Carefully descending the steep walls of the massive crater, Claude made sure to keep his footing steady, wary of slipping. He approached the centre cautiously, maintaining a safe distance from the ominous 'thing' sitting before him.

Claude stood in wonder and open curiosity as he motionlessly gazed at the pulsating red 'thing' before him. It hung in the air glowing with an eerie light, casting strange shadows in the gaping crater where it sat.

What was it?

What is it doing here?

From what he could see, it seemed connected to what had destroyed the ancient city.

"Lost lamb..."

The hairs on Claude's body spiked as he heard a hushed whisper float into his ears, sending a chill down his spine.

"Come... Seek what it is you desire..."

His eyes focused intently on the anomaly in front of him.

'It's coming from 'that'...?'

He tried to step back, but a haunting realization hit him: he couldn't move.

"Is it... Power? ...Knowledge? Perhaps... Hope?"

Tap!

Tap!

Tap!

Lacking the ability to resist, Claude could only watch in horror as his body moved closer to the source of the whispers, his feet betraying him with every step.

Step by step.

Inch by inch.

Soon he stood before the anomaly, its crimson hue casting a sinister glow on his youthful face.

Whoosh!

Before he could register what was happening, the world around him began to spin, a dizzying blur of colours and sounds. The last thing registering in his head was a flash of gold and more faint, unintelligible whispers.

"Yes... Come... Come bathe in His shadow... Seek thine eternal rest..."

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Claude's eyes fluttered open as he clutched his head and groaned, assailed by a throbbing headache, confusion swirling within him. He sat up slowly, his mind struggling to piece together the fragmented memories of what had just happened.

He glanced around at his surroundings. His vision was blurred by his throbbing temples. The room was rather bare, its austerity only adding to his disorientation.

The stone walls were cold and damp, seemingly carved from bedrock itself, their rough texture dotted with patches of dark moss and creeping lichen. The ceiling was low, adding to the room's claustrophobic atmosphere, with heavy wooden beams supporting the weight of the grand structure above.

In the faint light cast by a flickering torch mounted on the wall, he could make out strange inscriptions marked the walls, yet Claude's blurred vision hindered him from understanding them.

The room was devoid of furniture, leaving it stark and bare. The only break in the relentless stone was the heavy, reinforced oak door, bound with iron bands and fitted with a small, barred viewing window. The hinges and lock were massive, designed more to keep something in than to allow for an easy exit.

Clenching his teeth, Claude held back his frustration and slowly stood up, clutching at the wall beside him for support. As the pain in his head slowly subsided, he managed to focus on the writing on the wall.

Symbolum Nox Offertor:

This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

From the primordial vastness, where light dares not tread, he has emerged. He is the shadow that shapes worlds, the darkness that cradles the stars. In the silent recesses of the night, where secrets whisper and shadows conspire, he reigns supreme.

Do not fear the dark, for it is within its embrace that the soul finds its true form. The light blinds, but the dark reveals. Embrace the shadows, and we shall see with new eyes, hear with new ears, and understand with a wisdom that transcends mortal comprehension.

He is the weaver of shadows, the harbinger of truths untold. In our darkest dreams, he waits, whispering, watching. To seek the infinite under his guidance is to risk losing the finite, and in embracing the eternal, we may forsake the moment. This is the nature of the cosmos he embodies: vast and indifferent, beautiful and terrible.

Despite not knowing the language system used to inscribe these words, their meanings floated into Claude's mind with an unsettling clarity.

'Is this referring to the Bloodborne's God...? Am I in their camp now? But... How?' Claude began to realize he might be in a completely different world right now.

Nevertheless, he felt more unsettled by his latter question.

How did he get here?

If he got to the previous world due to that strange thing in his mental space, which is also somehow tied to the subspace, is this also due to the subspace?

The worst-case scenario would be that he was in the subspace itself.

"Come on, Claude! Stop dilly-dallying!" he muttered to himself, slapping his cheeks lightly.

Claude tried to touch the red thing that had brought him here, yet his hand just passed through it, as if it was just a figment of his imagination.

