beast's putrid bodily fluids.
Now that he could see it clearly, the creature was reminiscent of the Cathedral Ward giants—at least in sheer size. But where those behemoths were clad in tattered robes, their forms vaguely human, this monstrosity was a swollen, malformed abomination. Its skin was stretched tight over a grotesquely engorged body, pustules the size of fists leaking a viscous, yellow-green fluid. Its arms, ending in gnarled, clawed fingers, were unnaturally long, dragging through the filth as it turned toward him.
The beast's empty sockets locked onto him, and in an instant, it lunged.
It shouldn't have been fast. Not with a frame so bloated, not with flesh that sagged and split at the joints, not with the rot devouring it from the inside out. But in the span of a heartbeat, it was already where Izuku had been standing, its massive hands sinking into the sludge with a wet, sucking noise, sending a wave of filth splashing outward.
It was fast.
But Izuku had fought the Orphan of Kos. He had battled something that moved with the speed of lightning itself.
This thing was nothing in comparison.
Izuku moved the instant the beast's feet hit the muck, his dagger a blur in his hand. He danced around the creature's hulking form, each step precise, each strike deliberate. The razor-sharp edge of his blade carved effortlessly through bloated, pus-filled blisters, splitting sickly yellow sacs that ruptured with wet pops, spilling putrid fluid into the filth below, it was like playing a sadistic game of connect the dots. The air filled with the stench of rot and burning flesh as his fire-lit dagger sizzled where it remained buried in the creature's shoulder.
His strikes were merciless. As he circled behind it, his dagger traced deep, cruel lines across its Achilles tendons, severing the thick cords of muscle and sending tremors through the beast's legs. It staggered, its grotesque form lurching as Izuku leapt, driving his blade into the gnarled ridge of its spine. The bone let out a soft crack, the noise like splitting the exoskeleton of a crab.
In one fluid motion, he grasped the burning dagger embedded in its shoulder and pulled, throwing his weight into both weapons. Metal bit through flesh, shearing twin gashes down its back—one cutting from mid-spine to lumbar, the other raking from shoulder to ribcage. The sequence of pops filled the air like popping popcorn as bones split as easily as muscle.
Izuku landed lightly, already bracing for the inevitable retaliation. He expected a frenzied, blood-mad counterattack—a desperate attempt to crush him beneath its massive hands.
Instead, the beast simply collapsed.
It crumpled like a sack of rotting meat, its ruined body slamming into the filth with a sickening, wet impact. The only sound that followed was the soft crackle of flame as Izuku straightened, staring at the unmoving heap before him.
That was it?
His grip on his daggers tightened, watching for any sign of movement. But the beast remained still, its body rapidly cooling, its blood leaking into the sludge in thick, brackish pools.
Izuku exhaled, his grin sharp. Pathetic.
He wiped the blades on his coat as he survived the room, the blood of the beast was a sour scent. Like vomit. But beasts like this always held the potential.
Izuku waited, watching as the thick pool of coagulated blood slowly began to shift. The congealed vitae darkened, hardening into something crystalline—another blood gem. This one was large, far denser than the lesser gems he had gathered before. He plucked it from the filth, rolling it between his fingers, feeling the faint pulse of power within. This will need study. The Dream would reveal its properties in time.
With a final glance at the fallen beast, he turned and strode deeper into the chamber. Another door loomed ahead, its rusted metal groaning against the stone as he pushed it open. Beyond, a narrow stairwell spiraled downward, disappearing into the dark. The air changed as soon as he stepped through—thicker, heavier. Older.
The same old Yharnam stone framed the path downward, but the atmosphere here was different. Stagnant. Stale in a way that felt untouched for centuries, if not longer. He moved swiftly, descending two steps at a time, boots echoing against the cold rock.
Ten steps. Twenty. Forty. Seventy.
The descent finally broke into a landing, a small, enclosed space before another door. This one was different. Unlike the rotting wood, rusted iron, and tarnished bronze of the catacombs layer above, this door was carved from a deep blackened stone, its surface marred by age. Time had been unkind—etched cuts and gouges scarred its face, spiderweb cracks ran deep through its foundation, and thick, blood-red moss blossomed from its edges like a wound left too long to fester. And yet, at its very center, one section remained untouched—a small, deliberate indentation, no larger than a cup. A chalice. A key.
Izuku pulled his bag around and rifled through it. Three such chalices lay within, each one a relic of the hunters before him, each one taken or in a single case, gifted to him through his travels. Carefully, he withdrew the first—a delicate, unassuming thing, a cup no larger than what a noble might use to sip wine. He traced its edges, feeling the weight of history in its form. He had read of this door, of the mad hunter who had last set foot here. Irreverent Izzy, they called him that due to his eccentricity. A man whose descent had been chronicled only through the words of those who fled.
Izuku had wanted to meet the man early on, to talk of cures to the beasthood affliction, but all the notes and maps said the same thing. He had stayed on layer twelve. Where the tombs and catacombs of Yharnam met with the forgotten cities and endless halls that the Pthumerians once lived.
Izuku exhaled, rolling his shoulders as he stepped forward. He slotted the chalice into the waiting indent, its bronze surface fitting with a soft click. He knew what was required to fill it. He had read the rites, studied the materials that ancient tomb prospectors carried for this purpose. But he needed none of them. His veins ran thick with the blood of the Great Ones, a gift that set him apart from every hunter before him. Sure they could have gotten close, but the marking on his arm spoke of his difference.
Without hesitation, he drew his dagger and dragged it across his palm, then pressed the wound against the cracked stone above the chalice. His blood spilled freely, dark and rich, pooling into the small vessel. The chalice drank greedily, its intricate etchings igniting as the arcane symbols greedily absorbed the offering. The lines pulsed with a sickly red glow, creeping outward like veins spreading through flesh.
Then, the stone door trembled. A deep, resonating thud echoed through the chamber, shaking dust from the ceiling as unseen mechanisms groaned to life. The cracks in the stone widened, red light spilling from them like an infection, and with a final, shuddering grind, the ancient seal broke.
The door lurched open.
