[h3]The Hunter's Dream[/h3]
On their way to the Forbidden Woods through the Hunter's Dream, however, the Hunters hit a minor snag as returning there meant another activation of the disruptive influence of the false Paleblood. For Torquil's part he merely sensed himself filling with vital energy like when he channeled the strength of their fallen enemies through the doll, but for Farren this sent a ripple through the Dream itself. The result of this soon became obvious as they found the Shopkeeper and the doll... with the latter having crumbled once more into an inanimate heap, the eldritch life drained from her remains.
[color=#007FFF][b]“We will return to rouse her, but it may be some time. The Ritual has progressed, time is short, and the Great One they are calling is a dire threat,”[/b][/color] Farren told them.
“I might be able to revive her now if it's tremendously important to you? Just nod or shake your head, love.” Ophelia asked the Moonborn.
The Shopkeeper, kneeling by the inanimate doll, immediately nodded their head without so much as turning from the porcelain homunculus.
Retrieving the runebrand, Ophelia handed it to Farren alongside the Echo of Agony. “Apply the Heir rune and crush this: I think it should give us enough to bring her back.”
Farren simply nodded, envisioned the Heir Rune in his mind's eye and then used the brand with not a sign of discomfort. Once he felt its power in his skull, a faint, but distinct vibration, Farren turned his attention to the Echo and crushed it in his hand.
It felt...like a brief rush, and then the ghostly weight of the echoes settled in his veins. It felt like enough. Farren drew over to Amaris, took to one knee and pressed a hand to the top of her head, opening himself and [i]pushing[/i] the echoes to her with his will.
Once again the doll blinked her eyes as whatever semblance of life she possessed returned to her. “Ah, again... I am sorry to be such a burden, good Hunters.”
Farren shook his head and rose, [color=#007FFF][b]“Don't be, it is a failing of my false paleblood, not of your being.”[/b][/color] He glanced to Ophelia, jaw set, ready to go if she and the others were.
“We're all Mother Moon's children here, dear. We would abandon you no more than we'd abandon each other, no matter how many times something happens. We'll see you soon.” Ophelia chuckled, her smile warm for just a moment before the sense of urgency overcame her features again and she made ready to set out.

[h3]Witch's Abode, Hemwick, west of Yharnam[/h3]
Though their destination was in the Forbidden Woods, the only one out of the party with any idea [I]where[/I] in the Forbidden Woods they were going was Ophelia. As such it was quickly determined that they would have a much better chance of getting to where they might find the Great Serpent if they went from a location she was intimately familiar with rather than some – to Ophelia – random place in the expansive forest. Looking at the markers on the headstones in the Dream, it became obvious that out of all of them, there was one place Ophelia was likely more familiar with than any other: the home of her old teachers, the Witch's Abode.
Awakening after touching the marker, the Hunters could observe that the structure they found themselves in only bore a superficial resemblance to the lair of the Witches of Hemwick. During the time of resurgence Hemwick had experienced in the wake of the Night of the Blood Moon, the now-vacant largest building in of the village had swiftly been claimed and repurposed as a workshop for the morticians performing their grim duties. The abode had been thoroughly cleaned and renovated, and at the height of its prosperity it had been a bustling place of business, with dozens of people happily processing multitudes of corpses.
Then things had taken a turn for the worse, of course. With the witches dead and their Mad Ones absent, Hemwick lost the protection they had had from the scourge of beasts, and with the mountain of victims of the Blood Moon being moved through Hemwick, beasts were an inevitability. The dead brought beasts and beasts brought Hunters, and some of those Hunters deserted the Healing Church and aided in rebuilding the Vilebloods, revitalizing the war between the two would-be rulers of Yharnam.
Nowadays the Witch's Abode, though still in much better condition than when the witches had lived there, was abandoned, and the briefly prosperous Hemwick Charnel Lane was reduced to a few scattered devoted, twisted souls who dutifully maintained the functions of the village.

But as nostalgic as this return likely was for Ophelia and for as many thoughts and feelings she might have about it, the Hunters were determined to make haste to their destination. They quickly exited the abode, stepping out under the night's sky into the moonlit grounds...
And indeed, straight above them – exactly where they had last seen it, rooted in place despite hours having passed – was the moon. Only, the moon would quite obviously not look how they were used to it looking. Though still pale and giving off its cold radiance, there was now a large, churning pitch-black splotch in its center, its edges slowly undulating and pulsating. Like the pupil of a staring eye in the sky, this dark mark looked as though it had already filled up about three fourths of the moon... with small, shimmering tether stretching down from it and to the ground, somewhere to their north. The distance was hard to determine from this vantage, but the direction and circumstances seemed to suggest that the other end of that ephemeral trail was rooted in Yahar'gul.

Spurred on by this reminder of their haste, the Hunters headed southward through the empty streets of Hemwick, climbed rocks and descended slopes before they, after traveling for about ten minutes, officially found themselves under the shaded canopy of the Forbidden Woods. Ophelia would know that it would likely take about another ten minutes or so to get to where people usually left offerings to their guardian deity, and so they hastened into the murk, toward the Great Serpant's shrine.
But before they had traveled for more than two minutes or so, they would encounter something quite unexpected: standing plainly among the trees off to their right, fingers steepled and a small smirk on her lips, was what appeared to be a civilian woman. She was wearing [url=https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/bloodborne/images/7/75/Student_Set_%28cloaked%29.jpg/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/270?cb=20170511224902]the garb of a student[/url] and had short, messy brown hair... and as if the fact that she was just calmly standing here in the midst of the Forbidden Woods was odd enough, she was also blindfolded.
It was made a little harder by the blindfold, but ultimately Ophelia would likely have little trouble recognizing this woman as the one she had seen in the Memory of Stars, and the one she had known from her old life. This appeared to be Nayra.