The Want To Go Home

by thesincorner2

In a world where the sludge villain escapes All Might, Izuku Midoriya, dejected from the lack of support from his hero, is caught up in the villains suffocating embrace once more. Quirkless and dying, until a Great One saves him. Bound to eldritch forces, he must face both nightmares and the real world, where death and madness await. Disclaimer: violence, gore, and mature themes.

22. Chapter 22

Chapter 22: Mergo, Child of the Queen, Child of Oedon.

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— https/discord.gg/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. https/linktr.ee/LittleLamb31532

Anyway, back to the fic.

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[EXTRA CONTENT WARNING FOR GROSS DESCRIPTION]

Warm.

It was so warm, like being cocooned in the softest blankets, a sensation he hadn't felt in what seemed like an eternity. No distant thoughts of school nagged at his mind, no half-formed worries clawed at his consciousness. For once, his world was still. Peaceful.

Izuku sighed, shifting slightly. His hands reached instinctively for the extra pillow on his bed—the worn, familiar thing that had served as his only source of comfort for years. His fingers, however, met something else entirely. Not fabric, but warmth. Soft and solid, a thin waist that his arms instinctively pulled closer.

His half-asleep mind barely registered the difference, too lost in the rare tranquility to question it. He pressed his cold nose against the comforting heat, chasing the warmth deeper—

A small, startled squeak pierced the air.

His blood turned to ice.

Reality hit Izuku like a brick to the skull.

A curtain of curly ginger hair filled his vision, soft strands tickling his face. Izuku blinked, his breath hitching as his sluggish mind scrambled to piece together where he was—how he had gotten here.

Then, like a dam bursting, it all crashed into him at once.

This wasn't his room. This wasn't his bed. And yet… he was in a bed. Just not the one he should have been in. Or was he supposed to be in this bed?

His arms instinctively tightened around the warmth in his grasp as his mind reeled, everything slamming into him like a truck.

The slime villain choking the air from his lungs, drowning him in darkness. The searing agony of the transfusion. The blood-soaked streets of Yharnam. The Hunt.

Flora, his new mother. The kind doll. Gehrman's sorrowful gaze—his kindness. Maria's relentless blades, her skill, her prowess. Ebrietas, the monotone creature who teased him endlessly. The civilians—those he had saved, pulled into the Dream, giving them refuge. The nightmare, the dungeons, the curse of Oedon.

Everything.

His breath hitched. His fingers twitched. The warmth in his arms shifted.

He wasn't home.

Even now, this dream—this breathtaking, nightmarish realm—was nothing more than a gilded prison, its gates locked until he completed his quest. He couldn't linger in Yharnam, not even for a day. Nothing here belonged to him. Nothing here was his. He loved this place, but it would never be his.

It was theirs.

The people who had endured the beast plague for generations.

The people who had been twisted, broken, and reshaped by eldritch gods who used them as playthings.

The people who deserved salvation.

This was their world. And no matter how much he wished otherwise, he was nothing more than a trespasser. A fleeting shadow, passing through their suffering like the countless hunters before him.

He would leave—abandon the people who had cared for him, even if that care came in the form of horror, even if it was a love sharpened into something jagged and monstrous. And then, he would go back to his world. He would return to the cold walls of a home that had never truly been one, to a mother who barely looked at him, who spoke his name as though it hurt her tongue.

His father had left fast. Izuku barely remembered that night. The first week after his father disappeared was a haze, blurred by the weight of a child's confusion. But the moment he did recall was burned into him like a brand. The scent of smoke clinging to his father's coat, the rasp of his voice as he crouched to Izuku's level, whispering words that never stopped echoing. His breath reeking of his quirk's thinly veiled smoke and the same stench as his favorite brand of cigarettes. "I'm sorry, my little green wyrm. I can't—I can't have a quirkless son… not like this. I love you, kid, but not enough for this. I'll… Don't worry. You won't have to deal with it for long. I love you enough to fix this."

Izuku hadn't understood.

He hadn't understood the way his father's voice wavered, hadn't grasped the weight of the slammed door that followed. The yelling had faded into static, lost in the empty space his father left behind.

He barely remembered the Bakugous. Mitsuki, with her sharp tongue and warm heart, had taken him in for a time. She never said much about the "incident," only whispered about it when she thought he wasn't listening, her voice thick with worry. The time spent there wasn't long, but for a child it felt like forever and a moment. He had lost the week somewhere in that time frame, between his fathers door slam, to staying with the family that at the time was almost his second family.

And then he had gone home. A new home, a different home, a smaller apartment. Mitsuki said their old one had burned down due to some electrical issues. She told him his father had taken a job overseas. He believed her,

His mother flinched when she looked at him. Her hands trembled, her body stiffened, as if he were something to be feared. Some nights, he woke to the sound of her sobbing. Muffled cries over the phone, her voice cracking as she repeated the same words, over and over again. "Izu… He looks just like HIM in the eyes. I can't, Mitsu. I can't…"

Izuku had never questioned it. Not really. Even after the slime villain, after he had stared death in the face, he hadn't let himself think about it. He shoved it into the corners of his mind, buried it beneath everything else, because dwelling on it wouldn't change anything.

His mother's neglect had only compounded it all. He ignored the fact that, in all these years, he had never received a single letter from his father. Ignored the burn scar on his mother's left leg. Ignored the gaping hole in his memories—the blank space that stretched across the night his father walked out and the days that followed. Ignored the fact that, for a few months after the "incident," his classmates had been kind to him. Even Bakugou.

Maybe his father had burned that apartment building down. Maybe he had tried to "fix" everything for Izuku. Maybe his father's love was no different like Kos's—a love that twisted, that warped, that destroyed. A love that justified everything, even murder, so long as it was done with conviction. Or maybe it had been an accident. An electrical fire. A cruel coincidence.

Izuku didn't want to know.

He didn't want to unravel the knots, didn't want to pick apart the fragile framework of his past. Because every day, piece by piece, he was realizing the truth—his old life had been built on nothing but half-truths and outright lies. The people in it had lied to him, had pitied him, had resented him for something beyond his control.

He was quirkless. A defect. A cruel roll of fate's dice. His father had left. Another fact. Another thing beyond his reach. Their home had burned to the ground. That could have been anything.

His body trembled. He didn't want to think about it. He didn't want to know.

But his mind refused to let him go.

A hand wove through his hair, nails scratching lightly at his scalp. He barely registered the touch before a quiet, broken noise slipped from his throat. He clenched his jaw, willing himself to stop.

He hated how easily he cried.

No matter what horrors he faced—no matter how much blood had soaked his hands, no matter how many nightmares he carved through—the tears always came back. Again and again.

And he despised them.

He hated the way they burned tracks down his cheeks, leaving the skin raw and irritated. How his eyes swelled, how his breath hitched and his body trembled under the weight of emotions he couldn't suppress. He loathed how easily they came, over things that shouldn't matter—things no one else would cry over. But no matter how much he tried to force them back, they fell unbidden, hour after hour, until dizziness clouded his mind, his stomach twisted into painful knots, and nausea threatened to pull him under.

He hated that something that happened nearly nine years ago still festered inside him like an open wound. Yet the thought of feeling another's blood on his skin didn't stir even the smallest tear. He had killed too many times for it to mean anything anymore. Murder had become muscle memory, violence a second nature. He had committed atrocities that would mark him as a villain in his world—a title that should have weighed on him. But it didn't. Not anymore.

He was a monster molded from the remnants of a broken child. He had no right to cry like the normal people of his world. No right to cling to sorrow, to let himself feel.

He was fourteen years old. And he had killed more people, slain more beasts, fought more battles than any hero in his world.

More than any villain.

And he hadn't even started high school yet.

Fingers traced gentle rivers through his hair, scratching soft circles against his scalp. A pair of arms wrapped around him, pulling him into a cocoon of warmth. The floodgates had broken, and now the tears spilled freely. His grip tightened around the other in his bed, his mind sluggishly linking the fiery ginger strands to Ebrietas—the Great One who had always been so kind to him. And here she was, holding him, letting him cry into her like a child in need.

He tried to pull away, but she only held him closer. Her fingers moved in slow, comforting motions along his scalp and neck, her voice thrumming against him like a cat's purr.

"Izuku, rest," she murmured. "You can be strong later. For now, just rest. You've been through so much… and you've done better than anyone here ever imagined. We thought it would take multiple attempts to bring down the Queen." A soft chuckle vibrated through her chest, her tone lifting with warmth. "But I knew you could do it. You never fail to impress."

Her nails raked through his hair once more, her voice dropping to a soft whisper. "Sleep a little longer, little hunter~"

Like a spell—perhaps it was one—his eyes grew heavy. The tear tracks still burned, but the pain faded into the background, swallowed by the gentle warmth of Ebrietas. Slowly, she pulled him down into the depths of sleep.

Izuku woke up sometime later, his mind caught in a strange haze—both foggy and clear. He sat up slowly, moving with sluggish, mechanical motions as he pulled on his usual hunter's garb. Where there was once speed and precision, now there was only weary imitation.

He drifted through the empty Hunter's Workshop, hands gathering supplies on instinct alone. His thoughts wandered, sifting through the puzzle before him.

The corpse he had used to enter the Lecture Hall had belonged to a Mensis scholar. And beyond that threshold, past the twisted halls of learning, lay the true nightmare… The Nightmare of Mensis was a fitting name. It was not the source, but the link. The bridge leading to the nightmare's heart. He had only stayed there a brief moment, he had become overwhelmed with the sheer arcane that flowed through that hell.

His hands fell to a drawer—usually locked, but at his touch, the mechanisms parted with a sharp click. With a smooth motion, he pulled it open, retrieving three wooden boxes and setting them atop the memory-stained altar.

The air in the workshop grew heavy. Arcane energy crackled and hissed where the boxes touched, currents of power dancing between them like unseen lightning. Even unopened, they radiated an oppressive presence.

Izuku reached for the oldest box first. His fingers lingered on the lid, reverent, before he slowly lifted it free.

"Every Great One loses its child," he whispered.

The words left him as the lid came off with another sharp click. The thing inside—blackened flesh, pockmarked with hundreds of lifeless, staring eyes—seemed to watch him still.

"Then they yearn for a surrogate," he continued, voice hushed. "This Umbilical Cord precipitated the encounter with the Pale Moon, which beckoned the hunters and conceived the Hunter's Dream. The Pale Moon… Flora… lost her child so long ago that no records even remain from when this was formed."

His fingers trembled slightly as he lifted the grotesque relic from its box. "Gehrman used it as a medium of prayer… to connect with you, mother." A pause. The weight of his next words pressed against his throat, thick and suffocating.

"I need its strength," he murmured. "The sibling I never had. Please—grant me the strength to face the worst this world has to offer."

With his final plea, he brought the foul thing to his lips.

His teeth sank into the cold, rubbery flesh, his body instantly recoiling at the bitter, electric tang. Arcane power surged through him with every bite, filling his veins with unnatural energy. His stomach twisted, nausea gripping him like a vice. His hands shook as he finished, breath coming in shallow gasps.

The flesh of a dead Great One's child churned inside him, and his body threatened to reject it. But he forced it down.

He had no other choice.

Strands of the first still clung to his teeth, a vile mockery of sinew and flesh—reminiscent of chicken or beef. He swallowed against the revulsion, reaching for the next box with slow, deliberate movements. The lid came free with a quiet click, and again, his voice slipped into a low, labored murmur.

"Every Great One loses its child," he began. The words filled his mind, anchoring him as the next umbilical cord rested heavy in his hands. "Then they yearn for a surrogate. And Oedon, the Formless One, is no different." The name tasted like bile. Izuku spat the words as though they burned his tongue. This one—this cord—had come from Ariana.

It had been a shock when Gehrman handed it to him, his voice hushed, weighed with something almost like regret. He explained, in grim detail, what would have happened had no one intervened. Ariana, an innocent, burdened with the child of a Great One. A child whose birth would have spelled her end. A cruel, inevitable fate—one she never even knew was forced upon her.

"To think… it was corrupted blood that began this eldritch liaison," Izuku finished, his voice raw.

His fingers curled tighter around the grotesque relic. His mind conjured the image of Ariana's gentle smile, the warmth she had given so freely, just like the blood—she offered it to him every chance she could. The endless kindness she had offered. It was a kindness that would have been twisted into horror by an uncaring god.

"Oedon," he whispered, his breath shaking. "Your crimes are unforgivable." His teeth clenched. His grip on the cord tightened, his nails biting into the withered flesh.

"You placed this in the body of an innocent. Someone I swore to protect." His voice was steady, but his rage trembled beneath it, barely leashed.

"I claim its strength," he vowed. "In defiance of you." Then, without hesitation, he brought it to his lips.

And bit down.

The second went down about as smoothly as the first—meaning not at all. His stomach twisted, a slow, creeping nausea settling in his gut, but he ignored it. The moment he forced down the last cold, rubbery strand, he reached for the final box.

His fingers shook, whether from disgust or anticipation, he couldn't tell. It didn't matter. He needed to be ready.

With another quiet click, the lid came free. Inside, the last umbilical cord lay coiled, grotesque and ancient, its form somehow wrong even in death. His stomach churned at the sight. His hands trembled more violently, but he refused to stop now.

"Every Great One loses its child," he muttered, the words like bile in his throat. He swallowed, forcing himself to continue. "This cord is ancient. The first found by the Byrgenwerth Scholars, deep within the Pthumerian tombs."