Beyond it, the darkness loomed, thick and suffocating. The air that bled from the gap smelled of rot and stagnation, of things long buried that should have remained undisturbed. Where the door once stood, only the small pedestal for the chalice remained, the crimson lights fading as the base of the cup was released from the stone. Izuku took a steadying breath and stepped forward, grabbing the cup and sliding it into his bag as his firelit blade, the only source of light in the darkness around him, blazed.
The stale air clung to him, thick with moisture that sizzled against his skin. Izuku pulled up the fabric of his mask, the coarse material doing little to filter out the choking stench of rot and damp stone. The taste of old blood and stagnant water settled at the back of his throat, but he pushed it aside. His mind flicked back to the map—two lefts, then a dead sprint to the next descent. The diagrams had never been to scale, but the notations were precise enough to navigate by.
"Silence."
The word left his lips in a whisper, and the arcane took hold. The clinking of his tools ceased, his footsteps became nothing more than muted ghosts upon the stone. Yet even in the suffocating quiet, he felt them. Eyes in the dark. Watching. Waiting. Kos? Or something else?
He had no desire to find out.
Izuku ran.
Izuku burst forward, his body dissolving into a crimson mist as he veered left, narrowly slipping beneath a massive, clawed hand that lashed out from the darkness. The air behind him split with the force of the strike, but he didn't stop—didn't dare stop.
His boots slammed against the stone wall, momentum coiling in his legs before he pushed off, launching himself into the second turn. He didn't see the end of the corridor, only the endless, yawning black ahead, but he didn't slow. His body reformed mid-stride, feet pounding against the cold ground as he widened the gap between himself and whatever thing lurked behind him.
Twenty yards. Sixty. A hundred.
A flicker of movement—the jagged edge of stairs plunging downward. The main path.
Izuku dove, his body twisting as he hit the first steps, skipping entire sections as he dropped down the staircase. The floor blurred beneath him, the descent barely controlled, until he hit the landing and saw the half-broken door.
He didn't stop running. Didn't bother trying to push it open.
He misted through it.
The moment he reformed, he threw himself behind the nearest stone pillar just as a gunshot rang out. The deafening crack echoed through the chamber, dust shaking loose from the ceiling as the bullet embedded itself somewhere unseen.
Izuku's breathing steadied, fingers tightening around his daggers.
He wasn't alone.
Izuku's grin twisted into something hungry as the heavy footfalls closed in. Three of them. Good. He flipped his daggers in his hands, catching the blades by their tips. A whispered word— "Lightning."
The response was instant. A surge of crimson-red electricity crackled to life along the edges of his weapons, the air around him humming with charged energy. The arcane pulsed through his body, he felt ecstatic, his lips stayed intact.
He moved.
Diving from cover, his left hand snapped forward. The blade whistled through the air before embedding itself deep into the bulbous eye of the nearest creature—a grotesquely overweight thing, its gray-blue skin slick and unnatural. The moment the dagger struck, the lightning detonated within, its body seizing as arcs of energy cooked it from the inside out.
A gunshot rang out. Izuku twisted, the bullet missing by inches as he ducked low, his right arm already in motion. Another throw, another flash of crimson lightning—this time, the blade buried itself in the chest of a second creature. It let out a choked gasp, its grip tightening around a rusted metal pipe—just before the surge of energy fused the weapon to its gnarled flesh and burned through its insides.
Izuku didn't slow.
He moved like a wraith, his form dissolving between the pillars in mere moments, weaving through the battlefield in a blur of mist and motion. Above him, the telltale rustling of a messenger signaled its arrival. From the ceiling, a gnarled hand dropped his scythe.
Izuku grinned.
Perfect.
Reforming mid-air, he caught the weapon in a single motion, his body twisting into a controlled spin. The gun-wielding creature barely had time to react before the scythe's blade sang through the air—one clean, effortless slice.
A sharp wetness, then silence.
The thing's head tumbled free from its shoulders, hitting the floor with a dull thud before its body crumpled in a heap beside it.
Izuku landed lightly, rolling his shoulders as the last arcs of red lightning danced across his scythe. Three bodies. Three clean kills.
His grin widened.
Not bad.
He had been tormented so long—through the Nightmare, through Kos's relentless grip on his mind—that he had almost forgotten how much he enjoyed—
Izuku shook his head. No. Not now.
His grin didn't waver, sharp and feral as ever. With a practiced flick, he detached the scythe's head and hung it on his hip, the massive handle collapsing into a compact form before locking onto a hook at his back. A sharp whistle left his lips, and the daggers embedded in the corpses shimmered, dissolving into streams of teal light—the same glow that pulsed from the Moonlight Greatsword—before reforming in his waiting hands.
He loved the hunt.
There was no use lying to himself anymore. To deny it would be to invite madness, to let his mind spiral into the endless pit of doubt and hesitation. He had seen what happened to hunters who faltered. To those who denied what they had become.
With deft movements, he rifled through the gunner's remains, pulling free a handful of bullets, feeling the familiar weight of them settle into his belt. A pool of blood at his feet shimmered faintly—his fingers dipped in, retrieving a freshly-formed blood gem. Large. Promising.
He tucked it away, barely sparing it another glance.
Then, without hesitation, he turned and pressed forward, steps carrying him to the next descent into the depths.
His past self—the boy who once dreamed of heroism in its purest form—would have hated the pride swelling in his chest.
Izuku didn't care.
He continued his descent, bounding down the endless stairs three at a time, his body thrumming with the aftershocks of battle. He had no sense of how long he had been running, how many halls and chambers he had bypassed and left behind—but it didn't matter. The tension, the weight of the Nightmare, of everything he had endured, was sloughing off like old, dead skin.
For the first time since he had awoken in this accursed place, since the sickness had wracked his body and left him hollow, he felt alive.
The fire of life churned in his chest, hot and restless, and the smoke of desire filled his lungs.
How deep was the Queen buried?
Flora had told him she was deeper than Izzy had ever reached, but not at the true depths. Only the Great Ones knew how far these tunnels stretched, how deep these graves truly ran. The last person, according to her, to have been on the same layer as the Queen. Was Ludwig himself, but his descent was stopped by his discovery of the moonlight blade.
Izuku shook his head as his mother softly whispered encouragement to his mind. Yet she would not whisper the secrets of the abyss and where the queen was truly located.
Not even to him.
