[h3]Forest, near ancient Yharnam, ancient Pthumeru[/h3]
Going through the landscape, there might be just the faintest hint of similarity from just watching the landscape itself – a slope here they recognized from the Forbidden Woods, a rock that looked vaguely familiar, a stream that was in approximately the same place as it had been where they came from – but these details only served to enhance how stark a contrast there was between what they had come to realize were two versions of the same place. Over the presumably vast period of time they had been displaced by the Great Serpent, practically everything in the two places had changed. Even things that people tended to view as permanent and use as landmarks for navigation, like trees, rocks or even just the shape of the landscape, had observably changed. It was a perhaps shocking reminder to some of them that even the world itself, if viewed over a long enough span of time, was naturally shifting and changing. Rocks and sediment moves and erodes, water carves new paths through the land, trees – even long-lived ones – are not eternal, but eventually expire to be replaced with new plants. Even things as foundational as the quality of the soil changed, and with enough of a shift the entire ecosystem could morph in ways that would render previously native life unsustainable, and new migratory life flourish instead.
This was still a forest, but it was effectively an entirely different forest. The trees were not just another generation of the same sorts of trees, but entirely different families. The undergrowth beneath the canopy were not just the same selection of plants redistributed, but a different configuration of bushes and ferns entirely. And the hill – when they reached it after just a couple of minutes of walking – was much taller than it had been in the Forbidden Woods, and much more sparsely wooded. Not only did climbing it get them higher than most of the trees around the hill, but the hill itself had very little to obstruct their view.

The Hunters climbed the hill, looked around... and discovered just how much this was not the Yharnam they knew.
Further north, where they all knew – but Ophelia would be particularly familiar with – Hemwick usually was, with Yahar'gul even further north, was now a huge, sprawling city the kind of which none of them had ever seen before. It stretched all the way to the water's edge – which was further west than it had been last they saw it – and all the way in front them from left to right, continuing off eastward and northward almost as far as they could see. Modern Yharnam was dwarfed by this absurd behemoth of a metropolis.
Not only did the city cover massive amounts of land, but even looking at individual constituents of the city there was a huge and obvious difference. Very little was where they expected them to be, with the only immediately recognizable landmarks being the mountains and the distant island that normally housed Castle Cainhurst... but even the castle, which was quite possibly the oldest part of modern Yharnam, did not feature in what they now saw. There was no bridge to the island, and rather than a castle it just featured what appeared to be a small fishing village whose numbers of scattered boats paled in comparison to the fleet of boats and ships occupying a harbor that was not supposed to be there.
Every house and building in the city was of a completely different make and design than what they were familiar with, and even the most humble residence was larger than most homes in modern Yharnam, and made entirely from stone, and looked to have far more ornamentation than they were used to. Far to the north, about where modern Yahar'gul would have been, they could make out an incredible cathedral that would put the Grand Cathedral of the Healing Church to shame. It lacked the weird bridges and platforms that allowed for the existence of the modern Upper Cathedral Ward, but was much larger and built from white stone, with such enormous and colorful mosaic windows that they could make them out even from kilometers away in moonlight. And to the east, toward what appeared to be the heart of the city, was a palace of unspeakable majesty. Its spires towered above everything else, seemingly competing with even the surrounding mountains to see which would be tallest, adorned with countless fluttering banners and surrounded by beautiful gardens and orchards. Its walls were built from a mix of black, white and red stone, with the distribution of the colors being so deliberate and the design of each and every detail, from the amazing, sweeping arches to the simplest doors and windows, displayed an ancient beauty that had long been lost to this land.

“[I]There,[/I]” the voice told them, once again speaking in all of their heads. “[I]That palace; that is where the ritual is taking place.[/I]”

But it was not just that the buildings of the city were different. Despite where they were and what they knew of ancient Pthumeru... despite the prominent full moon above them, which marked this clearly as a Night of the Hunt... when they looked past the outer wall of the city, they saw [I]life[/I]. Where the streets of modern Yharnam were deserted on a night like this, this city was brimming with activity. Under the blue light of the eternal fires they had seen in the Old Labyrinth, the streets of this city were full of what appeared to be people, many of whom manned stalls or worked their crafts out in the open, but most were just idling around. It looked like a festival of some kind, which coupled with the distinct lack of pyres, screaming and howling, made for a bizarre contrast to the Yharnam they knew.
Just several hundred meters to their northeast, they would see a gate in the outer wall that separated the city from the forest. It was manned, but its doors were open. And there was not a single censer in sight.