His grip tightened, breath shallow. He could picture them—those long-dead seekers of knowledge—unearthing this wretched thing, oblivious to the cosmic horror they had invited into their world.

"Provost Willem sought the Cord to elevate his being. To elevate his thoughts to those of a Great One, by lining his brain with eyes." A bitter chuckle slipped from his lips.

"The only choice, he believed, if man was ever to match Their greatness."

Foolishness. Arrogance.

One of these cords could grant power, yes. Could twist and shape a mind, expand it. But three—three were needed to stand before the Higher Great Ones.

Izuku had already felt the disparity.

Kos. Flora. Ebrietas.

Ebrietas was powerful, but compared to those two? She was lesser. A mere child grasping at the footsteps of gods. Even Rom—one of the weakest Kin of the great ones he had ever faced—had slaughtered hunters with ease.

The gap between humanity and the Great Ones was monstrous.

Izuku sighed, the weight of the cord pressing against his palm, dragging his mind backward—to the clinic.

Iosefka's Clinic.

To that quiet, sterile place, long since transformed into something unrecognizable. The Kin—dozens of them—warped and wailing in the dark. Their pale blue skin and bulbous heads shaking, sobbing, unable to comprehend anything.

And among them, one whose scent was not like the woman who had handed him a vial through the slit in the door. The real Iosefka.

The woman who called herself Iosefka… wasn't.

When he had finally seen her, propped on a medical table, screaming, begging, accepting her role as a surrogate host to a great one's child—she hadn't been a doctor. She hadn't been the kind voice he once trusted.

She had been something else. She had been a scholar of the Healing Church. A member of the Choir. An enemy.

Izuku exhaled slowly. There had been no pride in that kill.

But only the Choir possessed the knowledge to turn those patients into Kin. Only a Choir member could have done it. And so he had done what he must.

Extracting the implanted cord had been gruesome work. The ancient flesh, surgically placed—forcibly implanted—had barely begun to grow warm in that woman's body. It grew into a thing neither fully child nor fully human. Malformed. Incomplete. Sprouting with dozens of black eyes, rotting flesh already beginning to decay. Dead.

It had begun its old purpose—anew, perhaps for the hundredth time—but it had failed. Once its original child had died, it lost that ability, it could attempt but its new potential was never meant to create life. Only to shape something beyond life into something else, as a part of something else.

Izuku could still smell it. The sickly scent of vile fluid clung to his senses, thick and suffocating. His nausea doubled, his stomach twisting violently, but he didn't hesitate.

He brought it to his mouth.

Bit down.

It stank—wrong in a way beyond rot. Beyond decay. It crawled down his throat, thick and desperate, as if trying to claw its way back out.

He forced it down.

His body rejected it immediately. A violent shudder ran through him, his arms trembling as he slumped against the memory altar. His vision blurred, the edges of his sight distorting. The sheer disgust made his breath ragged, his stomach lurching in protest.

With a sharp snap, he broke the needle off a blood vial, tilting it to his lips. The thick, iron-rich fluid poured down his throat, warm and familiar, forcing the lingering taste away.

It settled his stomach—barely. But it was enough.

He braced himself against the cold stone of the altar, focusing on his breath. A minute. Another. The nausea dulled, his body ceased shaking, and the sweat on his brow cooled.

Enough.

His steps were steady—almost—as he moved to the workshop table. His fingers found the gemstones and bloodstone shards he had set aside, their arcane hum a quiet reminder of what came next. His daggers needed new gems. His scythe, too.

He had more than enough shards now to reinforce them both.

Carefully, he slotted the gems into the weapons, their resonance thrumming under his fingertips. The shards themselves were being melted down, he would submerge his weapons in them, let them drink from the material. It would strengthen the edges, their latent energy would be devoured by the waiting blades.

Between gathering his supplies, and monitoring his weapons as they absorbed the bloodstone, he retrieved the relics from the queen.

The head. The stone.

He carried them to the statue at the back of the workshop, where they joined the Orphan's severed head and the Crown of Illusions.

One step closer.

One more step done.

He felt a flicker of pride, for a meer moment.

He shook his head, exhaling softly before lowering himself into the chair at his desk. Another notebook sat waiting—a single volume among thousands, a meticulous catalogue of the School of Mensis and their atrocities.

He propped it open, fingers tracing the aged parchment. Reinforcing his weapons would take hours. He had time to read, to understand the enemy before he faced them.

The book hadn't been there before.

Ebrietas was a sly one. Always planting knowledge where he would find it, threading information into his path like breadcrumbs through a darkened wood. Just like the scattered notes around his desk—insights he hadn't written, but that had appeared nonetheless.

He read.

Minutes blurred into hours. Then, a note—a single passage—stilled his breath.

The School of Mensis, at one point, had access to a fourth umbilical cord. Mergo's.

His grip tightened on the paper, knuckles paling. His mind raced with possibilities, questions spiraling through the murk of old theories. How had they obtained it? Had they stolen it, wrested it from whatever beast once held it? Had they made a deal for it?

Ebrietas had been working alongside him—somewhere off in the dream, only dropping by with a note before leaving—scouring the depths of the notes he had the messengers bring up from the dungeon, unearthing what secrets she could. Fragments of madness from the madman Izzy had been eerily correct about a lot.

Not enough for the full truth. But enough to confirm the worst.

Izuku swallowed, forcing his pulse to steady. If the School of Mensis had that—It would explain the group of cage headed people after the reborn monster… The sheer force of creating a portal to Mergo's nightmare, to become one with the old one's nightmare, to be the host of the path to that ancient hellscape… Not all of them had to agree to it, but Izuku doubted any of them had a choice by the end. It would explain why most of them were shackled to their chairs. All except the one whose corpse had shunted him to that nightmare.

Izuku exhaled deeply, his shoulders sagging as he turned another page.

Fanatics. That was the only word for them. The School of Mensis had discarded even the loose regulations of the Healing Church, forsaking all limits in their pursuit of human ascension.

Not surprising.

By the time he finished the notebook, the reinforcement process had completed. His weapons gleamed, renewed with sharpened edges and tempered power. He closed the book with a quiet thump, fingertips lingering on the worn leather cover.

Ebritas had processed the notes she scavenged—most were the ravings of the mad, empty words scratched into the depths of delirium. As for the ones concerning Oedon…

"Later," she had whispered into his mind. "After you survive this nightmare."

He didn't argue.

Rising from his seat, he rolled his shoulders, stretching the stiffness from his limbs. His daggers slid smoothly into their sheaths, their familiar weight a steadying presence against his sides. His scythe, newly reforged, clicked into place as he assembled it.

This next stretch of the hunt demanded range.

Not that he planned to fight much—no, running was the better option. The Nightmare was vast, tangled in horrors, and he had sensed three presences within it. Two watched him.

The third… The third was shielded.

A presence he should have been able to sense, but something obscured it—blocked him out, as though veiled by some unknowable force.

He grimaced. It was unsettling.

Shaking off the thought, Izuku moved to the workbench, methodically gathering his supplies. Blood vials, quicksilver bullets, beast blood pellets. A few blue elixirs, just in case. Bone marrow ash.

A handful of sedatives, pocketed for the inevitable moments where his nerves would fray. Six enhanced Molotovs clipped to his belt.

Better to be prepared than sorry.

His preparations complete, he took one last glance around the workshop. The Dream was quiet, still. The next step was forward—into the nightmare. And into the grasp of whatever was waiting for him. Probably Mergo, Oedon, and whoever was the host of this nightmares strengthened the connection to reality.

Izuku strode toward the headstone, the one barely tethered to the lantern marking the entrance to this particular nightmare. As he passed the messengers, he gave them a brief pat on their bony heads. They chittered in delight. He waved toward the Doll, who offered him a gentle smile before vanishing into lightless radiance.

Then, he stepped forward—into the nightmare.

The moment his boots crunched against brittle, white stone, he felt it.

Eyes.

Crawling over his skin like unseen fingers, pressing into his thoughts, watching. But unlike before, his mind didn't shatter under the weight of it. It itched, a deep, gnawing discomfort that made his stomach twist.

Copper flooded the back of his throat. He turned his head and spat. A glob of crimson landed on the pale ground—not just blood. A small, shredded piece of meat. The color told him it was definitely a shred of his organs.

His stomach clenched as he eyed the pulped remains. The cords. His body was rejecting them. "Too late now." he thought simply, if it killed him, he would just come back.

Without hesitation, he jabbed a vial into his leg. The familiar sting of the needle was a relief, the surge of healing blood chasing away the worst of the nausea. He wiped his mouth and pressed forward.

The opening stretch was simple. A path carved into his memory, one he could walk blindfolded. Silver-furred beasts, snake-riddled and writhing, fell beneath his blades.

Forward.

And then—

The castle. Or was it a monument? A cathedral?

Whatever it was, its mere presence explained the suffocating sense of being watched. Two gazes bore into him.

One from the top, reeking of an Old One's offspring, its scent fouling the air, polluting the land with its inconceivable existence.

The other, halfway up—a lesser Great One. An amalgamation of minds, fused into something that should not be. It spoke—no, whispered into his thoughts, tendrils of madness curling around his psyche.

The Mensis Ritual was a success.

Join us. Transcend.

It hurts. It hates.

It wants to see its family again.

It despises what it has become.

It desired to be set free.

It wants to connect, make a connection, exist in spite of itself.

To grow into a true scholar.

To kill the one who did this to them.

To kill all those who doubted the ritual.

The weight of its misery clawed at his mind. Izuku clenched his jaw. With a pulse of arcane energy, he shut it out. The whispers cut off, silenced by an unyielding barrier of will and power.

The creature's eyes burned into him, filled with loathing. He ignored them and moved forward. He had felt the frenzy it caused to make his blood sharp in his own veins. A skill he had a love for, something he now knew how to shut out.

Izuku pressed forward, each step met by the flash of silver fur and the glint of massive claws. The beasts were fast—agile—but he was faster. He weaved between their strikes with effortless precision, his daggers carving through sinew and bone in swift, fluid arcs. There was no need to linger. He had places to be.

Then, ahead—the bridge.

A gaping cavern stretched beneath it, separating him from the building that housed his prey. And up the path past the bridge a handful of giants stood guard. Slow things they were, unable to notice him till he had already passed the bridge and slaughtered the silver beast at its end.

However, as soon as the first one spotted him, Izuku barely had to wait a moment before it moved, hoisting a massive boulder over its head. With a guttural roar, it hurled the stone straight at him.

He could've dodged.

Instead, he grinned.

"Let's see how strong I've become." He murmured under his breath as he waited, standing his ground as the boulder hurtled toward him. At the last possible moment, he caught it.

The impact rattled through his bones. It was heavy—a crushing weight—but compared to Izzy's strikes? A feather.

Something popped in his back as he heaved the boulder, muscles coiling, before launching it back at the giant.

The monster wasn't nearly as graceful.

The rock slammed into it with a thunderous crash, sending it sprawling to the ground, rubble pinning its writhing form. It barely had time to struggle before Izuku closed the distance, stepping over shattered stone.

One clean cut across the throat.

It stilled.

The other two fell quicker, rocks shattered on ground and made gravel, but the beasts fell quickly. Izuku didn't stop to admire his work. He briskly, happily continued forward, stepping through the massive doors.

Then—he froze.

Suspended from the ceiling was an army of spiders.

Massive, bloated things, their glossy black bodies pulsing, countless legs twitching in anticipation.

A sharp, crawling sensation raced up his spine.

"Oh—

Oh, I hate this." Izuku took a slow step back, swallowing the bile creeping up his throat.

"Can… can I have a single part of this fucking quest where I don't see shit like this?" He breathed out deeply, his disdain for the creatures making his body itch.

Spiders. Massive spiders. An army of them, hanging from the ceiling, their glossy black bodies shifting, legs twitching in anticipation.

He crouched outside the entrance hall, exhaling through his nose. Calm. Calm. Get it over with. You've killed worse, these are just huge spiders. It took him a few moments before he shook off the feeling of spiders crawling up his neck.

Then, he stood and strode back inside. In an instant, his form blurred, solidifying above the hanging arachnids. The largest among them noticed him—but too late.

With a quick flick of his wrist, he lit and hurled one of his Molotovs.

Fire erupted, consuming the largest spider in an inferno that quickly spread to the smallest. Their screeches filled the chamber as burning bodies thrashed, the flames leaping from one to another.

Izuku didn't stick around.

He dropped, landing with a thump, boots skidding across the floor as he turned right, moving fast. The path was a tight hallway briefly before opening into a bridge leading to the next building.

A single man stood there.

A notepad slipped from his fingers, fluttering to the ground as he reached for the weapon on his back—a silver, smaller-bladed counterpart to Ludwig's greatsword came from the sheath weapon that was its whole. Without hesitation, he charged.

Slow.

Painfully slow.

Izuku didn't wait.

He closed the distance himself.

For the man, it was as if the younger hunter had simply vanished. No cloud of smoke. No arcane haze. Just… gone.

Then—nothing. No moment of struggle. No time to react.

Izuku reappeared behind him, daggers dripping. The hunter's body sagged, deep cuts precisely placed—skull, chest, heart. Lethal. Efficient.

Izuku didn't look back. He was already moving forward… the notepad however sat on his pouch snugly as he went.

Izuku cleared the bridge, stepping into the rundown grand hall before him. His eyes adjusted quickly to the dim light, the sound of metallic shuffling filling the vast, crumbling space.