Excitement coursed through him like fire in his veins. When he survived this, and finished his quest for Flora, he would have the chance to go even deeper. To uncover the buried secrets of the dungeons, to map out the unknown. The first twelve descents had been documented, vast labyrinths stretching for hundreds of miles, yet no one had made it beyond them.
That made him grin.
His hands moved through his bag with practiced ease, fingers closing around a small pellet. He popped it into his mouth, biting down with a satisfying crunch. The taste was bitter, thick with the essence of the hunt. He could go faster. So much faster.
"Beast's Embrace—"
Pain.
Not sharp and isolated, not focused like the lesser runes he had forced into speech—but vast, all-encompassing. His body shifted, bones stretching and reforming in ways that felt at once unnatural and right. His fingers tore through his gloves as his nails became talons, thick and wickedly curved. He let out a breathy chuckle, flexing his new claws even as he reached into his coat and jammed a vial into his thigh. He'd need new gloves. He pulled out another small watch from his bag and started it, learning timing was important.
The bottom of the stairwell met him like a hammer strike, his feet barely touching the stone before he swallowed. The thick blood slid down his throat, and his pulse roared to life.
Twenty yards—right.
Sixty yards—left.
One hundred yards—another right, then the descent.
He slammed his foot into the door, sending it flying open on ruined hinges.
And then he bounded forward.
His mind narrowed to a singular focus, the rush of the hunt overtaking all else. His body moved as if it belonged in this state—leaning forward with unnatural grace, his claws carving deep into the stone as he twisted into his first turn. Boots scraped against the ground, kicking up dust as he came face to face with a beast-cloaked man.
Instinct took over.
Izuku lunged, ripping his mask down in the same breath as his fangs sank into flesh. The taste of fresh, hot blood flooded his mouth. The thing beneath him barely had time to shriek before he wrenched its throat free, his weight forcing it backward. A sickening crack split the air as its spine snapped clean in half, its body crumpling mid-motion while Izuku vaulted over it.
He landed light on his feet, barely slowing.
With a sharp spit, the torn throat hit the stone behind him.
He sprinted forward, faster than before.
He cleared the sixty yards before the body even hit the ground. Less than a second. The crash of its corpse never made it to him.
His next turn came in a blur. He pivoted sharply, his momentum sending him feet-first into the wall. Instead of slowing, he pushed off, launching forward even faster as the stones of the wall jostled and cracked. The next descent opened before him, a forty-step staircase stretching into darkness. He didn't bother with the steps. His body twisted mid-air, and he slammed into the rough stone below, the impact cracking the already fractured floor beneath him.
The metal door ahead loomed, heavy and ancient. If it was locked, he didn't notice. He simply reached down, fingers finding the rusted edge, and heaved. The door roared upward, locking into place with a jarring clang as he sprinted forward, unimpeded.
His sharp, single-minded gaze met that of a waiting guardian.
The watchdog stood in the center of the chamber, its massive form tensed and ready. Crocodilian in shape but grotesquely warped, its body bristled with uneven ridges of bone and fire-glazed flesh. Multiple eyes, burning with an unnatural flame, tracked him as it loomed.
Yet it hesitated.
Izuku did not.
In a blink, his daggers were in his hands. In the next, he was gone—fading into a swirl of crimson mist.
The first dagger buried itself deep into one of the beast's left eyes. The second found purchase in one of its right.
From the empty air where he had once stood when he threw the blades, a whisper:
"Lightning."
He had spoke then words as they left his hands, yet the arcane relied upon the sound to activate. Eldritch sparks erupted within the creature's skull. The reaction was instant—its head snapped back, a guttural roar clawing at its throat, its exposed chest heaving with pain.
Izuku was already there.
The moment before sound shattered the air, he struck. His scythe's blade slammed deep into its chest, the force of the impact carving upward in a brutal arc. In the same movement, he twisted the weapon's base, locking it into place with a practiced flick. The scythe snapped to full length, the curved blade humming through the air as he spun.
Two deep, effortless slashes carved through the watchdog's throat.
Izuku landed lightly and drew his gun in a fluid motion, leveling it at the beast. Boom. One eye burst. Boom. Another.
The roar never got a chance to be born. The creature let out a strangled whimper before crashing to the stone, a lifeless heap of smoldering flesh.
Silence returned.
Izuku watched the corpse for a moment, ensuring the fight was truly over. Then, with a slow exhale, he holstered his scythe. The daggers reformed in his hands with a shimmer of teal light.
He knelt by the beast's still-warm blood, fingers sifting through the cooling pool. His search yielded a gem, larger than the others—embers still smoldered within its depths, glowing with an eerie inner light. A rare find. He pocketed it and rose to his feet.
His nose twitched at the retched scents from the stairs down. It was time to move.
He pressed forward, already descending the next staircase when he felt it—his blood, no longer surging with wild hunger, but settling. Not fading. Not yet.
Just enough to let him think.
He had scavenged the rune from a skull, long buried beneath the Nightmare's weight. It had rested beneath the elevator altar, hidden and waiting, its power undisturbed until he pried it free. He knew it had importance, even as he crushed the brittle bone beneath his grip, he felt the lingering traces of its arcane link unravel. Whatever it was connected to died, and its power dissolved into the unseen winds of the hunter's nightmare.
Beast's Embrace was only one of the forbidden runes he had claimed, but it was far from the only one he wanted to test out.
Most hunters could etch three basic runes into their minds, along with a single advanced rune—powerful, but limited. Any more runes and they would lose themselves, forget their purpose. Die. Izuku wasn't like most hunters.
He couldn't bear an advanced rune.
Something had been placed in his mind long before he had ever set foot in the dungeons. Long before he had entered the hunter's nightmare. A mark, a binding, woven into him not by his own will, but by his mother's. He still didn't know its name, but he could feel it, always.
It whispered through his veins, threading through his blood like an unbroken tether.
A kinship rune. A bond to Flora.
Would he ever be able to speak it? To give it form, to understand what it truly was?
One day. He hoped.
The last step met his boots, and he came to a halt before another towering door. His hands pressed against its surface, fingers running over the cold, aged metal.
Once, he had feared the blood. Feared the pull of the hunt, the slow, creeping loss of self that consumed those who let the beast take hold.
But he had come to understand.
Bloodlust was not a curse.
