Staggering as he rose to his feet, Claude fought to steady his breath, his heart still pounding in his chest. He scanned the ruins around him. Where Ag'ourth's throne had once loomed, a massive stone edifice, there now lay only rubble.
But amidst the crumbling debris, something unusual caught his eye—a faint, golden glow that beckoned to him, flickering like a distant memory.
Claude's attention locked onto it. Slowly, shakily, he began to climb the uneven mound of bones toward the source of the light, his legs trembling beneath him.
Every step was laborious, yet he forced himself forward. When he reached the summit, there it was: a crown.
Its gold shimmered, pure and untarnished, as radiant as the sunrise he had so longed for during his years trapped in that world forsaken by it.
The sight stirred something in him—a longing for home, for mornings that weren't dim and moonlit.
"What... is this?" Claude murmured, his voice barely a whisper. But as his gaze swept over the wreckage surrounding him, his jaw clenched. Hope, fragile as it was, sparked within him.
"Whatever this thing is, maybe—just maybe—it can help me escape. I can't exactly make it back to that strange red portal in time... And even if I did—" he hesitated, "there's no telling if it would send me home, or straight into another nightmarish realm."
Without allowing doubt to stop him, Claude reached for the crown. The moment his fingers closed around it, a surge of warmth flooded through him. Blinding golden light erupted from the crown, swallowing the desolation around him.
Just before darkness claimed him, a figure emerged from the glow—its form impossible to define, yet distinctly golden and radiating power beyond comprehension. It was as though light itself had taken shape.
The last thing Claude heard as he slipped into unconsciousness was a voice, soft and distant.
"Thank you..."
-----
----------
----------------
"Are you sure about this?" Karl asked, his voice low.
In the dim light of Agnes' store, the soft flicker of candles cast long shadows on the walls. Across from him, an elderly figure sat hunched in a worn chair.
"Karl, what choice do we have anymore?" Gerard's voice was rough, laced with the exhaustion of a lifetime. He turned his gaze to the window beside him, watching a familiar figure dart past.
It was Oliver—the boy Claude had saved, the boy who had once stammered in terror, now clean and dressed in fresh clothes, his laughter piercing the quiet gloom of the city.
Outside, Oliver ran with the other children, their shrill cries of joy filling the narrow streets, their faces alight with happiness. Gerard smiled faintly, though it barely lifted the corners of his mouth.
"Isn't that why we did all of this? Fought, bled, suffered... so that kids like him could live without fear? Without the constant threat of the Bloodborne, or the beasts that stalk the forests?"
Karl followed Gerard's gaze, watching the children play. For a brief moment, a warmth spread in his chest. "Aye," he murmured, a smile tugging at his lips. "For this."
But as quickly as the peace settled over them, it shattered.
Their smiles vanished as the dim moonlight, which had long bathed the city in an eerie glow, faded. The crimson hue that had been a constant in their lives for years started to wither, slowly retreating as though swallowed by an unseen force.
A thick, inky darkness rolled in, swallowing the streets, the buildings, and the children's laughter.
Karl's heart lurched. His breath caught in his throat as shouts and screams rose from the streets. "What's happening...?" he whispered, his voice tight with alarm.
Gerard was silent, his wrinkled hands tightening around the arms of his chair as he peered into the unnatural void outside. The air itself seemed to hold its breath. But then, just as abruptly as the darkness descended, it was banished.
A searing, blinding light exploded across the land, flooding the city in a radiant brilliance they had only dreamed of in their darkest hours.
Both men groaned as the intensity of the light burned against their eyes, forcing them to shield their faces. The pain was sharp, stabbing, but something deeper urged them to look—to see what had come.
With great effort, they blinked through the agony and stared upward.
And there it was, suspended in the sky like a long-forgotten dream, impossibly real yet overwhelming in its presence.
A sun.
Golden, blazing, filling the heavens, whilst bathing this forsaken land in warmth and light. Gerard's mouth fell open, his voice trembling.
"It's... it's real..."
For a moment, neither of them could speak. The impossible had happened. Their world finally had light.
-----
----------
----------------
In a twisted, crimson void, an impossibly vast and shifting landscape stretched endlessly in all directions. The realm was a nightmare made real, where the sky bled scarlet and black lightning crackled through the air.