He stood on a second-floor balcony, overlooking a path leading to a rickety, barely-held-together elevator. Below, swarming the area, were them.

Puppet-like creatures.

Metallic marionettes, child-sized in proportion, their faces hidden behind rusted masks, thick plates of armor fused to their frail frames. They didn't walk so much as waddle, unsteady and unnatural, yet still closing in from all sides.

Izuku took a breath. No need to waste time.

With a swift movement, he climbed onto the railing and jumped.

The hoard clamored, grasping at the empty air where he had stood. He landed below, bypassing them entirely.

A sharp crack rang out. An arrow splintered against the stone just beside his head, but he didn't flinch. Instead, he quickened, blurring into motion and sliding between the legs of a massive marionette—a grotesque, oversized variant wielding a jagged cleaver.

The weapon came down, splitting the floor where Izuku's mist form had been an instant before. But he was already past, slipping through gaps in the encroaching crowd, a laugh escaping him at their stumbling, clumsy movements.

The elevator was ahead. He leapt, boots skidding against its floor as it lurched upward, the horde below screeching in frustration.

The ascent lasted only a few moments. When it finally stopped, Izuku stepped forward onto a metal bridge.

A stench filled his nose—thick, heavy, rotten with arcane filth. It clung to the air, suffocating and putrid.

Before him, two puppets hung, their movements lazy, bodies suspended by unseen arcane strings. They stood in front of a door at the bridge's end.

Izuku exhaled, fingers twitching toward his weapons.

More obstacles. But at least they weren't spiders.

Izuku blinked forward, vanishing into motion, arcane words slipping from his tongue as one blade shimmered with a pale false fire.

He plunged his off-hand dagger into the first puppet, the edge biting through the brittle outer shell of the puppet and snapping into the ancient, shriveled bones beneath—not a puppet, but mummified flesh, held upright by strands of arcane will. It was pushed into the wall behind it by the force, cracking the stones it's body pressed into.

With a spin, his main dagger carved sharp semicircles into the second puppet, slicing clean through decrepit flesh and the web of glowing strings tethering it to the puppeteer. With each precise cut, parts of it fell limp, collapsing like a marionette without a master.

Before the husks could crumple, reconvene and reanimate their forms, Izuku leapt past them, and behind him, a ticking molotov—primed, waiting—crackled.

It exploded, the hallway behind him blooming with blue fire, incinerating the cursed remains in a roar of radiant fury. The new mixture coated the stones and sung a litany of crackling and choking smoke.

He didn't turn back.

Izuku's feet cracked stone and dented rusted metal as he surged forward, only slowing when the air grew thick—too thick.

The arcane miasma ahead was dense, nearly solid. It clung to his skin, suffused his lungs, reeked of death—but not blood. Not the coppery tang of violence. Not the smell he was so used to in his time in Yharnam.

It was Rot. Pure and ancient. Like a crypt that was never supposed to be opened.

Izuku halted, eyes narrowing as he scanned the stone staircase before him. The mist thinned slightly, disturbed by the soft echo of approaching footsteps. The soft clicking of light steps would have been inaudible to most people, but they were confident, their gate excited.

From the right path of the hall as it branched from a singular path into a cross section, it appeared.

A metal cage crept into view, revealing itself inch by inch—that headpiece, familiar from the coven of scholars of mensis that lay mummified and brain dead after the fight with the One Reborn. But this time, the man beneath it was alive.

Their eyes met.

And Izuku felt it as soon as their eyes met.

Crazy met crazy, green with dancing lines of silver and red met blue… or were they turquoise? Or a mad aqua sea.

Izuku did not know, but what he did know was that the man was the host of this nightmare, or at least he was the catalyst for Izuku's entry. However something more sat behind those eyes veiled behind the metal bars of the cage that sat heavy on his shoulders.

An arcane mass bloated within the man's skull like a tumor, threads of warped power stapling his soul to the Nightmare. Three distinct paths of pulsing energy nailed into him, tunneling through the bars of his helmet, their excess bleeding back into the Nightmare's air like leaking oil.

And beneath it all, like a bitter stench he'd never forget—Oedon's mark.

The man smiled. Broad. Familiar. Like a brother greeting kin across a battlefield.

Izuku smiled back warmly.

Then the man raised his arms in welcome—wide, dramatic, a performance for an audience of one. His voice rang out in a high, almost singsong tone, manic and brittle, as if his thoughts were stacked on top of each other and cracking under the weight. His gaze pierced through Izuku—and beyond him, far beyond.

"Ah, Kos… or some say, Kosm… Do you hear our prayers?" He sang out, his shoulders shuddering in euphoria.

His feet tapped the stone floor—once, twice, thrice—before he spun in place and spread his arms again, the cage on his head catching what little light remained.

"No, we shall not abandon the dream! No one can catch us! No one can stop us now!" He cackled, and the sound echoed like a fractured hymn. He danced a finger across the dusty stone wall.

"Oh Kos, oh Kos, Oedon has divorced us from our flesh—grant us eyes! Eyes so that we may ascend! So that we may attain a higher standing!" As he spoke his voice rose, and with every utterance of her name Izuku felt her eyes on him. Peering from a shadow in the darkest depths.

As the man howled to gods and ancient beings, the threads of arcane string snaked from his fingertips—those same cruel lines that had danced puppets in the dark now lashed out like tendrils, seeking new bodies to bind. Some went down the opposite halls and went taught, but a few floated in front of him, dancing in the air.

Izuku stood his ground, a smile tugging at his lips.

The puppet master grinned back, wider still.

The threads snapped forward before Izuku could move, gouging trenches in the stone as they sought him like leashed serpents. He vanished into mist and reformed behind a crumbling pillar close to his position on the stained library—something Izuku just noticed as his body shifted the fog, towering cases of books with titles illegible, Izuku wanted them. He shook his head as he loaded a vial into his injector as he whispered a curse under his breath.

The man—Micolash—Izuku at least guessed that the leader of the school was the man before him and did not chase after him—the man danced further into the hall. The cage on his head clanged as he turned a corner with wild laughter. The walls groaned around them, old marble warping under the pressure of something watching.

Izuku sprinted after him, weaving through the serpentine paths that seemed to stretch and split and curve. The path opened wide and then split—two mirrored doorways gaping at the far end. Micolash ducked into one, his voice trailing like a thread in Izuku's ears: "Ahhh… To be free of the body, yet still aware! It is… divine!"

Izuku yelled out, his grin strained at the frustration of the chase, "You're just running!"

The left path was dormant of the crackling arcane of Micolashs' connection. Right it was.

He followed through a twisting corridor lined with cracked mirrors and oil-drenched paintings, until he found himself in a grand library—the books half-melted from arcane rot, whispering on their own. And there, in the center, stood Micolash—hands raised, channeling a cyclone of blue shimmering threads that laced the air around him.

"Oh, you poor grounded thing," Micolash said, laughing with sudden venom. "Still shackled to causality. Still thinking in lines and limits."

He snapped his fingers.

From the ceiling dropped two more puppets—smashed-open torsos bristling with arcane filaments, twitching with borrowed life. One charged. Izuku ducked, dashed, and ripped it in half with a clean slash. The second got closer, shrieking soundlessly before Izuku slammed a molotov into its gut and vaulted away. It exploded, splattering the ground with twitching limbs. The heat of the flame caught oil paints that slicked a portion of the floor, spreading and devouring books and paintings as it spread, the light illuminated the mad man's eyes, his teeth shining bright and reflective.

"YES!" Micolash cried. "The agony of separation! You feel it, don't you? We are so close to touching the firmament!" He broke into a deranged laugh as the twisting threads danced around him, "And what flames! Blessed flames, not of the material! So enhanced, so beyond and beautiful! How did you learn about such a beautiful fire?"

"You're insane," Izuku spat, advancing fast.

"But aren't you listening? We are eyes! We are vessels! The Mensis Ritual worked! We opened the gate!" The man broke into a shattered giggle, his eyes bulging in his sockets, "My form is gone and yet I cannot see how you conjure such fire! Such fire! Blessed fire much like my form!"

Micolash swung his arms and sent a blast of arcane energy screaming down the center of the hall. Izuku mist-stepped to the side, letting it scorch past. He closed the gap in a breath, daggers flashing with Arcane Edge.

He slashed Micolash across the arm—only for the madman to vanish in a shimmer of threads, laughing as his form dissolved like fog in sunlight. "NO ONE CATCHES US! No one catches the dream! You're beyond what I thought, but not able to touch me!"

Izuku growled, pulling a puppet's head from the floor and hurling it at the spot where Micolash appeared for a split second before he vanished once more. Sparks erupted off the wall. Gone. Somewhere deeper into the hellish maze.

The halls shifted.

Doors slammed open. Laughter echoed through the nightmare, bouncing off the wrong angles of the space.

Another chase. Another game.

Izuku cracked his neck and bolted after the sound, his steps heavy and sure as the madness thickened.

He ran through the corridors with ghosts breathing on his neck. With every step he felt the eyes of Micolash in him, of Kos, of Oedon.

Every corner Izuku turned, Micolash's voice spilled from the walls like oil—dripping with mockery, rage, euphoria. The walls shifted. The halls grew narrower. The air was thick with the weight of wrongness. Arcane static licked at his skin, tasted the marrow beneath.

"And yet you chase! Hah! Of course you do! The Hunter chases, just as the dream demands! And yet you are no natural Hunter, no Hunter could exist here without going mad, without succor!"

A door slammed behind him.

Izuku whipped around—nothing there. He grit his teeth, daggers clenched, quickening bubbling just under the surface of his skin. His boots slid across a floor suddenly slick with ink-dark fluid as another echo crashed through the space: "We gave up our flesh to become pure thought! We are beyond meat, beyond pain, beyond… consequence! Yet you… your flesh beyond flesh, beyond my reach, yet you think linearly, like a mortal…"

He found another door open now. It hadn't been before. Izuku stepped in without hesitation—and the door behind him slammed shut with a shriek of rusted hinges.

The room was tight—barely fifteen feet across, circular, the ceiling high and fading into smoke. Books burned in piles at the edges of the room. And there, standing at the center, arms spread wide, grinning like a child before a birthday cake made of stars, was Micolash.

"You made it! Oh, Kos, you made it! Do you see me now? Do you see what I am?" The tone rose higher, more excited.

Izuku didn't answer. His foot hit the ground and he dashed forward.

Micolash's hands lit up with warping energy—threads lashed out in a chaos of sharp angles. Izuku ducked one, parried the second with a blade that sparked against the filament, and drove his knee into Micolash's ribs. The cage rattled. Micolash let out a breathless wheeze—then laughed.

"Yes! YES! Strike me! Anchor me! Let me remember what it meant to be real!" With a twist of his hand the host of the nightmare went to call upon a great one's strength, the Augur of Ebrietas, but the summoning failed and the man's smile faltered for only a split second.

He swung his hand again, and the threads bloomed into a nova of arcane barbs. Izuku twisted, one slicing his arm—but he gritted through the pain and slashed across Micolash's chest, daggers ripping through cloth and skin alike.

Micolash stumbled, bloodless wounds fizzing with unnatural light, and suddenly jerked backward.

"BUT THE DREAM MUST GO ON!" he screamed, and then—gone.

The arcane snapped, his body unraveling mid-step, fading into the same nothing he'd escaped with before.

Izuku stood in the center of the ruined chamber, breath ragged, fingers twitching with leftover adrenaline.

Above him, the ceiling began to warp. Stone peeled back like wax—revealing a spiraling loft above, a warped staircase uncoiling from the dark like a tongue.

The laughter came again. Distant now. Higher.

Izuku inhaled, cracked his neck, and sprinted up the stairs, each step echoing like a gunshot in the dream's brittle air.

Halfway up the stairs the air changed, from cold to heated and full of something more, charged and enriched with the fluctuating arcane that buzzed through the cold stones.

The building howled around him.

Wind that didn't exist tore through stone and shuddering metal, howling like the wails of children and the sobbing of old gods. The staircase spiraled into impossible geometry, twisting back on itself in sharp turns that made Izuku's knees ache and his stomach churn. He ran through it anyway. One foot in front of the other.

He heard it before he saw it.

The chanting.

Dozens of voices, all Micolash's, in dozens of octaves—overlapping and clashing like a choir turned inside out. They spat scripture and nonsense in equal measure, sometimes sobbing, sometimes laughing. And at the top of the loft, in a pulsing room of gray stone threaded with veins of bone-white tendrils and writhing glyphs, was the source.

Micolash himself.

But no longer merely a man in a cage.

He had changed.

His arms were longer now, stretched like melted wax. Fingers bent at impossible angles, nails splitting through flesh as they curved into jagged claws. The metal cage still crowned his skull—but it bled now, dripping black ink and arcane fluid down his spine like a leaking halo. The energy pouring from his eyes was wild, feral—like a beast caged within brittle bone.

He turned slowly.

Every eye not on his face opened across the walls, floors, and ceiling—too many to count. Each stared at Izuku, pupils like black pinholes, forged from the same dripping arcana that ran from Micolash's sockets, down his chest, and into the stone below.

"Ah… The Child of the Dream returns to us… to me… to Him. The child of the moon, fawned over by the sea, wielding flames as potent as the sun—stands before the bloodied womb of the formless god who oversees our lives and grants us purpose. Mourns and avenges. Hates and harbors grudges."

Izuku didn't speak.

His feet skidded across slick stone as he lunged, a burst of heat trailing behind him. His blade glowed with arcane script, searing the air as he came down in a leaping strike—sharp, decisive, a killing blow.

