One-shots and plot bunnies

The great clocktower of Yharnam rang in the distance as the Protagonist, known to the world as the Hunter, stood at the precipice of the final choice. The Great One, Ebrietas, lingered in the depths of the Nightmare. He had slain the Moon Presence, silenced the bloodthirsty madness of Gehrman, and forsaken his humanity to answer the call of the celestial realm.

Now, before him stood a decision that would seal his fate, the fate of the world, and the fate of those who had once been beneath him: ascend to become a Great One or return to the mortal world he once knew. The echoes of the clocktower seemed to fade into the void as his gaze locked onto the swirling, cosmic abyss in front of him. The path to ascend had been laid bare before him, and the weight of what would come next pressed heavily against his chest.

The echoes of his previous life—the hunts, the blood, the terror—suddenly felt far away, like the fading memory of a dream half-forgotten. And with that realization, a profound hunger rose within him. The truth of what he had already become stirred, a call, an overwhelming beckoning from the cosmic expanse. He could no longer ignore it.

Yes... I will ascend.

His decision made, the void around him surged. The stars themselves seemed to align, and in an instant, the air thickened, vibrating with a force beyond mortal comprehension. A deep, cold laughter reverberated in his mind, the sound of many voices—those of Eldritch beings who had long ago transcended the limitations of flesh and mind.

The transformation was instant, but that didn't mean it was without agony. The Hunter's body, once human, began to writhe, twisting in ways that no human form was ever meant to. His skin grew pale, then stretched into something more luminous, like pale moonlight, ethereal and fluid. The air around him felt heavy with the pressure of invisible forces, and the ground beneath him buckled and cracked, as though reality itself recoiled from his new nature.

His hands, once simple and calloused from countless hunts, stretched, elongated. His fingers split open and formed delicate, webbed tendrils of blackened, writhing energy. His spine twisted and expanded, becoming impossibly long and jagged, an unearthly silhouette that hovered just between the worlds of the living and the unseen. His eyes burned with the knowledge of a thousand lifetimes, ancient knowledge that would break lesser minds. The world he had once known began to fade into something new, something far more alien.

The moon's light grew brighter, as though it could no longer comprehend the shift. As his transformation reached its peak, he felt a ripple pass through his consciousness. His perception of reality split into a thousand pieces, each fragment a reflection of infinite, incomprehensible worlds beyond human sight.

I see... everything.

The stars above were no longer distant objects of light. They were eyes, watching, seeing, judging. He could sense their whispers, not with ears but with a primal awareness deep inside his very being. Each breath he took was no longer drawn from lungs, but from the cosmos itself. The air, thick with the stench of the Great Ones, seemed to sing a dark, mournful song. He could feel the entire city of Yharnam, every building, every corner, every shadow, as though it was part of him, woven into the fabric of his existence. The layers of the Dream no longer seemed separate. They were now an extension of his mind, connected in a way that was impossible for any mortal to grasp.

He stood tall, no longer bound by flesh and bone. His form was both human and inhuman—his body an eldritch amalgamation of glowing energy, twisting tentacles, and shifting shapes. His consciousness, once limited to his mortal senses, now stretched across the cosmos. He could see the hidden truths beneath the veil of reality—see the dark, writhing tendrils of the Great Ones reaching from distant stars, their minds as vast and unknowable as the infinite void.

But even as he reveled in the power, he could not help but feel a sense of sorrow. He was no longer the Hunter—the mortal man who had roamed the streets of Yharnam, chasing blood and beasts. He had ascended beyond the mortal coil, but what did that mean for him? His humanity was gone, dissolved in the ether. His body was no more than a vessel, a conduit for powers that even he struggled to comprehend.

The blood that had once fueled his hunts was now a distant memory, replaced by the cold, unfeeling power of the cosmos. The instincts that had guided him in battle—the bloodlust, the thrill—felt like echoes from a far-off world. Now, the darkness was all-encompassing. Every thought, every sensation, was overwhelmed by the endless, twisting void of the Great Ones' existence. He no longer wanted to fight. The hunt had become irrelevant. He had transcended those urges.

And yet, there was still something human inside him—something that clung desperately to the remnants of his former self. A sense of loss, a longing for a world that no longer existed. The reality he had known, filled with hunts and blood and the madness of the Beast Plague, had become nothing but a fleeting memory, fading as quickly as his mortal body had disintegrated.

His new form thrummed with a resonance he couldn't ignore. It was an unsettling sensation, like the sound of a distant drumbeat echoing through the emptiness of space. The world around him was both endless and infinitely small. His mind swam in the ocean of the cosmos, connecting with entities and beings beyond comprehension, their thoughts tangled in ways that made his human mind twitch with a type of cosmic vertigo.

Is this... what I wanted?

He drifted, both within and beyond himself, pulled in every direction at once. His gaze turned to the city of Yharnam, a fading memory now, a ghost in the corner of his mind. The streets where he had once walked in search of answers were now an abstraction. The people—their faces, their fears—were irrelevant. He could feel them, but only as fleeting, shifting particles of existence. Their struggles were far beneath him now.

The sky above him seemed to pulse in rhythm with his thoughts, the Great Ones whispering their ancient words in a language that was older than time itself. They beckoned him, not with kindness, but with the cold indifference of beings whose existence was outside mortal comprehension.

I am no longer part of that world...

He closed his eyes, and in that moment, the weight of his new form settled in. His power, his knowledge—it was both a blessing and a curse. He had transcended humanity, but in doing so, he had also severed the last remnants of what it meant to be human.

This is what I am now.

A Great One. The Hunter who had ascended to become an ancient, eldritch being. A creature beyond time and space, beyond mortal thought.

And as his consciousness stretched out across the void, embracing the infinite cosmos, he realized that he no longer sought answers. There was no question left to ask.

The ascension was complete. And the world—Yharnam, humanity, the very fabric of existence—was nothing but a fleeting shadow in the vast, cosmic expanse

All he needed now

was

a

child