It was a tool.
And those who lost themselves to it were never going to end the scourge.
Izuku had always wanted to be a hero. Someone's hero. If he could find a way to fix the beast plague—to uncover some cure, some secret buried in these forsaken depths—then maybe, just maybe, he could matter.
Maybe he could save something.
Even if it wasn't his own world.
His task was simple in name but steeped in blood—kill the Queen, buried so far beneath the city that her existence was little more than a whisper, a nightmare muttered among hunters and scholars. She had been here long before the city above ever took shape, sealed in the deepest, blackest crypts where only the desperate or the damned dared to tread.
But the Queen was not the only reason he wanted to push further, deeper into the endless maze of catacombs and tombs.
Izzy had been lost on Floor twelve.
But lost did not mean dead.
If he had survived, then the blood in his veins would have ensured he persisted even now—whether as a man, a husk, or a wandering corpse, driven mad by eternity.
Izzy had been brilliant. A scholar of blood, a theorist who had once pushed the boundaries of what hunters understood. His books, his notes, his ideas…
If there was any insight left in the depths, Izuku needed it.
And if that meant robbing a corpse of its wisdom?
…Well, it wouldn't be the first time.
Izuku pushed the door open with ease, feeling the last remnants of restraint—both conscious and unconscious—slip away from his body. He rolled his neck, a sharp pop echoing through the dim corridor, and stepped forward.
Floor Four.
Or, as the notes called it, The Pit of Fire.
The heat struck him first, thick and suffocating. The air was heavy with humidity, tinged with the unmistakable stench of charred and rotting flesh. The walls bore the remains of long-dead torches—blackened stubs of wood, their iron sconces still glowing faintly with trapped heat.
Yharnam's mines reached this deep, extracting molten rock from a stray fissure in the depths. It was a small vein, but the damage was done—this floor, and the two beneath it, had been transformed into a furnace. Many passages had collapsed, sealed beneath layers of cooled magma, leaving only a handful of viable paths forward.
Two routes remained. Both led deeper.
And at the end of at least one of them, past the searing heat and shifting rock… another great beast would be waiting.
Izuku bounded forward, already pushing his body to its peak before anything lurking at the floor's entrance could even register his presence.
Four hundred yards. That was the distance he had to clear. The only documented path was a straight shot—a brutal sprint through the heat and shadows. The second path, splitting off at three hundred yards, was longer, winding, forcing a detour through the depths of Floor Five.
He chose the direct route.
A sharp right—his sheer momentum sent a bulbous beast stumbling. Before it could react, Izuku's clawed hand raked through its throat, using the force to pivot his body and propel himself forward.
Twenty yards.
He slammed into the dead-end T-split, his boots carving divots into the stone as he ricocheted left without pause.
Another right.
Another left.
Then—the stairs.
The moment his eyes locked onto them, he flew, descending like a beast possessed, his body blurring with raw, unrelenting speed.
Izuku barreled through the wooden door as it came into view, his shoulder slamming into it with enough force to send splinters flying. The impact barely slowed him—he tucked into a roll, his instincts screaming just in time to dodge a searing wave of fire.
He sprang up mid-motion, launching himself over the flames.
Then—there it was.
A beast, trembling, its grotesque form reminiscent of one he had faced before. It barely had time to react before Izuku closed the distance, his daggers flashing in the dim light.
The creature's back slammed into the stone wall as Izuku drove both blades deep into its chest. He gave it no chance to fight back. Again and again, the daggers struck—piercing, twisting, tearing. Its heart became nothing more than a ruined mass of punctures, a cratered ruin like the shattered face of the moon.
With a final shudder, the beast went limp.
Izuku wasted no time. He drove his fist into the still-warm corpse, fingers closing around the forming blood gem. He wrenched it free before it could harden, the soft, pulsing stone slick in his grasp.
Then he was moving again.
Izuku had no thoughts beyond movement. No hesitation. Just speed.
Stairs blurred past beneath him, each step taken six at a time. A door. Barely a pause—he crashed through it, splintering wood and stone as he surged forward. More stairs. Down, down, faster. His momentum carried him in a near free-fall, boots skimming the steps more than touching them. His body barely registered the impacts.
The antechamber to floor five loomed ahead. He would not slow.
Then—a figure.
A man, or something close enough to one, clad in bone and tattered cloth, waiting. Unmoving. No fear in his stance. Steps measured. Balanced.
Izuku lunged.
The man moved—a sidestep, an attempt to escape. But there was no escape. Not from him. Not at this speed. Any direction was into his range.
A plume of blood mist, and Izuku was behind him. The twin daggers struck true, their tips meeting inside the man's gut.
A twist. A pull.
The outward slice tore through flesh before the pain could even register.
Izuku flipped the daggers into a reverse grip, muscles coiling like a spring before he drove them home.
Blades punched through clavicle and tendon, severing the delicate mechanics of motion. Ribs split apart as metal carved deep, but the true retaliation wasn't from steel—it was fire.
Heat roared around him, eldritch and searing, but not his. Not blood red. Not his fire.
Flames rushed up his arms, licking at his coat, scorching the edges of his vision. His hair sizzled, the whites of his eyes seared with pain. He snarled and launched himself back, boots skidding across the stone.
The man still stood, though barely—a burning, twitching wreck of tattered bone and cloth.
Izuku didn't give him the chance to recover.
With a flick of his wrist, the daggers reformed in his grasp. He hurled them forward, watching them bury themselves into the man's back with a sickening crunch. The force sent him sprawling, his body convulsing, eldritch flames still dancing over his ruined form.
Izuku exhaled, steam curling from his lips as his heartbeat thundered in his ears. His hand snapped to his belt, fingers closing around a glass vial. Without hesitation, he injected the diluted blood into his leg, and then discarded the empty vial to the floor. It shattered against the floor into hundreds of shards.
Cold relief flooded his body. The burns knitted themselves shut, the pain dulled into nothing. And as the fire in his veins settled, the grin returned.
Another gem lay amidst the blood and embers, its glow pulsating in the dim light. Izuku knelt, scooping it up, watching as light refracted through the precious stone. It was hot to the touch, more heat imbued into a single gem than he had seen before.
He should have come here earlier.
The dungeons were dangerous, yes. But they held so many options.