But Micolash caught it.

Hand to blade. Skin to steel. No armor. No enchantment. Just flesh.

And still—he didn't flinch.

The man whose brain was stillborn as Mergo's licked his lips—if the black fluid leaking down them could still be called blood. His other hand struck forward, palm bursting with compressed energy—detonating the air between them.

Izuku was thrown back, bouncing across the floor, ribs screaming, blood streaking across the stones.

"Do you feel it?!" Micolash howled, body twitching, shoulders seizing. "The gaze of the Outer Dark! The pressure of thoughts too vast for bone?!" He staggered, eyes burning. "You are the flaw in the machine, Izuku. The aberration. Let me FIX you!"

The liquid pouring from his eyes wasn't blood. Not tears. It was arcana in its rawest form—leaking from a body that couldn't hold it.

He rushed again.

Izuku reacted—pivoted—and kicked him square in the chest. The impact sent Micolash flying, crashing into a pillar of bone and glyphs.

"The formless one wants nothing more than to keep its child," Micolash gasped, rising slowly. "And you—child of the moon—would slaughter it for your mother's will! How is that fair? How is that fair?!"

Arcane spears blinked into existence—four, eight, ten—then fired in volleys.

Izuku twisted through the chaos, rolling between two, cutting down a third mid-flight. One caught him in the ribs—hot pain flaring as his coat singed. He bit down on it, hand flicking to his belt. A healing vial hissed into his side, restoring what little he could.

And then he moved—a blur of speed and intent, closing the gap again like starlight on a string.

In a blink, he struck.

One slash across the shoulder. Another across the ribs. A third across Micolash's chest—so deep it sprayed darkness like a ruptured artery.

But still—the madman laughed. His body cracked and bled and split, and he kept advancing.

Izuku skidded back, crouched low, panting. "The longer that child lives, the more humans die."

"AND?!" Micolash screamed. "Humans are microorganisms to Oedon! Ants in a corpse! The old ones are but kin with no teeth, forms shackled by limits! WE will break that!"

The walls shuddered.

The room shrank.

Tendrils of nightmare matter coiled inward—looping, crashing, rearranging the arena. Broken furniture hovered. Dead ceiling beams twisted into floating sigils. Glyphs of knowledge—awful, living glyphs—circled like vultures.

Izuku ducked under a claw swipe, slashed with his off-hand dagger—cutting through a line of eyes blooming across the floor. Each one burst like overripe fruit, spilling ash and flickering light.

He twisted again, both blades plunging into Micolash's side. More liquid—thicker now, oozing like oil—poured out. Izuku jumped back, breath ragged, muscles twitching.

"Eyes, eyes, eyes—we need more eyes! Can't dream if we can't see!" Micolash shrieked, voice splitting, rising to a register that shook glass. "Oedon gave us thought, Kos will grant us meaning—YOU… you will give us consequence! Let us make of you a GOSPEL!"

Micolash raised his hands in front of himself and clenched his fists, his whole body twitching from effort as the spell came from every direction. Dozens of thin arcane lances. They formed mid-air, then converged.

Izuku tried to quicken, tried to dodge, instead all he could do was scream—body rippling with arcane backlash as the impact hit like a bomb. His skin split in places. His lungs felt like they were on fire. He hit the floor and almost didn't get back up.

Almost.

But he did.

He roared, defiant, planting a boot and charging forward—daggers burning with the words he carved into them at the Workshop long ago. He poured every ounce of Arcane, Strength, will into the charge. He pulled the space between them, thirty squares closed in a split second as the room shrunk in moments.

He slid under Micolash's wide swing, pivoted behind him and dug both blades into the madman's back—one in the kidney, the other up through his spine. He lifted him, muscles screaming, and slammed him into the floor with a wet, unnatural crunch.

The cage crumpled. A sound like a bell being bent in half shrieked out as the structure warped and buckled.

And for a moment—there was silence.

Micolash twitched. "Hah… ha… ha… do you… see…?" he gurgled.

His eyes—what remained of them—turned to Izuku.

"We're all… puppets… just waiting for strings…" a deep gurgling groan escaped his lips before his final words scraped the air like nails on a chalkboard. "Now… now I'm waking up, I'll forget everything…"

Then the arcane began to leak. The three cords of energy binding him to the nightmare snapped, one after the other—pop, snap, whine—and Micolash went limp, his body smoking with burned knowledge, bloodless, and heavy.

The nightmare cracked.

All around Izuku, the space groaned—shuddered—fractured.

Micolash's corpse faded into mist, his last thoughts echoing into silence as the dream threatened to tear apart without its Host.

Izuku looked up, his body covered in blood—his or not, he wasn't sure—and turned slowly toward the only path forward.

The Nightmare of Mensis's host was dead.

And then, in the far distance, came the groan of iron and chains.

A scraping—deep and resonant, like the bones of the world grinding against one another.

He turned.

The air thickened again, like he'd been submerged in oil. Reality tilted as if rejecting itself, folding along edges that shouldn't exist. His vision blurred. The smell of smoke and rot coiled in his lungs.

He blinked.

And suddenly—he stood at the edge of a man made cliff.

A sheer drop into the rest of the building he had just ascended moments ago yawned before him. Below, something ancient stirred, unseen beneath layers of shadow. But his gaze was drawn upward, thick chains screamed hellish choirs as they slid through rusted mechanisms. They lifted something, like Micolash's death had revived this machine as it brought up the large metal bridge he had met the first puppets on. It slowed and slammed into place, steel bit into stone like ragged teeth as a path across the chasm opened before him.

The great bridge was a thing of twisted steel and malformed architecture—the blackened steel could have been forged that color or the endless blood that kept this land alive had etched itself into this ancient walkway.

Izuku began walking. His heart pounded in his chest as emotions sturred deep beneath his heart.

It was mostly melancholic.

Izuku narrowed his eyes as he walked and exited into the uppermost top of the building, he could feel where Mergo would be, but they were not his first target, something else was. The glowing embers of his blade crackled low beside him. The stench of madness was thicker here. Copper and sulfur and something wrong. Two scents mixed into the air like rotted perfume—one bitter and cold, the other old, hollow, and heavy with power.

Mergo.

But not yet.

That something else lingered.

Something that glared at him.

That watched

The frenzied glare of the nightmarish entity still burned across the landscape, an invisible weight that clawed at the back of his skull, pulsing with hostile rhythm. That—whatever it was—that had to fall first. That cyclopean gaze that kept track of his every step.

He would find it.

He would end it.

Then, and only then, would he ascend to Mergo's chamber and finish what began the moment he opened his eyes in Yharnam.

He stepped forward into a running sprint,

Each footfall was a promise. Each breath, a countdown.

This nightmare would end.

He would end it.

For him.

For them.

For everyone.

He would feel no remorse. Not anymore. That well had run dry long ago.

His footsteps echoed against the rough stones of the loft—sharp, deliberate, the rhythm of a hunter with nothing left to lose. The sound stirred things that should not exist, abominations cobbled together by nightmare logic and severed instinct.

He could smell them before he saw them, rotting flesh forced to be animated with life, it burned his throat like bile. The first to stagger into view was a thing with the emaciated body of a dog—its fur once white, now yellowed and caked in rust-colored stains. Its neck had been roughly severed, then fused with crude staples and arcane thread to the head of a raven. The avian skull twitched violently, black eyes gleaming with vicious clarity. It opened its beak and unleashed a cry that was neither bark nor caw but something wet, thick, feral.

It wasn't alone.

Two more limped from the shadows. One wore a dog's snarling head atop a crow's fragile body, legs bending the wrong way as it struggled to support its unnatural bulk. The other was a tangled hybrid of both, stitched, broken, wrong.

They lunged.

Too slow.

A molotov greeted them.

Flames howled through the open air as Izuku's arm snapped forward in one clean arc. The glass shattered mid-air—fire erupting into a bloom of burning oil and screams. He didn't watch them fall. His boots struck stone again, sliding to a halt before a lamp tucked beside a broken elevator that hung treacherously over the edge of the loft, the single steel chain creaked and groaned in the quiet wind, a cage that could free fall at any moment.

The air around him was wrong—tainted with a scent that wasn't rot, but something deeper. An echo of presence. Izuku lit the lamp with practiced ease, eyes narrowing as the elevator groaned beside him with a wicked metal cry. The metal door hung half-detached, pried outward from the inside like something had clawed its way free. Its single hinge squeaked with every breath of the nightmare wind, eager to fall.

It was a death trap, no normal man would dare to enter.

He stepped inside anyway.

The descent was short-lived.

Halfway down, instinct struck like lightning. He saw the ledge—felt it—and launched off the platform, catching the rough edge with practiced grace. He slipped through a gaping hole in the side of the building and landed in a narrow, crumbling corridor.

The stench hit him immediately.

It was thick—cloying—ancient. Like wet parchment soaked in spoiled milk and cosmic weight. A Great One's presence. Not just an echo, but a living thought, bleeding into the air. He closed his eyes and breathed it in.

Target Two.

His eyes snapped open. He ran.

The corridor curved, stone giving way through an old forgotten doorway in front of him to a twisted, alien formation of nightmare-born rock. The path ahead forked briefly before the doorway, a faint glint catching his eye. A side passage. A chest.

He didn't hesitate.

He snatched it open, retrieved the item—some ingredient, some fragment of old will—and passed it off to a waiting messenger that blinked into existence without a word. Then he turned back, quicker than a breath.

The path opened up on all sides as he passed through the door.

The nightmares rocky stone in front of him were filled with pockmarked holes and silent screaming faces. It became a maze of contorted geometry and impossible angles, twisted rock growing like roots from the very thoughts of the world. And in the spaces between—he heard it.

Soft gurgling.

Choked humming.

Faint lullabies hummed in a language older than human blood.

It was familiar. Somehow. Some part of him flinched.

He ignored it.

Braced his mind.

The air pressed inward with every step now, heavy and stale. The closer he came, the more the nightmare bore down on him. His thoughts grew sluggish at the edges, invaded by a pressure that wasn't just mental—it was spiritual. A weight meant to grind down the soul.

He gritted his teeth and slipped between the stones of the maze before him, the open air of the bridge between the tower he was in and the one before vanishing as the maze engulfed him. He misted through tight gaps, reappearing in flashes of heat and arcane shimmer. Every step brought him closer.

Every step pressed him deeper into something's gaze.

But he would not stop.

Not until it was dead.

His thoughts raced as he slipped between the stones, each one warped and seeping with ancient wrongness. Just ahead, he heard the squelch of footsteps—too deliberate, too moist—and his blood turned a degree colder.

He recognized that sound.

He had faced them only a few times during his time as a hunter, and each encounter had been pushed to a deep point in his mind. He always tried to forget those things.

They emerged into view with the jerking grace of a puppet pulled by broken strings. Their clothes, once elegant, were soaked in blood—saturated to the point that every movement caused red to drip down onto the cracked stone floor. Their heads were swollen things—massive, bulbous lanterns of eyes and twitching flesh. Strips of skin fluttered with each motion, muscles spasming under the strain of too much vision, too much knowing. The smell that radiated off them was a mockery of the doll's faint perfume and the stench of Oedon's intent.

He hated them.

They were mockeries.

Mockeries of her. Of the Doll. Of the woman who had done so much for him.

Her beautiful dress, her calm smile, her kind eyes—twisted into something frantic and deranged. The eyes on these things searched wildly, hungrily, twitching in every direction. They weren't looking—they were seeing. Too much. Everything.

He didn't wait a moment. Three molotovs tied together. A single toss. A fiery arc. He would have smiled but couldn't bring himself to enjoy this.

They landed just past the rocks between them.

The creature screamed.

And that was worse than anything else.

Because it was her voice.

The Doll's voice—sweet and soft, warped by something beneath it, something foreign. It slashed through his gut like a knife of guilt and revulsion. Izuku gritted his teeth and kept moving, faster now, ducking around an opening in the nightmare's stony maze.

The air shifted again—open, briefly calm—and then he saw another.

This one walked away from him, but the dozens of eyes clustered across the back of its pulsating head twitched and swiveled, nearly catching him in its gaze.

Too late.

Izuku closed the distance in a single step, another trio of molotovs already lit. The second Winter Lantern went up in fire and shrieks.

Its flesh bubbled and peeled, its stitched dress blackening in the flames. Its voice cracked and wept—but it was not her. It only sounded like her. That truth grounded him, but his stomach still churned.

Even now, even with all he had become, they still haunted him.

Finally, the maze began to end. He reached the far wall—though calling it a "maze" felt like a lie. It wasn't an obstacle. It was a funnel. A narrowed path meant not to confuse, but to corral. Herd. Guide prey.

He blinked the thought away.

Pressed forward.

And then he stopped.

Because waiting just inside—lurking in the sickly yellow and dim light of the nightmare—was something grotesque.

The head of a man, slack-jawed and twitching, had been sewn to the bloated body of a spider the size of a mastiff. Eight twitching legs clicked and scraped the floor as it turned its gaze on him.

It blinked.

The man's mouth opened.

And Izuku realized, with total clarity—

He despised this place.

Every inch of it.

Every echo.

Every breath.

His mind caught up only seconds later. His hands were soaked in blood—thick, coagulated, burning. Web-like strands of gelatinous filth clung to him, stretching from his limbs to the broken walls, then snapping wetly as he stumbled forward. The stench was foul, thick with copper and rotting meat. His breath came in ragged bursts, hot against his lips, but inside… he felt cold.

