Arlo had spent five years as Elara’s apprentice, cataloging cursed artifacts that would make a lesser man’s mind unravel. But this… this was different. The map showed no streets, no landmarks, no sensible topography. Instead, it was a labyrinth of tangled, pulsing lines that seemed to shift when viewed from the corner of the eye. Crimson threads, like veins, branched from a central, swollen knot labeled in a spidery script: The Heart of the Hunt.

The veins on the parchment glowed a faint, arterial red. The lines writhed like startled serpents, then rearranged themselves. A new city unfolded before his eyes: not the gothic spires and cobbled streets of the Yharnam he knew, but a twisted, vertical necropolis of bridges that looped into themselves, staircases that descended into their own tops, and plazas where the moon was always full and always wrong.

He unfolded the map one last time. The blood-drop that was him had already started to move, sliding down a vein labeled The Alley of Crying Stones . Arlo packed a saw-cleaver, three vials of pale blood, and a single match.

He would not burn the map. He would let it burn through him.

And then he saw himself .

That night, the howls started outside Arlo’s window. Not wolves. Something worse. Something with too many legs and a voice that sounded like his own mother’s scream. The map, now hidden beneath his shirt, grew warm against his chest. He could feel its pull, a gravitational hunger directing him toward the old cathedral.