And Izuku always wanted more.
Izuku let out a quiet chuckle, the sound barely audible over the rhythmic drip of blood and the distant, muted howls of the dungeon's depths. With a final glance at the charred remains behind him, he turned, already moving—downward.
Floor Six.
The last of the noted destruction caused by the lava, the final floor with a simple path before the longer, winding paths took hold.
The heat that had pressed against his skin like an open furnace was already beginning to fade. The deeper he went, the less suffocating the air became. By Floor Eleven, it would be ice.
A sigh left his lips, one not of exhaustion, but of awareness. The runes were fading.
Izuku pulled the two small, pocket watches from his bag, their delicate frames and cold silver nothing of note. But they read the time like any other tool, and kept ticking through any damage they were inflicted with.
Izuku's eyes scanned the clock faces and he clicked them open, reading the time passing by the second. The Eye Rune had lasted a solid twenty minutes. His Beast Rune? Barely twelve. He felt anger fill him. He needed those times longer. But the heat subsided quickly as realization hit.
Had it only been twenty minutes since he entered?
His brows furrowed as he considered the passage of time. He had spent minutes harvesting blood gems, waiting for them to settle—perhaps longer than he realized. And yet, even with that time accounted for, his progress was unbelievable
His hand drifted back into his bag, fingers brushing against the map. Every documented path, every turn had proven accurate.
That was the only reason he could move this fast.
Izuku's lips curled into a smirk. Anger forgotten
He was making incredible time.
Izuku's fingers traced the worn edges of his map as he descended, his mind turning over the notes left behind.
Izzy and his companions had taken nearly ten days to reach this point, navigating the labyrinth of winding paths, dead ends, and collapsing stairwells. The deeper they ventured, the slower they moved, meticulously scouting each floor, marking every odd stone, every unstable wall, every trace of something unseen lurking in the dark.
They had mapped the path with caution. Izuku had taken it at a dead sprint.
They hadn't simply been delving blindly. They had a purpose—a lead Izzy had uncovered. Something that had driven them to descend toward Floor Fifteen. But what?
Izuku had scoured every book he could find, every scrap of paper left behind by long-dead Hunters. Not one of them said what lay that deep.
He knew the queen was there. Trapped. Waiting.
But what else lurked in the depths with such a figure? What knowledge was left forgotten with that ancient civilization lost underground?
Izuku tightened his grip on the map. He intended to find out.
Izuku moved like a specter through Floor Six, the heat waning with each step, the air thick with stillness. Not a single beast pursued him.
The silence was unsettling.
This place was different.
The walls—where they weren't melted or collapsed—held a fusion of stonework from wildly different ages. Yharnam's familiar, crude masonry met something older, far more refined. Some stones bore intricate engravings, sharper, untouched by time, their runes whispering of something beyond even the city's ancient blood rites.
Izuku let his fingers graze one of the etchings, memorizing its twists and lines.
Something about them felt significant.
He continued downward, his steps soundless—until movement caught his eye.
A cluster of messengers scuttled over the lip of an ancient stone birdbath, their bodies jostling against one another in frantic, eager waves. The sight gave him pause.
They turned as one, hollow eyes gleaming as they noticed him. Merchants.
Like the ones in the Dream.
But their wares were not the same.
Izuku stepped forward, scanning what they offered. Undiluted blood the kind that could turn a normal man into a beast with just one vial. Raw quicksilver, unrefined or cleaned do the impurities. Bloodstones—purer, richer than any found in Yharnam. And in Izuku's opinion, the most interesting thing they sold. Altered versions of Hunter Weapons. Their forms were the same, yet they bore gem slots that seemed… adaptive. Different.
Izuku wasted no time.
He bought everything they had, sending it all to the Dream's storage. He could study the weapons later, dissect the mystery of how they accepted gems of different types so readily.
With one last glance at the messengers, he turned toward the next descent.
The great beast of this floor awaited. And so did Floor Seven.
Izuku pushed the door after the stairs, mindlessly at first. But then he tensed, his grip firm on his daggers as he stepped forward, the sheer weight of bloodlust in the air pressing against his senses like a physical force.
This chamber was different.
Larger. Ancient.
The crude, familiar masonry of Yharnam was gone. Replaced entirely by pristine, seamless stone that had seen centuries, perhaps millennia beyond human memory. The room stretched circular and vast, its center dominated by a gaping pit.
Bottomless.
The void yawned before him, yet it was not the pit that set his instincts aflame.
It was the thing beyond it.
Izuku almost missed them in the haze of predatory intent.
A man—or something close.
Tall. Gaunt. Stretched unnaturally thin.
He moved slowly, deliberately, his gait methodical as he circled the pit.
Stalking.
His skin held an eerie, corpse-like pallor, but his face—his features—were too sharp, too refined, almost sculpted. Human, but more.
The twin sickle-like blades in his hands gleamed in the dim light, their curved edges whispering of ritual use rather than mere violence.
He breathed deeply.
Inhaled.
Savoring the scent of Izuku's presence.
The tension stretched, the distance closing.
Izuku exhaled, lowering his stance, the flickering light catching the hungry gleam in his green eyes.
Then, with a final, deliberate step—
The man lunged.
Izuku side stepped the man's strike. Mindlessly as he studied the creature. Not man. Something far more ancient. Yet not an eldritch old one. A descendent of the queens race perhaps?
He ducked under the next strike and let his own killer intent bleed through his dissection of the man's musculature. It was simply more practical than that of a human. Stronger, faster, sturdier.
But how sturdy?
Izuku lunged under a wide strike and sliced deep into the man's shoulder, separating arm and chest. He caught the arm and compared its density in his head to the common men he had fought through central Yharnam. Far heavier.
He ducked under another strike and sliced deep in the man's chest, hearing the bones pop like cheap plastic. In his head he wondered what one of these beings in their prime would be like. Perhaps on par with a hunter?
Perhaps stronger still?
Izuku slipped behind the being and ripped the cloak off of them, sighting the bent spine as he placed a finger to it. "Melt." His words were final.
A dull ache entered Izuku's back teeth but it was ignorable as the skin layer of the creature began to dissolve, showing muscle and tendons beneath. The creature would die of shock before long. But it was a good source of information to see its muscles flex as it jumped away from him.