Something was swimming in his blood.

A poison? A curse? It gnawed at him from the inside, corroding, seeping into marrow and memory. But it wasn't enough. Not enough to slow him—not enough to stop him. Not anymore.

He couldn't get angry.

He had to remember.

The first of the man-headed spiders had shocked him—its human eyes wide and blinking, pleading without words. The sound of its mandibles clicking through malformed prayer had unnerved him.

The other seven?

They had enraged him.

Now the chamber was a graveyard, if the term still meant anything here. Every surface was painted in blood—a red so deep and vivid that Izuku briefly wondered if this was still real, or if he had fallen into some digital hallucination. A glitch in the Dream. Entrails were flung like streamers. Organs that didn't belong in human or spider anatomy stuck to the walls like grotesque decorations.

He couldn't tell where one corpse ended and another began.

He thought he had cured the blood-drunk curse.

Maybe he had.

Or maybe this was something worse.

His fingers twitched, slick with gore, and he raised one trembling hand to his face. The blood was warm. His lips curled—he felt it. A grin. Painted in red, stretched across pale flesh like a sick masquerade. He didn't feel sick or grossed out, he felt… normal.

He stumbled to his feet, bones popping like knuckles cracked too hard. His left hand—no, claw—remained half-shifted. The Beast's Embrace rune pulsed in his flesh, its presence like a heartbeat not his own. Thick, dark green fur rippled over his arm, nearly black in the low light, veined with silver and scattered red. Slowly, it receded, pulling away like a retreating tide until only skin remained—taut, pale, almost too smooth.

He didn't know partial transformations were even possible.

He didn't care.

He needed to focus.

A breeze slipped into the room, sick with rot and salt and something other—something ancient. His eyes narrowed. There. A passageway, quiet and yawning. A new direction. A way forward.

He injected a blood vial into his thigh with practiced ease and forced himself into a jog, his legs aching and slick with drying gore. The next room sloped downward, a winding staircase coiling into darkness, the air growing colder with every step.

And then he saw it—a lever, massive and elaborate, because of course it was. It sat on the precipice of a sheer drop. He had no idea what it did… but he had come into the habit of pulling every lever he found by now.

Izuku shook his head at the sheer size of the mechanism, Yharnam never did anything in moderation. He placed his hand on the worn brass, slick with moisture. And he pulled.

The sound was slow at first.

A heavy groan of iron. A deep, metallic screech that echoed through the chamber like a wounded beast.

Chains rattled.

Something shifted above—something titanic. Stones of the very tower shuddered and groaned as something enormous was released from its chains.

And the thing began to fall. Izuku saw it from across the gap between him and the next tower, a large something.

It didn't crash. It didn't drop like a stone. It descended—with terrible grace, as if lowered by unseen hands. Thick tendrils of umbilical sinew dragged behind it, slapping wetly against the shaft walls. The closer it got, the more wrong the world became.

It was enormous—impossibly so—larger than anything that could exist inside the loft naturally. Its mass was made of twisted nerves, pulsating veins, and folds of skin that shouldn't be. Bone jutted out like broken spires, some wrapped in toothy growths, others shattered and splintered like cracked tusks. Its eyes—dozens of them—spilled across its form like fungus, all blinking out of sync, all watching, even as it fell.

And then it fell past Izuku's sight from his position. He waited, waited for the crash, for a sound of flesh slamming against stone.

He stood there for almost a minute before a low impact that made the entire tower tremble echoed through the nightmare.

Psychic static, flooding the air with whispers and sobs and laughter—childlike and hollow. Izuku reeled, a spike of pressure drilling into the back of his skull like a screw, but he held firm.

The Brain—fleshy mass—had landed.

And it was still alive.

Barely.

Izuku turned toward the edge of the tower, passed the lever. He needed to find a way across—to see where the Brain had fallen. His eyes scanned the darkness until he saw it: a bridge, stretched out between his tower and another one across the chasm. It was a solid distance to his left from the lever—too far for a normal man.

But Izuku hadn't been normal for a long time.

He sprinted forward and launched himself, boots scraping the stone as he leapt, cloak trailing behind him like a shredded banner. His body arced through the air with brutal grace before his feet slammed onto the opposite ledge. The landing jolted his bones, but he held steady, skidding to a controlled stop.

To his left—the tower he'd just departed. There might be something there: tools, blood, maybe a forgotten relic. To his right—the path forward. The mass. The Brain.

He hesitated only a second before turning left, curiosity and desperation guiding his hand. He slipped into the next section of the tower, where a room yawned before him—bisected by a deep pit nearly fifteen feet across. No stone bridge here. Just rotted beams of wood stretched across like the ribs of some dead beast.

He didn't trust them.

With a sharp inhale, he misted across in a blink and rolled behind a fallen slab of stone.

A shriek tore through the room—high and piercing, wrong in every possible way.

Another Winter Lantern.

The sound made his molars ache. His thoughts stuttered. His rage did not.

With a flash, Izuku surged from cover, his twin daggers igniting as he muttered low words under his breath. The blades burned with arcane fire as he drove them into her bulging, lantern-like skull. He didn't stop at one strike. He carved, slicing through twitching muscle and swollen eyeballs, her cries distorting as if trying to speak with the Doll's voice—again. Again.

It died. Limp. Finally still. His hands were soaked with more warm blood, the daggers clear of even a drop, the runes etched into them having sucked up the flowing red that would have caked the blades.

He didn't breathe relief. He couldn't afford it. He was close now. So close to ending this nightmare.

He searched the chamber, heart pounding, hands slick with her blood. No exits—but a chest sat in the corner, almost forgotten.

He cracked it open.

Inside: a silver bell, cool as ice to the touch. Arcane energy pulsed in the air around it like it had a heartbeat. A tool. A gift.

Izuku grinned. His fingers trembled with giddy exhaustion as he tucked it away and turned back toward the bridge. Every step back he whistled sharply, tossing scraps and loose materials to messengers that scampered from cracks and crevices, carrying his burdens with eerie delight.

He sprinted across the bridge again, old stone groaning under his weight. And then—Dead end.

He hissed a curse between his teeth and doubled back, pacing halfway down the bridge before he saw it: a path, nearly invisible, shadowed by the spires of the nightmare. A narrow doorway into another tower.

He stepped through.

And stopped.

Before him was a square room, empty and silent. He stood at the entrance, more of a fall then a door, it was easily a ten foot tall drop to the room below, with a step he fell and landed on the balls of his feet.

In the center—directly ahead—was a gaping pit.

Fifteen feet by fifteen feet. A perfect square. [Five meters wide on every side.]

Izuku stepped to the edge of the pit.

The scent hit him first.

It was pain—thick, cloying, wet. The blood of something ancient and powerful, corrupted and raw. The stench crawled into his lungs, clinging to his tongue like rot.

He closed his eyes and took a slow, steadying breath.

The darkness below swallowed all light. It was oppressive, like a black fog that ate the very notion of color. He struck a match and lit a molotov, the flames dancing in his wide, bloodstained eyes. With a flick of the wrist, he dropped it into the abyss, watching the faint orange glow vanish into the void.

Behind him, he grabbed a nearby stone—a thick, uncut slab of bloodstone, dense and pulsing faintly with arcane residue. He turned it in his hands once before tossing it to a group of messengers, who eagerly scampered off into the shadows.

That made two.

He scanned the area with quiet efficiency, picking out a jagged hole in the stone wall—an old passage. He followed it quickly, and found himself on the bridge right after the room of normal massive spiders. The corpse of the hunter lay still, cooling still as Izuku passed back into the main hall like area. The sounds of metal footsteps and clanking steel echoing ahead. The Marionettes—cold metal-skinned waddling creatures all turned back to him quickly. He dodged between them, bolts and blades whistling past his head as he ducked low and sprinted through. A rage cleaver nearly caught his arm, but he slipped beneath it, gritting his teeth.

He was close.

His feet followed the familiar ground—the path that had once led him to the Host of the Nightmare. But this time, something new had been dislodged, hanging ominously near the edge of the platform to his right.

A cage.

It swayed in the still air like a forgotten pendulum, chains creaking with every lazy swing. The bars were bent, warped by some unseen force, but it still looked functional.

It would have to be.

Without hesitation, Izuku jumped into it. He landed hard, and for a heartbeat, it didn't move. Then—CRACK the door slammed shut.

The cage groaned. And began to descend.

Down.

Down.

Down.

It was the slowest fall he had ever endured. Each rattle of the chain echoed like thunder in the hollow black. The pit devoured time, noise, light, even thought. Minutes passed. Then more. It felt endless.

Izuku's breath fogged in the cold.

Then—finally—the cage jerked to a halt. A sound like wet meat slapping against stone reached him.

He stepped out.

His boots touched black rock slick with viscera. The air shimmered, not with heat—but psychic pressure. He was not alone.

Across the chamber, the Brain of Mensis lay in grotesque stillness.

It had fallen far. Far enough that its twisted flesh was split and burned, cracked and leaking. Fire still danced across portions of its glistening mass, flames licking the exposed nerves and bone-like protrusions. Its many eyes—some shut, others wide and mad—rolled in pained frenzy.

Then, it spoke.

Not aloud, but within.

"You feel it, don't you?" The voice was velvet over broken glass. "The weight of thought. The endless knowledge. I see you. I see your hurt. I see the dreams you deny. You don't have to fight anymore. You are chosen."

Izuku didn't respond. His eyes narrowed.

The Brain pulsed, twitching like a seizure in slow motion.

"Stay. Let us show you what lies beyond the veil. Join me… join us. And understand the truth of this world." A heavy, thrumming sound reverberated through the stone as power swelled around him. A rune ignited in his mind's eye—a vision of the Moon Rune—he had seen it before, he had partaken two lesser variants of the rune before. This one however was painted in soft gold and deep blue across the inside of his skull. He clenched his jaw as the knowledge entered him as the clearest moon rune entered his mind.

"You're delusional," Izuku muttered, stepping forward. "There is nothing you can offer me, you are a dying thing, you want what I have, you cling to life fabricated by a dead man." Izuku sneered, "Just stay still and die."

The Brain screamed—a thousand howling voices at once. It tried to recoil, tried to flee, but there was no flight, no mercy. It was butchery.

Its bloated mass, stitched together from madness and meat, shuddered with each breath of the nightmare realm. Pulsing veins the size of Izuku's torso spasmed with rotten ichor, twitching with desperate thought. Its hundreds of bloodshot eyes blinked at him in erratic, begging rhythm—some weeping tears, others ooze, others…nothing at all. It sobbed into the void with stolen voices, warping human tones into blasphemous pleas.

Izuku stepped forward, closing the distance quickly.

He whistled softly and a messenger arrived, his scythe in hand. The air stank of smoldering nerve tissue and boiled cerebrospinal fluid.

The first slash carved through an exposed lobe, splitting meat from brain matter like butchering a swollen fruit. The Brain shrieked—a high, glass-shattering keen that made blood drip from his ears. It tried to recoil, but Izuku leapt atop its sagging form, sinking his blade into a cluster of twitching eyes.

Pop.

Pop.

Pop.

The gore exploded upward, coating him in black-red fluid as the eyes burst beneath his blade. The Brain shrieked again, but it was cut short as Izuku plunged one of his daggers deep into the gaping cavity of his scythes wicked arc, twisting until blood ruptured with a sickening squelch.

The flesh beneath him rippled, muscles twitching erratically as the beast flailed. He barely held on, slamming his fist into the meat for leverage.

Then he ripped.

Flesh tore like wet parchment. He jammed his hand into a fold of brainstuff and pulled until he had a handful of glistening neural cord. With a feral snarl, he wrapped it around his palm and yanked—hard enough that the brain screamed with all its stolen lungs, its mind unraveling in a fountain of blood and viscera.

"DIE!" Izuku roared, driving his full weight into the final strike.

The scythe ignited—raw blue fire—and he brought it down into the core of the Brain. The impact sent a shockwave through the chamber, fire and flesh erupting together as the nightmare entity convulsed one final time. Limbs it had never grown twitched in impossible directions. The eyes rolled back. The meat folded inward.

The Brain collapsed like a lung.

With a wet THUD, it hit the stone floor, shivering once…then went still. Blood pooled out from beneath its carcass in steaming rivers.

Izuku stood, drenched head to toe in black blood, chest heaving. His arms trembled, not from fatigue—but fury. Pure, righteous fury.

He didn't speak.

He just spat into the corpse's twitching husk, turned his back, and walked away.

Izuku exhaled. He didn't feel triumphant. Only tired. Tired and angry.

Another god-thing dead.

Another nightmare purged.

Silently he returned to the elevator and rode it up—up, up, endlessly up. The groaning of the cage chains echoed like thunder in a coffin, a mechanical scream that shook the walls as the darkness peeled away and gray, dying light returned.

When the cage creaked open at last, the metal-masked marionettes waiting at the top reeled backward in unison. The clicking of their skeletal metal feet on stone was frantic, panicked. Their expressionless masks turned toward him and stilled, some spinning in place before collapsing as their limbs locked up, unable to run. One tripped over another in its attempt to flee and slammed against a large stone column, twitching as its body tried to push itself up.

Izuku stepped forward and they scattered. He didn't even look at them. He didn't need to.

The blood on his body was still wet, still steaming. His clothes clung to him like skin, half-fused to his flesh from fire and violence. His boots left red prints with every slow step. Droplets of crimson trailed him, dropping from his coat with each step.