Great swirling maelstroms churned violently across the horizon, tearing at reality itself, as twisted spires and dark fortresses loomed like jagged teeth, half-formed from the madness.
The very ground seemed alive, pulsating with unnatural rhythms as if it had a mind of its own, shifting and writhing underfoot.
This was the Subspace, a realm where the very laws of physics twisted and frayed at the edges of comprehension.
In the midst of this maddening landscape, several beings gathered. They were entities that defied mortal understanding, their forms constantly shifting between states of solidity and ether.
Some loomed tall like dark monoliths, their bodies twisted and adorned with barbed armour and jagged spines. Others were smaller, more agile, with bodies that flickered like shadows, their forms barely distinguishable from the seething chaos around them.
One figure, a hulking brute whose skin oozed with a viscous black fluid, stood silently at the centre. Its head was a mass of writhing tendrils, and where eyes should have been, there were only deep, hollow voids that seemed to swallow all light.
Beside it, another entity hovered, its form more amorphous and insidious—constantly shifting between shapes, from serpentine coils to insect-like limbs, as if it could never decide on a single, stable form.
"What happened?! How did we lose contact with Ag'ourth?" The brute's voice boomed across the void, its anger palpable.
The other more amorphous entity soon answered. "We don't know... But there were... traces... of magic...". Its voice rasped like rough sandpaper against dry wood.
The first figure's tendrils twitched with barely restrained rage. "Magic? You don't mean...?" Its voice trailed off, filled with suspicion and dread.
"Yes..." The second figure wheezed, its form flickering as if struggling to remain coherent. "It was the work of a mage. A weak one... but a mage... nonetheless."
For a moment, all the shadowy entities fell into a heavy silence, as their collective rage and fear thickened the air around them.
Then the first figure spoke again, this time with fury dripping from every word. "Damn it! Didn't He already devour that world?! Why are these pests still alive and running?!"
At this, another figure, monstrous in size, with twisted, horns and a bloated body leaking molten lava, let out a low growl. "Now that you say that..." it rumbled. "We may follow the Shadowfiend... but when was the last time we heard anything... about Him?"
"You mean... The Afflicter?" one of them finally muttered, its voice trembling.
At the mention of the title, all the entities recoiled, their twisted forms instinctively shrinking back into the shadows, their fear palpable.
A silence descended over the group, as though the mere invocation of that name had drained the life from the space around them.
"Eons..." another entity murmured, its voice barely more than a whisper. This one was the most grotesque of them all—a hunched mass of flesh, with dozens of eyes blinking in random patterns across its body. "His followers... their prayers go unanswered... for so long..."
"Whatever," the first figure spat, regaining its composure, though its tendrils writhed with tension. "It's none of our concern. Let those Plague Bearer scum deal with the magical vermin. That world is a lost cause now—we can't afford to provoke a war with another subspace faction."
Finally, in unison, they echoed the words that bound them to this forsaken existence, their voices a chorus of low, guttural whispers.
"May the shadows guide us..."
And with that, they dissolved back into the shifting chaos, their forms melding seamlessly into the crimson nightmare, leaving the space between them to churn with the same seething malevolence that defined their realm.
-----
----------
----------------
With a quiet groan, Claude slowly blinked his eyes open. His vision swam, and a dull ache pulsed at the back of his head. He took a deep breath, trying to gather his bearings, but his voice came out as a hoarse whisper.
"Where... am I now?"
Shaking off the lingering haze, Claude pushed himself to his feet, but his movements stilled as soon as he took in his surroundings.
His eyes darted around, wide and frantic at first—until recognition set in. The tension in his body melted into shock.
It was a place he knew all too well.
A small, unassuming cottage. Dust blanketed the worn wooden furniture, the thick layer softening the edges of chairs and shelves as though time itself had frozen here.
The hearth in the corner lay dead and cold. Everything had an air of abandonment, yet... nothing was out of place. The wooden walls, the small table with its single chair, the faded tapestry that hung crooked on the wall—it was all as he remembered.
As if pulled from a distant dream, or perhaps a memory he'd buried deep.
"I'm... back," Claude breathed, his words laced with a mix of relief and exhaustion.
He was home.