It fixed him with lidless eyes. Full of fear. And something else. Admiration?
It fell to its knees and clasped its hands together.
Izuku watched, head tilting slightly as the creature knelt before him. It was a first to be sure.
The final layers of skin sloughed away, muscles twitching in their final throes, exposed and raw, as blood poured freely from every ruined vessel.
But it did not lash out.
Did not snarl, nor attempt a final, desperate strike.
Instead, it prayed.
Its lidless eyes locked onto him—not in hatred, not in rage, but in something akin to reverence.
The murmured words, low and breathless, slipped from its trembling lips. The sounds were ancient, distant, like echoes from a time before men had shaped language.
Izuku frowned, his grip on his dagger tightening. It was begging.
Not for life.
For understanding.
It recognized him.
Not as prey, not as hunter.
As something else.
Izuku stepped closer, boots splashing in the growing pool of thick, dark blood. The creature did not flinch. Its hands clenched tighter in prayer, its voice rising, desperate.
His eyes flickered over its ruined form.
Even kneeling, it was built for power. Every fiber of its being was denser, stronger, more refined than anything human. If this was a remnant—a pale, decayed descendant—what were they at their height?
What were they meant to be?
He crouched, fingers ghosting over the jagged remains of its shoulder, where his blade had severed the arm cleanly.
The creature shuddered at his touch.
Not in pain.
But in awe.
Its breath hitched, and with its final strength, it whispered something soft.
Something that made the air hum around them.
Then, at last, it slumped forward, dead.
Izuku stood, rolling his shoulders, the ache in his molars fading as the aftershock of his command wore off.
Something in the back of his mind itched.
Izuku shuddered.
The words echoed in his skull, seared into him, not merely spoken but implanted—a prayer, a plea, a purpose.
It had called him Living God.
A name it gave him.
Not out of fear. Not in desperation.
In devotion.
Izuku felt euphoric. A rush so overwhelming, it was almost too much—like he had downed three energy drinks, like his body had been set ablaze from the inside.
Yet the high didn't fade.
The blood pooled at his feet sizzled, smoked—not evaporating, but instead seeping into him.
The creature's corpse wasted away before his eyes.
Its muscles decayed, peeled, fell apart in thick, meaty strands, breaking down into raw essence—smoke that slithered, crawled, reached for him.
It sank into his skin.
And he breathed it in.
The last remnants of the being, its flesh, its power, its final offering—all of it absorbed, taken, accepted.
A final whisper curled around his thoughts, words once incomprehensible now understood.
A prayer.
A sacrifice.
"Take me, as a sacrifice, oh living thing. Oh Living God.
Great and new, formed of flesh and bone.
Living amongst us anew.
The rest had left us.
The rest had ascended.
Yet you still walk? Oh great one who hunts me like a toy to dissect and learn from?
Take me. Take my blood to fuel you.
Take my muscles to liberate you.
Walk amongst the home of your predecessors, oh Living God."
Izuku exhaled.
His blood felt thicker. His skin hotter. His body humming, thrumming, alive.
The prayer had been answered.
He had taken everything.
And yet.
He still felt hungry.
Izuku shook his head to push the thoughts out.
Izuku turned the new blood gem over in his palm, feeling its unnatural weight and density—far stronger than it had any right to be. The remains of his worshiper had left it behind, hands once clasped in prayer now reduced to ash.
"Your first worship, my child?"
Flora's voice curled through his mind, as soft as ever, like a mother marveling at her child's first steps.
Izuku swallowed, rubbing a hand over his face.
"I… I think so," he admitted. The words felt foreign in his mouth. "I didn't know I could be worshiped. Or that someone could just… sacrifice themselves to me."
He cast a glance at the scorched patch of ground, where his worshiper had knelt. With a slow breath, he draped their tattered robe over it—a simple, hollow gesture, but it felt necessary.
"Only in your presence," Flora corrected, her voice laced with amusement, as if she were explaining a natural bodily function. "You are but a child, my little one. But as you grow, so too will your domain of influence. The older you become, the further your reach will extend. These people… they know more of our worship than even we do."
Izuku snorted softly at that, shaking his head.
"They have done so since before my birth in life… and my rebirth in ascension."
A mother explaining the workings of his body, like telling a child about growing pains or hunger.
"In time, others may offer sacrifices of food, gifting you vitality. Some may even sacrifice others to you, hoping to earn your favor. These people—the Pthumerians and their descendants—are few now, but they can sense our kind as surely as a human can smell. They are endless in number, not by birth, but by decree of their queen. They will forever be shaped from stone and clay, through her blood, her will, to serve us… to seek Oedon's love once more."
Flora's voice faltered, ever so slightly.
"Once, they were cherished by Oedon. Granted a child by them. But since that child's… birth… Oedon has grown angry. Greedy."
Izuku exhaled slowly.
Oedon.
He had known that name for a long time.
But now, for the first time, he wondered—why was Oedon worshiped so reverently in the cathedral ward? How had their name become so common?
Izuku's mind drifted, unbidden, to the battle with the reborn monstrosity.
It felt like a lifetime ago—that towering mass of writhing bodies, stacked upon themselves in a grotesque mockery of life.
He had pushed forward, carving his way through its twisted flesh, an ancient power had brought it onto being. Not simply as a foe for Izuku to fight, but a guard for the hall of corpses behind it.
He felt sick when he walked into the room of caged headed men and women, chains of arcane energy had linked them to one, and that one was alight like a beacon, a doorway.
A doorway Izuku had used to enter another nightmare. A labyrinth of crumbling halls and scholarly chambers, warped in the image of Byrgenwerth's old halls.
He had fought to the end and reached a door. When he entered that door he was shunted across reality. Where he ended up made him feel sick, it was so ancient and malicious that he couldn't stay in that plane of existence for long. He had left quicker than he had run from anything before.
Something seething had been there. Held by something even stronger, protected by something beyond Izuku's comprehension at the time.
It was a presence that gnawed at the edges of his thoughts, turning them sluggish and unfocused. It hated his very existence.
He had known then that he wasn't ready.
But now?
Now, he had slain the Orphan of Kos. And soon, he would kill the Queen.
Yet that same sensation, that slow, sinking dredge of ancient bonds and buried power, stirred in the air here—drifting up from the depths below.