"Great... Looks like I can't return there any time soon."

Shaking his head he walked towards the locked door on the other side of the room, wondering how he would escape this place.

Pondering for a moment, he came to the realisation that performing his spell might be more taxing than normal.

Unlike before where there had been sufficient water vapour in the air due to the inherent nature of that world; now he would have to expend more mental energy to create a similar spell.

And, despite now having the mental energy to cast 15 Tier 0 spells, he didn't want to waste any of it in such an unfamiliar environment.

Glancing around the room, his eyes glinted as they locked onto the patches of moss that dotted the walls of the room.

With a thought, his mental energy surged into action. It soon began to tether and draw out the moisture out of the moss.

Little by little, the water began to coalesce into a large hand.

Claude then drove the hand towards the door and had it grasp the large iron rods that bound the door.

He then began to heat the hand by increasing the kinetic property of the molecules, within it and then began to rapidly cool it.

After repeating the process several times, the iron bars soon began to falter. And, with a final freeze.

Crack!

With a crack the bars broke apart, falling to the ground, shattering in the process.

Placing his hands on the door, Claude heaved it open and began ascending the flight of stairs leading up, each step echoing in the eerie silence.

As he neared the end of the staircase, he heard the thumping of footsteps, hammering away at the floor above. The noise was heavy, deliberate, and most definitely not human.

His doubts were confirmed when he glimpsed two crimson giants standing at the exit.

"Why Grokk no can fight bugs?" grumbled the smaller one, his voice a rumble of frustration, echoing off the damp stone walls. His fists clenched and unclenched at his sides, itching for action.

"Stoopid, Grokk." The larger giant responded with a slow, deliberate shake of his head, his tone laced with a condescending growl.

He leaned lazily against the entrance, arms crossed over his broad chest, eyes half-closed with a semblance of smugness. "Master says wait. Throgg smart. I listen."

Grokk's brow furrowed deeper, his thick fingers scratching at his head in frustration. His gaze darted toward the descending flight of stairs, catching Claude off guard and causing him to hug the sides of the walls and try and blend into the shadows.

"But… shiny red thing take us there? Why we no go?" Grokk hesitantly asked.

Throgg let out a low grunt, clearly irritated. "Dumb dumb," he spat. "Shiny thing no work now. Scary gold man break it." He bared his yellowed teeth in a sneer as he remembered the golden figure, his deep-set eyes narrowing. "Gold man smash it good. No more shine."

For a moment, Grokk's face sagged with disappointment, his slumped shoulders and drooping hands making him look almost childlike despite his monstrous size. "Throgg right…" he muttered, resigned to the situation.

Throgg, satisfied with Grokk's obedience, nodded sagely. "Master come soon. Then we smash bugs," he said with a slow, deliberate grin, revealing the sharp edges of his tusks. The thought of violence brought a glint to his eyes, a hungry anticipation that made his muscles twitch.

"Grokk like smash," Grokk echoed with a gleam in his eye, a slow smile creeping across his brutish face. "Grokk good at smash."

Throgg rumbled out something that might have been a laugh, though it was more akin to the distant growl of thunder. "Yes, Grokk is good at smash. But no smash yet. Master says wait."

As the conversation faded, Claude emerged from the shadowy depths of the staircase, eyes wide with shock.

He felt like his worldview had just been viciously assaulted and then flipped over.

'They speak...?'

Claude had been scouring the world for the past few years and had found too many Bloodborne camps to count. Yet, he had never seen them speak. More often than not, they just growled and barked at each other, not unlike animals.

'They speak…?' Claude thought, his mind racing. The giants' speech was crude and halting, but the fact that they could form coherent sentences was alarming enough. Yet, the contents of their conversation troubled him even more.

'They want to travel through the thing that brought me here… but can't?' Claude's gaze flicked to the malefic red 'thing' sitting in the room behind him, the same thing that had transported him. 'And these "bugs" they talk about… are they referring to humans like me? And, why can't they travel through it anymore?'