He crossed to the main elevator with mechanical precision and pulled the lever. The larger platform howled as it descended to greet him, and he stepped on without pause, riding the ascent in silence. It carried him through the air, each shudder as metal chains were pulled up into hidden mechanisms was an agonizing eternity.

Up and up, until he walked once more the twisted, looping halls of the domain Micolash had called his own. He passed scorched, half-incinerated corpses—those accursed dog-crow things, now little more than heaps of twitching ash and split bone. Their forms had barely settled, still smoldering in some places. They didn't move. Not anymore.

He turned a corner. The soft hum of power called to him.

The lantern.

The familiar blue false light bathed him in a ghostly glow. A final haven, one he'd seen many times before, but this time… it felt heavier. Like a gravestone.

He sat. Hard.

His legs folded beneath him with a painful crack. His breath rattled in his throat. For a few long seconds, his entire body trembled, and the blood on his gloves shimmered as his muscles twitched uncontrollably. He was shaking. He hadn't even noticed. Was it from adrenaline? From rage? From despair?

Does it matter?

He didn't stand. Not yet.

The tremors faded as his body began to heal, the regeneration working deeper than bone this time. It went after exhaustion, after damage that wasn't just skin-deep. His heartbeat steadied. His hands calmed. His mind… tried.

He pulled off his gloves with slow, blood-slicked fingers. The skin beneath was pale, veined, marred by small scars and barely-healed blisters. His fingernails had cracked again. He didn't care. He reached into one of the deeper pockets of his belt bag and pulled free a dark bottle, capped with a seal shaped like a Cainhurst rose.

He turned it in his hand.

Blood was worshipped in Yharnam—holier than water, more sought after than wine. More intoxicating than liquor. Due to that, real liquor? Alcohol? That was rare. And this bottle had been with him for a long time, stashed away after Cainhurst fell. It had been meant for Gehrman. A gift.

A parting gift before Izuku left.

Izuku stared at it for a moment before twisting the cap free. The scent that hit him was ancient, floral, with a bite of iron and spice. The burn of a hundred winters. He could still give it to the old man, but as Izuku stared at it he realized that Gherman was definitely more of a wine guy.

"Fuck it." He thought hastily. He raised the bottle and drank deep.

The liquid scorched his throat like flame, settled in his gut like firewood. His breath hitched, his eyes watered, and for a moment the world around him blurred—not from emotion, not from memory, but from the sheer bite of the thing. He hadn't had anything like this before, even back in his world the most he had drank was some off brand beer that barely tasted like a drink.

He swallowed again.

No buzz. No dizziness. No warmth that wasn't already a part of him. His body processed it too fast—tore it apart like it did every other foreign invader. His curse wouldn't let him feel peace. Even now.

So he took another mouthful.

And another.

He didn't expect to get drunk. But maybe he could pretend. Just for a little while. Just long enough to forget the number of bodies on his conscience, the number of monsters whose screams haunted his mind. Long enough to forget the exact number of things he had done.

It was easily more than the days he had been alive. He had killed so many that he would need to age many, many more years before days outweighed bodies.

He set the bottle down beside him, rested his forehead on his hand, and let the stillness settle around him. Let the burn slowly creeping through him take hold, he hiccuped softly, feeling warmth encompass him.

One path left.

One final horror.

And then the nightmare would burn.

A soft laugh echoed from the spot beside his bottle.

Low, musical—like someone dragging their nails down velvet. He didn't need to look. The voice was familiar. Too familiar. A voice that mocked him in his mind every time he felt like he was moving forward.

The presence that came with it was like an ocean trying to crawl through a keyhole, pressing against his thoughts like tides smashing against glass. It didn't crush him, not anymore. Not like the first time. The umbilical cords—those three damned pieces of divine flesh—had done something to him. Anchored him. Hardened him. Most likely even changed him.

It didn't make the presence pleasant, but at least he could stay coherent now.

He didn't move, but his eyes slid to the side in a dead, tired glare.

Of course.

The bottle was already in her hand.

Kos tilted her head back and drank deeply, her throat bobbing in delicate swallows that echoed in unnatural rhythm—too slow, too graceful, like she was savoring something more than taste. The bottle left her lips with a wet click, and she set it down between them once more.

He stared as the brown liquor inside shifted, then began to bubble.

A volcanic churn of liquid, churning and swirling like it was about to boil over—but it didn't. It stopped, unnaturally, perfectly, just shy of spilling, its color deeper now, richer, with the glow of something arcane brewing just beneath the surface.

Perfect.

"My oh my~" she purred, drawing out each word like silk dragged across broken teeth. "Do you perhaps need a drinking buddy, my dear Izuku~?"

He grimaced.

"Do you ever just talk normal?" he muttered, dragging a hand down his face.

She didn't answer right away.

Instead, Kos stretched out beside him, curling her body into an unnervingly human posture. Her flesh glistened with the sheen of seawater, her hair trailing like kelp along the stone floor, every movement calculated to toe the line between alluring and alien.

"I could," she said, voice still dripping with saccharine heat. "But that wouldn't be fun, now would it?"

He didn't reply.

"I do so love your silence, you know," she whispered, resting her chin in her hands as she stared at him. "It means you're listening. Or brooding. Or planning to kill someone. All of which are so… you."

"Not in the mood, Kos." He really wasn't, his mood was already sour, this was only adding onto that.

"Oh darling, that's why I'm here," she crooned, leaning closer until her cheek brushed his shoulder. "You never talk to me when you're happy. In fact you try your best to not even acknowledge me when I watch you so ever closely~ And I think that says so much about our relationship, don't you?"

He shifted slightly, but didn't shake her off.

She took it as an invitation.

"You've grown so much," she whispered, sliding her fingers over his arm like sea foam on rock. "So strong. You've made the nightmare bleed. The Choir grovels. The Moon dotes on you like no other, and the formless one bares its fangs right at you. And you… you just keep marching forward."

Her smile widened—teeth too sharp for the lips that bore them.

"I'm so proud of you, Izu-ku."

He flinched.

She noticed.

"Ah… there it is. You still hate hearing it, don't you? Affection. Recognition. Praise." She laughed again, breathy and low.

"That's alright. I'll just say it more until it feels real."

Izuku grabbed the bottle and took another swig. It burned worse than before—thicker, like syrup left too long in the sun—but he swallowed anyway.

Kos watched him with a glimmer in her deep, abyssal eyes. The shifting galaxies in them spun lazily, like she had all the time in the world. And she probably did.

It hit him that he could almost look her directly in the face now, unlike before where it was too much for his mind.

"Tell me, darling…" she cooed. "What will you do when this is over? When the last scream has faded, when the last beast is ash, when the nightmare is quiet? Will you go home? Back to your little broken world? Will you try to be a hero again?"

He said nothing.

Kos leaned in, her voice dropping just above a whisper. "Or will you finally admit what you are? A pretty little monster of a boy who won't be accepted by anyone even with a fancy new quirk~ because you've been an outcast far too long~"

He didn't answer.

Didn't need to.

She sighed softly, then lifted the bottle again, took a tiny sip, and set it back down. Her voice lost its flirty edge—just slightly. There was something colder underneath now. Something calculating.

"I do have something for you, you know," she said, brushing strands of hair from her face with a claw-tipped finger. The gesture was almost human—almost. "An offer. One I think you'll find very interesting. Very… relevant to your little journey."

She turned to face him fully, that grin carving her face like a knife's edge. Her eyes gleamed like twin galaxies wrapped in obsidian, spinning slowly with impossible knowledge. "And if you want a chance to kill Oedon, my sweet hunter~"—her voice dipped, lush and sickeningly sweet—"then you'll accept my deal."

She rose—not standing, but unfolding—her limbs moving with a grace unshackled from bones or joints, as though her body existed on borrowed principles that only barely tolerated physics.

"Until you give me that sweet little ring that's sitting so snuggly in your pocket," she whispered, tapping the side of her head, "you'll never reach them. It's simple. You can walk away. Go home. Let your mother tell you everything will be fine. Let her hold your hand. Tell you it was all a bad dream."

Her voice dropped.

Or maybe it fell.

Tumbling into something deeper, colder.

"Or… you can destroy that corrupt thing that calls itself a god. You can be the blade that cuts this rotting world free. Be a hero, Izuku. To every man, woman, and child that still clings to life here. Make the Dream of yours real."

She leaned in close—her lips just inches from his ear. "Really, it's all up to you, my love~"

Then she was gone.

The air didn't just shimmer where she'd been. It burst—a silent pop, like something just slipped out of reality itself. The scent of her lingered like rot at low tide. Brine. Blood. And something else. Something wrong.

He was alone again.

The silence returned, thick and absolute.

Izuku stared at the spot she'd vanished from, heart pounding in a slow, heavy rhythm that matched the ache in his skull. His breath hitched—just slightly—as he looked down at his hands.

There was blood under his nails.

The bottle beside him glowed faintly. Still full. Still warm.

He took a drink.

Then another.

The burn crawled down his throat like fire with teeth, but it wasn't enough to distract him. Not really. His mind still spun.

Kos's words echoed.

If you want a chance to kill Oedon…

His fingers drifted to the ring in his coat pocket. The metal was warm. Too warm. It pulsed, faintly. Like it knew it had been mentioned.

He clutched it tightly, his knuckles whitening around the band of ancient silver, and for a second—just a second—he thought about his mother. Not his original mother, but Flora, the moon, his new mom, the mom he has come to love. His mom that had told him not to deal with Kos, not to fall for her tricks.

He couldn't tell if this was a trick or not.

He took another drink.

This time, it hurt going down. Good. He wanted it to. His jaw clenched as the fire spread through his limbs again. That old, familiar heat—the one that always came before something broke.

He didn't need to think hard about his answer. But he doubted his mother would like his choice.

Not one bit.

Izuku pulled his knees to his chest and wrapped his arms around them. The stone beneath him was cold, but it didn't bother him. The alcohol that stirred in his veins burned and kept the bitter cold at bay.

The liquor—no, not just liquor—whatever Kos had done to it—was a living fire. It moved through him like ink spilled in water, coiling in his lungs, threading into his muscles. He could feel it burning just under his skin, as if he'd swallowed part of a star with every mouth full.

His heartbeat slowed. Became methodical. Like the toll of a war drum deep inside his ribs.

For the first time in what felt like years, he just… existed. No monsters. No gods. No blood. Just breath.

But he didn't let it last.

He couldn't let it last.

Because if he gave himself even a second to reflect, to think about all of it—the screaming, the bodies, the eyes—he knew he'd start tearing himself apart. Not out of guilt. Not anymore. He'd start tearing himself apart at the fact he couldn't find it in him to regret anything he had done anymore. It still weighed on him, heavy like a crown, but the tears that pricked his vision were not for his actions. He knew he had lost himself somewhere, maybe when he first picked up the threaded cane, or maybe even before that.

He couldn't tell.

So he stood with little fanfare, joints cracking, the fire in his veins settling into a smolder. He capped the bottle with steady hands and tucked it away, burying it deep in his bag beneath tools, knives, vials, old tokens of lives and deaths long past.

His body moved on instinct now, dragging his resolve behind it like a blade too heavy to carry properly.

He was close.

So close it made his skin itch.

The path to the topmost loft should've been worse. He'd expected more. Instead, it felt like the world was clearing a lane—like it wanted him to finish this.

A handful of Yharnam shadows rose to meet him. A few bloated pigs roared and charged.

It wasn't clean.

It wasn't pretty.

He tore through them, not out of rage, not out of fear, but necessity. Each kill another step in burning the alcohol from his system, another scream silenced so his head could stay clear. To help him ignore the thrumming of his heart as his lack of regret at the sight of his blade cutting into flesh, he hated that it didn't affect him like it had once upon a longest night ago.

By the time he left them behind, the stone floor was a tapestry of red and rust. His boots clicked softly as he ascended, leaving bloody prints behind him—half dried, half fresh, none worth remembering.

He reached the final staircase.

That's when he felt it.

The weight of a gaze.

He paused, breath catching, and turned just slightly.

A familiar woman stood off to his left, a woman who had been hell to kill. Queen Yharnam stood before him—well, stood was a strong word. She more so hovered, her apparition flickering like a candle too stubborn to die. Her hollow eyes burned with a heat that hadn't dulled even after her death. Her hands were still bound at the wrist, even in death, shackled by the memory of her agony.

She looked at him.

No words. No movement.

Just that stare.

Judgmental. Measured.

Then her gaze drifted upward.

Izuku followed it.

An elevator. Silent. Waiting. It ascended twenty—maybe thirty—feet to the summit. To the precipice. To whatever waited in the final arena.

He didn't spare her another glance.

He didn't want to look again.

He stepped onto the pressure plate, the mechanism humming to life beneath his boots. The elevator groaned and locked him in. The door clanged shut behind him with a sound like a tomb being sealed.

His shoulders tensed. His hands curled into fists. There was no going back now. His prey was near. As the elevator screamed as it rose, its contraptions so old and unused that with every inch it ascended it shook like the chains would snap any moment.

Eventually, the elevator groaned to a halt, the mechanical heart of the tower ceasing its cry with a final clang that echoed up into infinity.

Izuku didn't move at first.

The silence was too complete.

Too still.

The moment stretched, until the door rattled open on its own—slow, deliberate, like even the mindless metal was uncertain of what would transpire upon this highest point in the gnawing abyss that was this nightmare.

A faint mist clung to the floor as he stepped out. It shifted softly as he strode out, each step sending almost waves through the thick gas.

