She stood there — tall, proud, pale as death.
Lady Maria of the Astral Clocktower.
Her gloved hand rested on the hilt of her beloved Rakuyo, the twin blades yet sheathed but ready, always ready.
Across from her stood the Hunter, their figure obscured beneath a battered hat and coat, smelling of blood, death, and madness. The scent was so familiar. How many had come before this one? How many driven by the same, cursed curiosity?
Lady Maria’s voice was soft, but it carried the weight of ages.
"A corpse… should be left well alone."
Her crimson eyes, burning yet weary, met the Hunter’s.
"Oh… I know very well… how the secrets beckon so sweetly. Only an honest death will cure you now… Liberate you from your wild curiosity."
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They clashed — steel against steel, blood against blood.
The fight was a blur of graceful violence. Maria’s movements were precise, deadly, like a dancer of death. The Rakuyo gleamed as it cut through the air. Blood magic laced her strikes, crimson arcs following every slash. The Hunter met her, blow for blow, unrelenting.
Maria pushed herself, feeling the forbidden power in her veins, the blood magic she had once sworn to abandon. She called upon it now, desperately, recklessly. A storm of blood and fury.
But it wasn’t enough.
The Hunter’s final strike drove her to her knees. Blood pooled around her, staining the clocktower floor. Her vision blurred, the sound of the Astral Clock’s ticking now distant, like the heartbeat of a dying world.
Regret clawed at her heart.
The Fishing Hamlet.
The screams.
The curse.
The sins she tried to bury by rejecting her bloodline, by turning from blood magic.
If only… if only she hadn’t turned away, perhaps that tragedy could have been prevented.
“Fools… all of us…” she whispered.
And then — darkness.
Her soul, untethered, began to drift.
Past the blood-soaked Yharnam streets.
Past the Great Ones.
Past the stars.
The Hunter continued on, to slay the Orphan of Kos.
The nightmare was unraveling.
It was ending.
But for Lady Maria — something lingered. A faint thread tugged at the remnants of her spirit. A call across worlds, through time, through dream and reality.
A voice.
A cry.
A child, born beneath a bleeding star.
And her soul was pulled toward it.
Toward Westeros.