There is no deliverance in the Hunt. Only echoes. Echoes of screams that never end. Of prayers that were never answered. Of blood, thick and wrong, soaking the stones of a city long since forsaken.

You arrived not as a savior — no such things endure in Yharnam — but as a vessel. A stranger cradled in sickness, offered a pact written in blood and sealed in nightmare. You awoke not in warmth, but in rot. In the haunted streets of Yharnam, where the dead do not rest, and the living wear beast-skin and madness like cloaks.

Your hands, once steady, were soon wet. First with necessity. Then with repetition.

Gascoigne’s maddened actions. Amelia’s broken sermon. The silence of Ebrietas — a silence so loud it split your ears. You pressed onward, each victory tasting less like triumph and more like rust on the tongue.

Only one voice remained clean in that world.

“Welcome home, good Hunter. What is it you desire?”

The Doll. Serene. Eternal. Her voice a balm upon your soul. She knew not rage, nor grief, but held your weariness like a mother nursing a wound that would never heal. Her presence tethered you to a reality not consumed by the Hunt.

But the dream was not merciful.

Beyond the veil, deeper still, there lay the Astral Clocktower. And within, Lady Maria, still and waiting beneath silver gears and centuries of shame. She, the pale thorn of Cainhurst, who cast away her Rakuyo out of disgust, and in doing so, shackled herself to a waking death.

When you came for her... it was not with hate.

It was with purpose.

You fought like dying stars — radiant, burning, doomed. Maria’s blood painted the floor like the petals of a crimson garden. And when she fell, it was with grace, like a woman unburdened of her sins at last.

“You wouldn’t... know...”

She whispered those words with bitterness — not for you, but for herself.

Still, the nightmare did not end.

In the garden of final dawn, beneath the gnarled tree that marked the boundary between dream and void, Gehrman waited. He spoke as one who had suffered far too long, chained by duty, haunted by failure. He offered peace. A release.

But peace was a lie. You denied him, blade drawn not in rebellion, but in understanding.

You killed your guide.

And from the heavens, the Moon Presence came. Eldritch and cold. The architect of the dream, the puppeteer of the Hunt.

It, too, bled like the many others.

And from its carcass, you drank deep.

You did not transcend. You did not ascend. You took the burden, and with it, restored balance to a world that had never known balance.

The beasts receded. The fog lifted.

Yharnam stirred with life again — not pure, not redeemed, but remembered. Laurence walked once more through the Healing Church, his mind no longer a furnace of flame. Ludwig knelt in the Healing Church Workshop, whispering prayers for the hunters who had followed him into madness.

And in the Workshop, the dream’s final embers glowed.

The Doll remained, her form no longer bound to dream alone. She swept the dust from Gehrman’s wheelchair, cleaned the blades without being asked. Her voice, as ever, sang gently in the shadows.

“Good Hunter... you have done well. May your soul find stillness... if not silence.”

Then, days later, rain kissed the doorstep.

And Lady Maria returned.

Not as a ghost. Not as nightmare. But as flesh, as breath — called back by your rebirth of the world. The blood no longer ruled her. The nightmare had lost its grip. She stood now not as guardian, but as... witness.

“You tore the world asunder... and stitched it back with red thread. I would call it madness... but you did what I could not.”

And as she stepped into the Workshop, boots clicking softly against old wood, her crimson eyes met those of the Doll.

The air stilled.

It was not shock that passed between them — not quite. Nor recognition. It was deeper. Stranger. Like two halves of the same dream watching each other from opposite sides of a mirror, both uncertain which was real.

The Doll tilted her head, the motion as gentle as the falling ash from the hearth.

“Ah... I see now.” Her voice was soft, almost reverent. “You... you are the shape from which I was drawn.”

Maria stared, silent. Her eyes narrowed, not in disdain, but... ache.

“So... this is what he made of me.”

She circled slowly, gaze tracing the folds of the Doll’s dress, the pale smoothness of her hands, the quiet tragedy in her porcelain face. There was no blood in this woman, no fury, no shame — only silence. Only care.

“He carved out my grace, my poise... and left behind the burden.”

The Doll did not flinch beneath her scrutiny.

“I was made to comfort. To serve the Hunter in all things. To endure... and to guide.”

Maria's voice cut in, sharp as the point of her Rakuyo.

“To obey.”

The Doll, unfazed. “To be what you could not.” Silence fell again — this time longer, heavier.

And then... something flickered in Maria’s gaze. Not anger. Not envy. Grief.

“A fine likeness,” she murmured, tone brittle and distant. “But empty. You speak of purpose with such... clarity. How I envy that.”

The Doll’s lips curved faintly — the closest she came to a smile, if it could be called that.

“And yet, it was your pain that shaped me. That, too, is purpose.”

The fire crackled. Neither moved.

For the first time, the Workshop held two faces of the same woman — one born of flesh, bound by memory and failure. The other, crafted from bone-white porcelain, free of rage but chained to eternal servitude. And between them, you — slayer of gods, breaker of dreams — stood wordless.