The arena was a cradle of death.

It wasn't just the smell—though that was enough to turn the stomach. It was the way the stone itself looked wilted. Like it had rotted. Black and violet veins split the walls, creeping like mold, pulsing gently, as if the space were alive and barely breathing.

Above, instead of a steady sky, or falsity crafted to feign reality. Was a twisting whirl of endless shadow. Stars blinked in and out like dying eyes. Clouds of oily ink churned and bloomed across the firmament like open wounds. There was no wind, no active movement of the air other than the soft swirl of the sky above.

And there, in the center of it all—a cradle.

It was small, swaying ever so gently in the windless night, its wooden frame far too quiet.

Izuku's eyes narrowed. He stepped forward. Just as his foot crossed the threshold of the arena floor, the light from the stars above snuffed out all at once. The sky became empty. Hollow. Like a breath held too long by a universe on the verge of choking.

Then the light returned—and the cradle was gone.

In its place stood something else.

The figure wasn't there one moment and was the next. Like it had always been. Like the cradle had merely been a mirage, a whisper of what had come before.

It began to move—not stand, not rise, but unravel.

A mass of thick, black cloth twisted in on itself like unspooling thread, shimmering with metal oddities, silver chains, and ornamentation that clicked and swayed without sound. The movements were smooth, yet disjointed. Too slow, then too fast. The fabric itself seemed to form the creature's body—folding into limbs, then dissolving again, as if reality struggled to define what it was looking at.

At first, its back was to him.

Then it turned.

Not a twist, not a pivot—just a reorientation of space itself.

Six long arms, each ending in curved, blackened scythes, unfolded from the cloth with a sickening grace. Sleek, impossibly sharp blades caught the moonlight and cast it aside like refuse. The joints were all wrong, the movement fluid like ink in water.

The creature hovered slightly above the floor, fabric dragging and whispering over the stone as it moved. Sparks danced where the scythes kissed the ground. Its form was nothing more than a trunk and limbs, utterly faceless.

But that wasn't right.

There was a head—or should have been.

The veil where a face might reside lifted slowly, impossibly high, towering above Izuku. It leveled its gaze at him, though it had no eyes. Nothing visible. Just void.

An undeniable void that churned with a familiar energy.

The cloth wasn't just hiding its form.

It was its form.

A writhing, ever-moving sea of blackness stitched from nightmare and silence. Brought to existence with Oedon vile energy.

Izuku could feel it—this thing was no mere beast. No flesh-and-blood monster. This was something designed, something refined. A surrogate, a nursemaid to something far beyond mortal comprehension. The Wet Nurse. The final barrier. The protector of the unborn Great One, Mergo.

And as it lifted its blades, arms widening like a flower blooming with death, it stood completely still for one long, heart-shattering moment.

It didn't need to speak.

It didn't need to roar.

It simply was.

And it would not let him pass.

Then it began to move.

And when it moved, it was wrong.

Too smooth.

Too silent.

Each step—if they could be called that—felt like gravity warped around it, bending to its whim. It drifted forward just a few inches, and the sound of a baby's cry slammed into Izuku's ears, loud and desperate.

A familiar cry.

A cry he had heard in the back of his head the entire time he was treading through the entire journey here.

A cry he had heard all the way back in Central Yharnam.

Thump. Its presence sank into the air as it moved closer to him. A smell like wet silk and afterbirth choked the arena.

And behind its veil of cloth, something moved. Dozens of something's. Eyes? Teeth? Hands? He couldn't tell. Perhaps not having a form meant that it also had to deal with its form constantly shifting from nothing to everything. Izuku wondered if that hurt.

He let the thought go as he whistled softly, a messenger hidden his shadow raised the scythe into his outstretched hand.

Its body shifting would hurt less than this fight's outcome.

The Wet Nurse didn't react. Not at first. It kept creeping closer, its eyeless faceless headless head locked onto him

The cloth split, just slightly, and something inside smiled as its formless body seemed to shiver in anticipation.

Izuku didn't hesitate.

He ran to meet it.

The air screamed around him as his feet tore across the stone, the scythe igniting in his hand like a blazing torch. Sparks bloomed beneath his soles with each stride, echoing his heartbeat—steady, sharp, hungry.

The Wet Nurse barely shifted from its position, its arms raised, the blades catching the light like they wanted to bleed him dry.

Izuku struck first.

The scythe carved a crescent into the air, catching one of the creature's upper arms and slicing deep into the layered fabric. Blackness sprayed like ink—but not blood. No sound. No pain. Just the resistance of the blade biting through ancient cloth and… something else.

He followed up without thinking.

Pivot. Spin. The curved end of the weapon came back around in a low sweep. Another strike landed against one of its side arms—metal screeched against fabric that shouldn't have been solid but somehow was.

The Nurse reeled slightly. Just slightly.

Izuku's feet never stopped. He darted left, then ducked low. One blade whooshed past his hair. Another slammed down into the stone where his shoulder had been an instant earlier.

His body was moving faster than thought now, instincts flaring hot like coals in his spine.

He hooked the scythe upward. Clang—a direct hit beneath the veil. The Wet Nurse twitched—again, barely.

It should have reacted more. Should have staggered. Should have cried out.

But it didn't.

Izuku grit his teeth. It wasn't reacting. It was enduring his strikes, its veiled body barely even moving after his flurry of blows. It made a knot churn in his stomach.

His next strike came down from above, all his weight behind it, blade aimed to split the headless trunk in half—

Only to meet nothing.

The body was there—and then it wasn't.

Air sucked inward like the world was breathing for the first time in centuries. A blast of cold hit him from nowhere.

Then the Wet Nurse reappeared behind him.

Izuku spun, slashing wide. Metal met fabric again—but only barely. The scythe tore through a single layer of its ever-moving cloak, and the creature simply tilted away, like the world leaned with it.

No warning. No physics. No logic.

Still, he pressed on.

Strike after strike, Izuku danced around the shadowy form. His movements were a blur—slashes, thrusts, spins, flips, using every ounce of strength and muscle memory honed from endless death and rebirth in this nightmare realm.

For every blow he landed, the Wet Nurse gave him an opening to land another. For every dodge he made, it gave chase lethargically, its cloak fluttering around it softly, neat slices barely visible between the layers.

His gut twisted more violently—why? Why wasn't it retaliating with more force? Why didn't it seem pressed? Why was it giving him so many openings?

He should've been more cautious.

He should have.

But instead he rushed in a flurry of attacks.

He should have realized it was watching.

Measuring.

Learning.

The first blade came faster than thought.

Izuku ducked on instinct alone—felt the kiss of cold metal slice a few hairs clean off his head. Another blade slammed down at his shoulder. He twisted, rolled to the side, and skidded back on one knee just in time to see all six of the Wet Nurse's arms flare outward like the mocking marionette limbs.

And then it vanished.

Pop.

Air snapped closed like a void had swallowed it. Silence. Then—Clang!

A blade from above. He barely brought the scythe up in time to catch it, the shock rippling down his forearms. Sparks flew. Another blade shot toward his ribs from the side—too low to block—he jerked his body back and felt the sting of cloth tearing as it sliced through the front of his coat.

No pain. Not yet. Just heat and wetness spreading across his front, his fingers darted and clicked a vial into place, the relief was instant as he jumped back from the onslaught. The flesh of his stomach knitted together quickly.

But not fast enough.

The Nurse disappeared again. Just as he jumped back. She reappeared micro moments later, in full swing, two blades cut neat lines across his back as he dived into a roll, the blood already flooding his systems targeting the new wound in moments. He looked for her but she was gone.

She was next to him, going for a swing. However, this time before she finished the swing. She was gone. No full follow-through. Just an echo of movement. The scent left behind caught him off guard, it was like she was around him.

Another pop.

Izuku turned just in time to catch a glimpse of veiled limbs appearing behind him again, blades arching out like a black flower blooming in reverse.

He kicked off the floor, soared into a backflip, and landed hard—knees bent, chest heaving. His nose told him she was behind him, he went to dodge—Too fast. It didn't obey any rules. No momentum. No inertia. Just perfect, instantaneous angles.

And it was from his right.

A blade hissed by his cheek. Another clipped his arm—thin, shallow, but enough to send fire racing under his skin.

He spun the scythe wide and tried to catch it mid-fade—but it was already gone. He hissed a swear as he mumbled an arcane word—"occludo." He felt his mind grow hazy, the obstruction was focused on his mind, too many inputs, too many smells, sounds, even the wind was tripping him up.

She was playing with him now. She was using tricks he didn't know existed to mess with his senses.

Izuku growled low in his throat, pressing a hand to his bleeding arm. His breath came ragged. Heart hammering like it wanted to crack his ribs open and run. But everything was dulled, everything but his hearing.

Then the pop resounded. Before it sounded like it was from all sides, echoing and omnipresent.

This time he heard it just as it rang out. She would be in front of him.

She appeared in front of him. He felt his smile return.

Arms wide. Blades poised. The cloth rippling and shifting like a living thing, whispering secrets he couldn't hear but felt.

This time, he didn't dodge.

He charged.

The Wet Nurse struck down on him with all its fury.

One blade screamed for his face. Another for his gut. Two more sliced in horizontal arcs meant to separate his limbs from his body. He parried one—twisted under another—took the third shallowly across the thigh and used the momentum to spin inside her guard.

His scythe hit home—deep.

A tearing noise like parchment soaked in oil echoed through the arena as he ripped through one of her lower arms. It flailed backward, limply, black threads unraveling—but there was no scream. No blood.

Just more writhing cloth, pulling the severed limb back into its form like a doll repairing itself.

He didn't stop.

He slammed the blunt end of the scythe into the center of her mass, creating distance.

The Nurse skidded silently back, arms lifting again, the fabric of her veil fluttering unnaturally—as if laughing.

Izuku panted, holding his ground, eyes wide, muscles shaking not just from exertion, but from excitement.

He wasn't losing.

But he was not exactly winning.

He needed to push harder.

Izuku didn't wait.

The moment the Wet Nurse skidded back from his previous strike, he surged forward with a snarl and threw his full weight into the swing. The scythe's edge gleamed like moonlight—or closer to a comet as the fire trail behind it screamed—and with a roar, he buried it deep into the Nurse's chest—if it had one.

A crack sounded—not of bone, but of strained cloth snapping under impossible pressure. The veil shuddered, the fabric of its chest folding like it had been cleaved down the middle by a god's strike. Ends were split and a violent gush of black smoke billowed out like a truck's exhaust.

Izuku didn't slow down. In moments one, two, three of her arms were severed mid-motion, sent spinning through the air like shredded petals in a storm.

The Wet Nurse staggered, retreating half a step for the first time.

Izuku didn't let up.

His foot slammed into the stone, leaving cracks behind him as he launched up, scythe reversing in his hands. He twisted mid-air and dragged the blade down the Nurse's back, unraveling layers of that nightmarish cloak. Silver sparks and oily black smoke sprayed out in bursts like blood and shadow all at once.

She fell to one knee. If she had one, her whole body seemed to almost sink into the floor itself.

And for a brief second, it felt like it was over.

Then—The world twitched.

A scream like a newborn being pulled into a world it didn't want pierced the arena. The sky above flickered, stars turning red, then black, then something in between. Shadows twisted on the walls. Shapes bloomed in the edges of Izuku's vision.

The wet nurse blinked out of existence.

And then he saw her again.

No—them.

The Wet Nurse didn't rise from her knee. Somehow moved from one place to another without actively moving.

But around her, six shadows bled from the folds of reality—half-seen, half-formed. They slid from the cracks between dimensions like spilled ink, each one carrying a blurred imitation of her form. Some tall, some squat, some stretched like meat puppets wearing her skin. But each held those same sickle-shaped blades. Each one moved with the same wrongness.

Izuku inhaled sharply. His eyes stung.

He felt himself scoff—illusions? No. Worse. They weren't illusions. They were real enough to kill him. Clones forged from some wicked imagination.

The first rushed him without warning. No sound, no scream—just motion. He ducked the strike and slashed upward, cutting clean through its arm, only for it to melt into black mist—and reform behind him.

Another came from the side. He spun and blocked—just in time for a third to stab through the second and nearly get his leg. The shadows weren't working together. They didn't need to. They only needed one hit.

Every strike Izuku dodged, three more came. Every shadow he cleaved apart was reborn in the corner of his vision. It wasn't just a battle anymore—it was a storm.

His breath came in ragged bursts. The scythe moved like it was part of him now, a blur of silver and red as he parried, dodged, countered, but the air grew heavier with each passing second. The shadows pressed closer. The arena itself felt tighter. His muscles burned. His arm ached. Blood dripped down his side and leg, wounds stacking where his guard had slipped.

Then a scream—her scream—split through the chaos.

The real Wet Nurse rose again.

It's cloth was whole once more.

It stood stock still for a moment, waiting..

It was once more watching him.

The clones circled.

And Izuku realized… This was only the beginning.

It was a dance with death—every breath a gamble, every step a decision that balanced on the edge of the many blades of the nurse.

Izuku gritted his teeth, blood running down the side of his face, matting his hair to his skin. One of the clones nearly took off his shoulder—nearly. He'd slipped just an inch out of reach, then carved through its torso with a vertical swing that left a glittering arc of black mist in the air.

Six total remained.

He didn't have time to think—he moved. Twisting, weaving between their blades, scythe catching and deflecting the worst of the strikes. A downward slash from one clone nearly cleaved into his ribs. He threw a palm out mid-dodge and snarled a word.

