To Fracture, To Bloom

Before the endless night of the hunt, there was the Healing Church. Before the Healing Church, there was Byrgenwerth and a group of scholars who sought to elevate humanity beyond its own design. This is a recollection of the time before—before Yharnam became less of a city and more of a tomb, before scholars and clergy grew horns and sharp teeth, and before the blood moon descended. This is a story of brilliant minds, crippling devotion, and the slow, irreversible collapse of a community from within, leaving nothing behind but blood and beasts.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

i, ii, iii, iv, v, vi, vii, viii.

Of cicatrices. excerpt below from chapter 5 of my bloodborne prequel, To Fracture, To Bloom.

The phantasm blazed in its jar like a lantern, its tendrils no longer pressed against the glass but reaching past it towards her, its limbs like pale vines from which smaller filaments and threads extended. She could see the architecture of her friends—Laurence, dense and golden, concentrated and contained, but blazing and ardent. She saw Rom at her side, newly luminous, as bright as the moon that hung in the sky above Byrgenwerth’s grounds. And Micolash was the very shape of famine, sprawling and dark, reaching outward in every direction, grasping for anything within reach. And she could see herself, a well that plunged through the floor, past the bedrock, all the way down into water that was not water, but a primeval current, where a great rupture was unfolding, far across the stars.

full chapter here.

On the orphan of Kos, ii excerpt below from chapter 5 of my bloodborne prequel, To Fracture, To Bloom.

The Old Blood was grounding and certain, and made one feel truly at home in their body, one with their bones. The pale Blood had muddled her senses and swept her off her feet, making the world around her spin, and melt, and meld. The Blood of the orphan of Kos was another thing entirely. This was an undertow that started in the chest and pulled her apart, fibre by fibre, by tendon and muscle, and down through the marrow. The void was within her, and it was not the absence of space, but the very matter where space would dwell. Her vision sharpened rather than blurred. She saw everything so very clearly, every sensation magnified and intensified by the song of the sea that slid down her throat and flooded her insides. She held the vial out Micolash carefully with steady hands.

full chapter here.

On the orphan of Kos, i excerpt below from chapter 5 of my bloodborne prequel, To Fracture, To Bloom.

On the table in the centre of the room, curled on the white cloth that had been draped over in a sad attempt to make the table appear less clinical than it was, was the child of Kosm. Its long limbs were drawn inward, its fingers opening and closing as it felt for a presence that was not there.  It was so small.  What they had seen on the beach, still appearing in fragments to the biologist, had been a wailing thing tucked into the First Hunter’s arms and concealed beneath his coat. Here, in this indifferent light, it looked less like an eldritch mystery, and more like exactly what it was: a baby, trembling and afraid.  Mother’s dead, her baby taken.  The biologist was not used to studying things that were still alive.  The baby’s fingers continued grasping for nothing.  Scales are suffering, the grief of Kos.  Its head was too large. Its skin was the same shade of iridescent pearl that had made its mother so radiant. The goddess of the deep. Do you hear it, a sealess void?

full chapter here.

On the fishing hamlet, ii. excerpt below from chapter 4 of my bloodborne prequel, To Fracture, To Bloom.

As the sound of more crying and slashing echoed from inside the caves, Tressa did the only thing that made any sort of sense to her, which was to run straight toward the great unknowable, that was, the Great One who lay on the beach with her body carved open, her baby taken.  Tressa ignored any cries of her name, beckoned instead by the call of the waves as they kissed the wounds of the Great Mother’s corpse in hopes of sealing the womb with stitches made of brine and bacteria. The biologist skidded to her knees at what she assumed was the Great One’s head, and she was glad to see that she had assumed correctly. What she had not expected was the face to look so breathtakingly and tragically human.  Her neck was long and covered by tissue that the biologist could only describe as hoodlike, lined with gills and filaments that spat seawater from tiny crystalline pores. She looked like the most beautiful woman Tressa had ever seen, carved from marble or crafted from silk.  Or perhaps from stardust that had fallen into the sea.  This being was beyond anything Tressa could have ever imagined, and when she met the white, dead eyes of this goddess, she understood that this was what the tide had carried.  All that was left to do was see.  And in order to see, the scholar needed to grow eyes.

chapters: i, ii, iii.

normally, I wouldn't update my work so quickly, but I'm very proud of this chapter, and it being bloodborne's 11th birthday, it felt only fitting. I hope anyone who reads it finds it a fine tribute.

On the fishing hamlet, i.

excerpt below from chapter 3 of my bloodborne prequel, To Fracture, To Bloom.

Tressa Bowen stood at the edge of a cliff with something vast and dark stretched beyond where the horizon should lay. All was black, save for the rock beneath her boots, though she presumed that what was before her was the ocean, since she could smell the salt in the air, feel the chill of the sea breeze, and feel the pull of it in her sternum like a hook. The sky above was the color of a bruise going yellow, and black tendrils spread from a central point in the sky where the sun should be.  The immense urge to look up further overtook her. Her neck strained as she tilted her head back, further than what should anatomically be possible, and a strange sight revealed itself. The spires of Byrgenwerth were above, their points like the tips of knives, so close to her head and  threatening to fall down upon her. The college was upside down, its architecture flipped and arranged incorrectly. The longer she stared, the more she noticed, and the more things she found out of place, disturbing, and altogether wrong.  Then, though she could not see it, she sensed the movement of something massive below her.  Come down, it said. It reached for and pulled at her, this intangible force with inviting and hungry hands, and she found herself so willing to be devoured by something that was more than she.  Come down, little scholar. Come and see what the tide carries. Tressa took a step forward, off the edge, into the maw of the abyssal unknown— 

chapters: i, ii.

there will never be a time when bloodborne does not completely own my heart, my soul, or my mind. I am deep into the ancient 10+ years of hell that is MicoTress / oc x canon, and I could not be feeling more free.