"The Queen bore Oedon's child… a stillborn," his mother murmured, her voice softer than before.
Izuku's breath hitched. Was that why Oedon was angry? It would make sense, old ones always craved children, and if they were to die…
"And in its first and final moment of thought, as its mother struggled to bring it back… it sent itself into a nightmare, a world where it could live. Where Oedon could watch over it forever."
The words pressed against him, their weight unfamiliar.
A child.
A newborn had created a nightmare? Had willed itself an entire reality? And it made Izuku run. Was it similar to the Orphan then? The Orphan had done something similar, but even the hunters nightmare had been manageable.
"All the nightmares… and even the beast scourge itself… they are tied to the formless one," Flora finished, a quiet certainty in her tone. "The very base of the nightmare you have been through base themselves above Odeon's child's creation."
Izuku felt himself rooted to the spot.
His voice came quieter than he expected. "A child caused all of this?" It rose, unsteady, as something cold crawled up his spine. "How strong was this child?"
Flora did not hesitate. "Stronger than I. Stronger than Kos, even the orphan pales in its single moment of strength." A pause. "That is why they died at birth. No mortal body could contain such strength. The Queen's blood empowered them too greatly."
Izuku exhaled sharply, pressing a hand against his temple.
The nightmares. The plague. The twisted horrors lurking in the dark.
All because a child had been born too strong.
The exact opposite of him.
His mother's voice echoed once more, threading through his mind like a whisper carried on the wind.
"It is not just the child that sustains this nightmare. Its creation was impressive, yes… but it would have faded long ago if not for Oedon."
"Oedon can only keep its child alive—and safe—through sacrifice."
Izuku's breath came sharp, uneven.
His boots met pristine stone as he reached the next set of stairs, and before he could stop himself, his palm slammed against the cold surface.
"Yharnam? The Healing Church? All of it?"
The words left him in a whisper, but his pulse roared in his ears.
He already knew the answer.
But when Flora spoke again, her presence slipping from his mind like a retreating tide, it still struck like a blade to the chest. "Yes."
"Beast's Embrace—Beast—Clawmark—" Three runes at once. Pain flared through his body, worse than anything he had ever known. Worse than the hundreds of deaths he had suffered. Worse than the Orphan's final, desperate shriek. Worse than the first blood transfusion.
A blood vial was already stabbed into his leg, its contents flooding his veins, but it was like pouring water over a wildfire. His body spasmed, writhed—relief fought agony, and agony won.
Blood poured from his mouth in thick, bubbling streams. His fingernails split, beds cracking open as red dripped down his shaking hands. His vision blurred, not from weakness, but from the bloodied tears that rolled freely from his eyes.
He barely registered the fall down the stairs, hitting the ground in a heap of trembling limbs. His mind was hazy. Everything hurt.
Everything hurt so good.
The mutations were stronger than ever before. His fingers curled, claws fully formed and pulsing with strength. His teeth had grown too sharp, so keen that simply existing made them carve into his own cheeks.
Izuku forced himself upright.
Three vials shattered at his feet, their glass biting into his palms as he jammed them into his skin—flooding his body with more blood, more relief, more fuel.
He needed to push himself further. He clocked his watch on.
If the child of Oedon caused this world to fall into nightmare, then he needed to be strong enough to kill a god.
If Oedon refused to mourn. If it defied death itself, seeding bloodshed into humanity, offering blood healing at the cost of every life lost—
Then Izuku would find a way to kill something formless.
Oedon didn't want to grieve.
It wanted to reject the laws of nature at the cost of everything else.
Izuku's breath came slow and measured, his claws flexing as he took his first steady step forward.
Then he'd make it grieve.
Floor seven greeted him with teeth.
A beast lunged, its maw stretching wide to close around him—only for its fangs to skid uselessly against his skin. Izuku caught its jaws in both hands.
And ripped.
It came apart like string cheese, flesh and sinew snapping beneath his grip.
Unlike before, his mind remained clear. Focused. Controlled.
At least, at first.
Halfway to the stairs—where yet another great beast likely waited to bar his path—his vision blurred at the edges. Not fatigue. Not strain.
Blood loss.
He slammed another vial into his leg, feeling the blood rush to mend the damage his transformation had wrought. Skin closed over the wounds, but it was temporary—no sooner had the flesh healed than it split open once more, deep crimson rivulets cascading down his arms, raining onto the stone below.
Too much.
His body had been pushed too far.
Yet, he couldn't bring himself to care.
Every drop of blood was just weakness leaving his body.
If his sinew, his bones, his very being had to be torn apart and reforged into something stronger, then so be it. If his body was the price, he would pay it in full.
He no longer cared about merely going back.
Yes, he still wanted to return to his world. To go home. But this place—this nightmare—held people who had come to love him. People he refused to abandon.
And he wanted more than survival.
More than just leaving.
He wanted to carve a path through the horrors of this world. To tear apart the beasts and nightmares, root and stem, until there was nothing left to torment those who remained.
If Izzy was dead, then so be it.
If it took a thousand years of bloodshed, of an endless hunt under an endless night, just to wring the life out of the formless thing that had condemned this world to suffering—Then so be it.
He ran out of blood vials just as he reached the next door. The descent had been agonizingly slow—his body teetering on the edge of collapse. His watch flickered in the dim light: three minutes left in this transformation.
He threw his shoulder against the door, forcing it open with a heavy groan of wood and stone. Beyond the antechamber lay floor eight. If he could reach it, he could rest. Just a little further.
Stopping wasn't an option. He would rather die and do this all again than stop now.
The moment he stepped forward, they rushed him.
Three of them. Familiar gray flesh, hunched forms, but these ones were better armed.
One wielded a flaming metal bat, embers spitting as it swung through the air. Another brandished a large, rusted saw, still slick with the blood of its last victim. The third—a flash of steel, a gunshot that thundered through the chamber.
Izuku's body jerked back as the bullet tore through his shoulder, sending him sliding back a few inches. Izuku fell forward onto all fours, clawed hands biting into stone.
A stronger gun than before, interesting.
He had no time to process it. The two melee fighters were already upon him, their weapons swinging in synchronized brutality.
They struck.
Metal met stone.
A miss.