"Chasma!!"

The air cracked like glass. A shockwave of raw arcane force detonated outward from his palm, catching two of the shadows in its radius. They screamed—distorted, unnatural wails—and exploded into scraps of oily cloth and shapeless mist. He landed heavily in the crater created by the act, the rough stone caught in the spell was a thin, sand like material that his boots sank into.

Four.

He jumped back, drawing a half circle with his foot. The runes etched into the leather of his gauntlet sparked with pale green light as he whispered another spell.

"Tutela-Duplex." A shimmer bloomed over his skin—deflection-protection, layered twice over with a reinforcement hex. It didn't make him invincible, but it gave his limbs a slight resistance to the biting arcs of those impossible blades. A nose bleed sprung like a faucet, but he had no time to worry about that.

They rushed him again. Two from the front. Two from behind.

Izuku spun and leapt—not away, through. His scythe carved low, taking the legs from one clone and dispelling it in a scream of black smoke. Mid-air, he twisted and pointed down. A guttural spell word—"Spinae-Mortifer!"—ripped from his throat.

The ground shivered. Spines of crystalized arcane energy erupted from the stone beneath one of the clones, impaling it in three places before it burst apart like a balloon made of ink and cloth.

Two.

He landed with a grunt, rolled, and came up swinging. Another arc of his scythe. Another clone gone.

The final one circled warily, no longer charging with blind frenzy.

They watched him. The clone and the real nurse.

And Izuku, still bleeding, still heaving, smiled through bloodied teeth.

He beckoned them.

"Come on."

The clone obeyed.

He sidestepped the downward chop, reversed his grip, and drove the back end of his scythe like a spear through its chest. With a pulse of arcane energy—"Mori!"—the shadow detonated in a burst of purging flame. Izuku smiled through red teeth, his whole body on fire, these new arcane arts were exciting—but he could feel his body still acclimating to the divine flesh he had eaten.

Izuku stood for a moment in the silence that had taken the field, the thick smog like clouds of the dead clones sank softly into the stone under his feet.

The shadows were gone. The heavy air seemed to shiver around him, relieved of their presence. His chest rose and fell, his breaths labored but measured. Sweat and blood clung to his skin, but his eyes stayed sharp. His arms, though trembling, held his weapon tight.

He turned his head.

The real Wet Nurse was still watching him.

Still waiting.

No longer patient.

The veils around her twitched.

And Izuku moved.

He shot forward like a bullet, reinforced by arcane speed and sheer adrenaline, scythe trailing behind him like a silver crescent moon ready to fall. His lips moved without thought, whispering another incantation—this one older, heavier. It made the ground bend beneath his feet.

He wasn't fighting to survive anymore.

He was going to end this.

Izuku launched himself across the stonework, the wind howling in his wake as his boots scraped sparks from the blood-stained floor. His blood his mind filled in without his consent.

"Fortis!" he roared mid-stride. His muscles bulged, bones creaking under the strain of the unnatural force flooding his limbs. Pain spiked along his spine—sharp, white-hot—but he held it, harnessed it. His first strike collided with the Wet Nurse's raised blades, the force of it shuddering through the arena like a thunderclap.

She slid back—not far, but far enough.

Izuku didn't stop.

"Velox!" His veins lit with searing heat. Time bent at the edges of his vision, his surroundings stretching like taffy as speed overtook sense. The world blurred. The Wet Nurse struck—six blades flashing in a wide arc—but Izuku was already gone, his form slipping under the slashes, too fast to follow.

He twisted behind her, scythe whipping up—Clang!

A blade intercepted, but he spun, kicking off the Nurse's torso and flipping backward with unnatural grace. His scythe bit into her side on the way out—fabric ripped, and from the tear came a sound, something between a scream and a wheeze, like a newborn gasping its first breath underwater.

Another spell tore from his lips. "Potentia!"

The world heaved. His grip tightened as his bones groaned beneath the weight of magical amplification. Every swing of the scythe now struck like a falling star—one blow shattered the ground, another cleaved straight through three arms before the Nurse split and reformed again behind him in a blink.

Blood ran down his neck.

His eye twitched.

His heartbeat was hammering like a war drum.

He could feel organs in his body boiling, melting at the stacked amplifications on his body.

His muscles burned, black veins threading under his skin like ink spilled in water. The arcane toll was catching up—he knew it, could feel his body unraveling with every syllable—but he couldn't stop now.

He wouldn't stop.

The Wet Nurse came at him again, this time blurring across the field like a rip in space. Izuku met her with a snarl, throwing his hand forward.

"Ignis!" A cone of red flame erupted point-blank, catching the nurse mid-blink. She reeled back, cloth and chains smoking, twitching violently. That was the opening.

Izuku struck.

Once.

Twice.

Three clean, brutal cuts—arms flying free, blades clattering away.

She shrieked.

The veil that covered her "face" twitched, a dozen empty gazes blinking into existence beneath it for only a second before vanishing again into the void.

He charged.

"Durare!" The final word ripped itself from his throat, blood spattering from his lips as the enchantment crushed down on his body like a vice. His ribs cracked. His vision flickered. But his legs kept moving.

Scythe met veil.

The impact cracked the stone beneath them.

Fabric split.

The Wet Nurse stumbled.

For the first time, she looked… wounded.

Izuku, chest heaving, body shaking under the weight of too many spells, too much strain, smiled.

He rolled his shoulders, spat blood to the side, and raised the scythe again.

"Round two." He muttered under his breath and struck. The blow landed.

A clean strike—deep, vicious, angled perfectly through the unraveling mess of fabric and darkness that cloaked the Wet Nurse.

And for a moment, Izuku thought it was over.

But then she screamed.

Not in pain. Not in fear. But in a soundless, airless, psychic howl—a pressure that slammed into Izuku's skull like a collapsing cathedral. The shadows around the arena shuddered, recoiled, then swallowed the space around her as if trying to pull her back.

But she refused.

No longer calm. No longer composed.

Unhinged.

Her body snapped straight, limbs stiffening like a puppet yanked violently by tangled strings. The veil that had once concealed her formless core burst apart in a plume of black fluid and writhing tendrils—too many to count. Her remaining blades melted into barbs and razors, reforming into jagged, twitching spears of nightmare steel. Fabric stretched from her torso like broken wings. A storm of chains spiraled around her in lazy, ominous arcs.

Izuku had to jump back, his adrenaline spiking as he realized in horror that his scythe was stuck in the transforming nurses chest.

She charged.

There was no grace now. No drifting. Just force.

Izuku wen to dodge, but he was too slow.

One blade pierced his shoulder, the impact lifting him off the ground and slamming him into a far wall with a sickening crunch. Another ripped across his stomach, shallow but deep enough to send blood fountaining into the air.

His breath hitched—he tasted fresh copper.

Then another pierced his thigh, nearly pinning him where he fell.

He rolled, barely his body turned to mist as the next strike crashed down where his skull had been a moment before. Stone cracked, the echo of the impact ringing like a funeral bell through the empty arena.

He hissed, pushing himself up, trembling, blood trailing in messy arcs. His body screamed—his spells were still active, still burning him alive from the inside, and now she was faster. Stronger.

Her movements were erratic—horribly fast. She moved like an insect that had tasted its own blood. Desperate. Thrashing. Every blow now aimed to kill.

Izuku was quick with pulling his daggers from their sheaths, moving fast to block another swing with the smaller blades, the impact jarring his bones so hard he felt something crack in his wrists. She didn't give him time to reset. Another blade came—this one nearly took his head off, grazing his cheek and carving a gash along his jaw.

His feet scraped backwards across the stone as he stumbled, barely upright.

She was a whirlwind now.

An unraveling of cloth, chain, steel, and wrath.

She lunged—Izuku ducked—he spun, bleeding—her blade clipped his side, again, cutting deeper.

His vision blurred.

His grip tightened.

Not yet.

He'd come too far.

His heart was a drumline of pain, a failing rhythm struggling to keep tempo with his rage. His body—battered, split, broken—screamed with every step. He staggered forward, his scythe was slick with blood and nightmares, lungs heaving with every breath.

He dropped to one knee.

The world spun.

The air smelled of rot and iron, of wet silk and something that should never have breathed.

But he wasn't finished.

Not yet.

With a grunt, Izuku ripped a blood vial from his belt, slamming the needle into his side. He could feel the fluid surge through him—his veins igniting like molten fire—mending torn muscle, slowing the blood loss. Another vial followed. Then another. He screamed through gritted teeth as the healing overwhelmed his nerves, pain and relief twisting together into something raw and unholy.

He forced himself to stand.

The Wet Nurse howled.

She lunged—not gracefully this time, not silently, but desperately. Like a dying animal clinging to purpose. Her fabric flared like wings, chains shrieking as her remaining limbs launched forward in a bladed storm.

Izuku charged into it with a crazed laugh.

One scythe slammed into his side, cracking a rib. A second carved across his collarbone, spraying blood in an arc that painted the stones beneath them.

He didn't stop.

He couldn't stop.

"Fortitudo!" The word ripped out of him, echoing across the nightmare. His skin cracked. His bones shook. The blood vials fought against the backlash, but it wasn't enough to stop the cost. His fingers bled around the grips of his daggers, he felt his nails on his right hand come loose in his glove with a sickening tug.

He vaulted over her next swing, planted a foot on the shaft of his embedded scythe—and kicked it deeper into her chest.

And in that moment—something changed.

The Nurse screamed. A scream unlike anything before. It wasn't the chorus of infants. It wasn't the shriek of the abyss.

It was her.

Just her.

She thrashed—her limbs wild, movements broken and uncoordinated, the void within her unraveling like yarn burning in firelight.

She lashed out one last time, a final desperate strike—and it landed. One scythe split his abdomen wide open.

Blood poured from Izuku's stomach like water from a shattered flask.

He dropped to one knee again, hand clamped over the wound, vision blurring. But the Wet Nurse was falling too.

She collapsed backward, shrieking, her body folding inward on itself, veil writhing like it couldn't decide whether to vanish or decay.

The scythe in her chest glowed, and with one last violent twitch— She was gone.

The silence that followed was absolute.

Only Izuku remained—bloodied, gasping, half-dead and swaying on his knees.

But he was alive.

He had won.

And the last great guardian of Mergo had fallen

He lay in a pool of his own blood, his body trembling as he peeled the arcane words off his flesh—ripping them free one by one. Each release left him gasping, each spell unwinding from muscle and marrow with greedy resistance. And with every one undone, a new wave of pain surged through his already shattered nerves.

His vision blurred. His limbs shook. He forced his hands to move.

The sobbing in the air—the crying—was louder now. Infantile. Agonized. Endless. It echoed like it was part of the stone, of the sky, of the blood around him. A sound that should have been impossible to ignore… and yet it was so easy to forget, until it wasn't. Until it hurt.

He opened his bag with fingers that barely responded, pain crawling down his spine like fire ants under his skin. Tools tumbled out, clicking and scraping against the soaked stone. Everything smelled like copper. Everything hurt.

He needed a vial.

Just one more.

His fingers dug deeper, slow, clumsy—his body making more blood even as it poured from the wound that split his stomach like a mouth. Regeneration wasn't enough. Not this time.

A vial slipped from his grip and rolled away.

Too far.

His lungs spasmed, pulling in shallow, ragged breaths. He kept searching, growing frantic. How many had he used? Why hadn't he called for more? Why hadn't he planned for this?

Tears welled up again. He couldn't stop them.

Something small and hard fell from his bag. It struck the stone with a clink.

The music box.

The one given to him by the youngest of the children.

His hand hovered over it, then closed. Not the vial. Not salvation. Just a little wooden box wrapped in memories.

The baby's cries grew louder.

Louder.

Louder still.

He tried to move toward the lost vial. His arms didn't work right. His legs felt nailed to the stone. He collapsed again, chest rising in shallow jerks.

The crying kept going.

He couldn't help it.

His fingers curled around the music box, and with all the strength he had left, he wound it.

Click.

Click.

Click.

The spring caught.

The box opened.

A soft melody spilled into the air—fragile, delicate, broken. A lullaby for nightmares.

Izuku choked on a sob as he rolled onto his back, the melody washing over him. It didn't fix anything. It didn't stop the pain. But it reminded him of why he was still breathing.

Of what he couldn't give up.

And somewhere… in the middle of the nightmare…

The crying stopped.

The air stilled.

Mergo had gone quiet.

Izuku stared up at the false sky, eyes full of tears he couldn't blink away. The music kept playing.

And for one single, breathless moment—

He was alone.

()~~~~~()

Word count for chapter 21235~

Patrion thanks section: Brandon Smith, Rom Hack, Carfmodyios, Sean Ross, bobomc0 3, Thediem, and Husky best dog! Thank you to these fine people for your massive support!

Final notes: I took a small break around 7k words in when I was writing this chapter. It was a load of fun to write but I got a little overwhelmed with my usual writing pace which is usually 2-4k words a day lol with LOTS of editing in between scenes. I originally planned to post this chapter around March 30th but I got side tracked and distracted lol. But it's finished and done with, I'm already a few thousand into the FINAL CHAPTER OF THE YHARNAM ARC!!!! So be patient with me as I write and finish this portion of the story.

I will be going back and rewriting chapters 1-17 as those were before my break from fanfiction, and arnt of the quality I want, all 17 chapters will—hopefully— be updated on the same day with a better polish and clean writing, I love you and and have a great day and I hope you enjoyed the chapter!