Blood mist exploded outward, thick and suffocating.
But Izuku—Izuku was gone.
Not reforming. Not lunging.
Not moving at all.
The mist churned unnaturally, twisting, condensing. Clawed hands formed first. Then arms.
Then the beast he had become lashed out.
His talons ripped into the first one, carving through bone, tendon, and ligament with precise, agonizing slowness.
He drowned in the blood.
Foul. Rotten. Sickly.
But his body drank it all the same, repurposing the tainted ichor to seal his wounds.
The creature screamed as its body came apart in sections, falling in slick, quivering heaps.
The second one wasn't far behind.
By the time Izuku was done, there was nothing left of them but piles of shredded meat.
The last one stood frozen, gun shaking in trembling hands. It knew—It knew couldn't fire fast enough. The scent of blood lust filled the chamber once more as it hesitated. It's fatal mistake.
Izuku's claws drove forward, tearing through the air before the beast could even think to pull the trigger. Its arms went first, ripped from their sockets in a violent spray of crimson. The gun clattered uselessly to the floor as it staggered back, mouth gaping in a silent scream.
It didn't even get the chance to fall.
Teeth.
Izuku's jaw snapped shut around its throat, serrated fangs shearing through flesh and cartilage like wet parchment.
The thing twitched in his grasp, its final, feeble spasms barely registering. Then—stillness.
Blood poured down his throat, hot and putrid, but fuel all the same.
He let the corpse drop, the remains joining the others in mangled heaps.
Breathe.
The room swayed. His vision blurred, limbs leaden with exhaustion. His watch flickered.
One minute left.
Not enough.
His body was eating itself alive. The transformation was meant to be temporary—never meant to be coupled with the other runes in this way. Without blood vials, without another source of healing, he was burning himself out.
But he was so close.
Izuku took a step forward, towards the next door—towards floor eight.
Another step.
His knees buckled.
He caught himself against the stone wall, claws raking deep gashes into the surface as he forced himself upright.
Keep moving.
Survive.
A sound—wet, labored breathing.
Izuku's head snapped up.
Someone—something—was still alive. One of the shredded bodies twitched. The first one. The one with the saw.
Or what was left of it.
Its jaw moved, barely clinging to the ruined wreck of its face. A gurgle, a soundless plea.
Izuku stepped closer.
It was still alive. That meant it still had blood to give. His fangs bared. His claws tightened. And then—The door ahead creaked open.
Izuku's breath hitched.
Something was coming.
The creaking door gave way to a shadow. A new beast. Larger than the others—easily twice their size.
Gray, mottled skin stretched taut over sinew and bone, its frame hunched but powerful. Clawed hands gripped a weapon—a massive cleaver, its serrated edge still dripping with old, blackened gore.
Its eyes burned, hollow pits of molten gold.
It had been watching.
Waiting.
Izuku straightened, his breath slow and steady despite the burning in his limbs.
The thing huffed, steam curling from its maw, its own jagged fangs bared.
A challenge.
Izuku grinned.
Prey.
The beast lunged.
Izuku met it head-on.
Its cleaver swung, a brutal downward arc meant to split him in two. He dodged, twisting aside just enough for the blade to graze his shoulder, splitting flesh but not stopping him.
He tore into its ribs.
Claws sank deep, his hand piercing through muscle and bone as he went for the heart. The beast roared, its free hand grabbing his wrist with inhuman strength and ripping him away.
Izuku flew, slamming into the stone floor with a sickening crack. Pain.
Brief. Fleeting.
He was already moving.
The beast rushed forward, cleaver raised for the kill. Izuku rolled under the swing, his claws tearing across its gut in a vicious, upward slash.
It howled.
Dark, thick blood spilled, intestines threatening to slip free from the ragged wound. Not enough. Izuku latched onto its throat.
The beast staggered back, claws grasping at him, trying to pry him off.
Izuku bit down. Flesh ripped. Blood flooded his mouth. The beast choked, its death throes violent but futile.
Izuku drank deep.
The wounds on his body knitted shut, muscle re-weaving, flesh restoring itself with every pulse of stolen vitality.
The thing shuddered one final time.
Then it collapsed. Izuku stood over its corpse, panting. Alive.
He was still not done.
The next door—Floor Eight—stood ahead.
The click of his watch snapped him back.
Relief crashed over him like a wave, washing away the last vestiges of his beastly form. His body buckled. A sharp, shuddering breath tore from his throat as he collapsed to his knees, pain erupting through his limbs.
Bones cracked and ground together, shifting back into their proper places, claws retracting, fangs dulling, muscles unraveling from their unnatural tautness. His ribs ached as they settled, his heartbeat hammering against them like a caged animal.
And then—clarity.
His mind no longer clouded by instinct and bloodlust, the haze lifted.
But nausea took its place.
The coppery, rotten taste of the beast's blood still coated his tongue, thick and cloying. His stomach turned, protesting, but he forced it down. He spat a glob of darkened, blood-laced saliva onto the stone floor and wiped his mouth with the back of his trembling hand.
His tongue felt sluggish, words catching in his throat as he tried to speak. "M—" A rasp, barely a whisper.
He forced the syllables out, hoarse but firm.
"Messengers. Blood. And… collect the treasures in this room."
Only now did he truly see the chamber around him.
Chests and coffins lined the walls, some intact, some split open, their contents spilling onto the floor—glittering gold, strange tools, artifacts, forgotten goods. Riches left behind by those who had descended into this abyss before him, their bodies long since claimed by the horrors lurking within.
The messengers skittered forward, their pale, withered fingers twitching in excitement as they obeyed.
Some scurried to his side, pressing vials of blood into his shaking hands. Others clambered over coffins, prying them open with gleeful little gasps, hoisting treasures and tools into the Dream with an eerie, silent efficiency.
Izuku exhaled, steadying himself.
He had made it this far, he wasn't just going to give up now.
()~~~~~()
Word count for chapter 13145
Patrion thanks section: Brandon Smith, Rom Hack, Lifeless, Carfmodyios, Sean Ross, Dylan Rosenbusch
Final notes: this chapter was a load of fun to write, perhaps one of my favorites. These next few chapters will officially be the end of the Yharnam arc, and will all be nice and fat for your consumption- writer lamb