BOOM!
The moment the names appeared, golden light clashed against crimson-black flame.
Lloyd's Sacred Relic Sword—pulled from the Erdtree by Alice—met Godfrey's Royal Axe in a violent collision. The impact burst outward in a tangible shockwave, rippling through the ground beneath their feet. Even the Royal Capital beyond the Erdtree felt the tremor.
At the same time, the stone hammer wreathed in soft gold and the double-helix greatsword burning with the Queen's Black Flame crossed once more, cutting through time and space itself.
BOOM!
After a brief exchange, both sides were forced apart.
A moment later, Godfrey leapt high into the air, his massive Greataxe raised overhead.
Marika, too, lifted her stone hammer, its head gleaming with golden light.
Were they about to strike?
It certainly seemed so.
But just as Lloyd gathered his power to meet the attack, Melina's calm voice came from behind him.
"Left. Dodge."
Without hesitation, the Black Flame flared, and Lloyd vanished from where he stood.
An instant later, golden afterimages of Marika and Godfrey appeared midair, their weapons moving at near light-speed. They struck again and again at the spot Lloyd had just vacated.
As they did, Marika hurled her hammer toward that same point. It detonated in a brilliant explosion—then, in an almost impossible maneuver, she and Godfrey blinked forward, materializing before Lloyd in unison.
Godfrey's axe fell immediately.
BOOM!
The ground shook violently.
But once again, the blow found no target.
The reason...
"Ah, daughters grow up—they never stay home," the village woman muttered wryly as she retrieved her hammer.
Marika's taunt earned no response. Melina stayed still, pressed against Lloyd's back, her unsealed Gloam Eyes fixed silently on the mother before her.
Then, the battle reignited.
Realizing brute strength alone wouldn't suffice, Marika shifted tactics. Raising one hand, she condensed golden energy and fired several beams of light toward Lloyd's position.
As the blasts fell, she aided Godfrey in teleporting before him once more. This time, instead of a vertical strike, he twisted midair, spinning his Greataxe in a full circular cleave.
Lloyd met the strike with his sword, parrying before countering with a golden shockwave that slammed into Godfrey. At the same moment, Melina unleashed a blade of Black Flame, the fire of Destined Death engulfing both mother and husband alike.
Yet even as gold and black converged upon him, Godfrey did not falter.
He pressed forward through the shockwave, his sheer endurance and will forcing a brutal exchange of blows. His Greataxe tore into Lloyd's side in a retaliatory strike.
Behind him, the goddess shattered the encroaching Black Flame with a swing of her hammer, conjuring a golden spear of light that she hurled forward. It pierced Melina's shoulder clean through.
A true portrait of "motherly love and daughterly affection."
What followed was a relentless exchange.
Greatsword met greataxe.
Black Flame met gold.
The battle raged on, the surrounding space collapsing under the shockwaves.
Finally, after yet another violent clash, the two sides separated once more, standing opposite each other in the wreckage.
Then, Marika dropped her hammer and drew Godfrey close, holding him tightly.
Godfrey lifted his Greataxe high. The might of the Highland Warrior and the golden law converged upon its blade.
[Special Domain: God and King]
[God and King: A law rewritten by the weakened Golden Goddess, forged from her final strength.]
[This single strike—no defense, no evasion. It can only be met with the power of 'God and King.']
Lloyd lifted his gaze.
Under the glow of that golden light, he accepted the twin-helix greatsword from Melina's hands. Together, they gripped its hilt and raised it high.
A golden phantom began to manifest, its overwhelming power distorting the air around it.
Black and crimson flames surged upward—within them flickered a trace of orange fire.
After a long buildup, both sides struck at once.
The phantom brought down its Greataxe.
The flames swung the greatsword.
The moment fire met gold, the world froze.
Then came the explosion.
The earth quaked. Space itself twisted. The shockwave was so vast that even the Erdtree trembled, scattering countless golden leaves into the distant Lands Between like a storm of radiant snow.
...
When the tremors finally ceased and the dust began to clear—
The colossal figure knelt, one hand gripping the Greataxe for support. The goddess behind him had already begun to fade.
Before them, the man holding the twin-helix greatsword still stood firm, while the Gloam-Eyes behind him continued to burn faintly in unconscious slumber.
The flames still burned.
The battle was decided.
"Tarnished..."
"The power you hold... that is what makes you worthy of a king."
The giant let out a final sigh before closing his eyes. His vast form collapsed to the ground and slowly dissolved into light.
The old god and king had fallen.
A new god and king had arisen.
If this were a tale of the Lands Between, the story could have ended here. But...
The black fragments began to burn.
As Godfrey's body vanished, Marika's did not follow.
The two remaining dark shards embedded in her body started to react. Unlike the previous ones, these fragments did not draw on the goddess's depleted vessel.
Instead, they detached, rising into the air, glowing faintly before igniting in dark flame.
Yet even together, these broken shards could not form a complete existence—certainly not one stronger than the rest.
So Lloyd lifted his hand and conjured a flame, fusing it into the burning fragments to fill the missing pieces.
The fire blazed brighter. Amid the roaring flames, faint notes of a piano echoed—three simple tones.
Huuu—
From within the inferno emerged an armored old man, crowned and wielding a greatsword engulfed in fire.
[God of the Beginning: Gwyn]
The Sun King—first among the Four Great Lord Souls—master of time and space. The first to throw himself into the First Flame, founder of the Age of Fire.
But something was wrong.
Though resurrected, this was not the charred, skeletal form of the Lord of Cinder, but a complete Gwyn.
Yet the murky aura surrounding him and the hollow emptiness in his eyes revealed that something within was off.
And on his neck—embedded deep—was an unactivated fragment, radiating an energy so foul that even Lloyd felt uneasy.
It was agony made manifest. Despair distilled into form. The echo of a dead world—and within it lingered something faintly familiar...
After a long pause, Lloyd drew his sword.
But just as he lifted his gaze, preparing to face the old king once more, a golden figure appeared beside him.
"Hold your strike."
Alice snapped her fingers. Golden light flared, repairing the fractured space. A golden veil rose between Lloyd and Gwyn, isolating them. With some unseen mechanism, she reversed time—Gwyn's body dissolved back into a swirling black shard, which floated motionless in the air.
"The last battle already destabilized this place," she said flatly. "If you two fight again, the Lands Between might not survive."
"Besides, there's more tied to that being—and this battle itself can still be used. Properly managed, it could serve a greater purpose."
She paused. "I just need some time to prepare."
Lloyd nodded. With Alice intervening, he saw no reason to object.
Casting one final look toward the two floating shards—especially the one that had been behind Gwyn—he lifted his hand. Together, he and Alice sealed both fragments into condensed spacetime for safekeeping.
Then, using the Golden Effigy, he summoned Melina once more. She had departed after the battle, but now returned to carry her mother's broken body away.
Though Marika had seemed powerful in combat, that had been only a brief surge—an afterglow of life ignited by the shards' influence. Once it faded, her body exhausted the last traces of vitality. Death was inevitable.
And that, in truth, was what Lloyd had intended.
To put it simply, he had never revived a goddess before—let alone one with two distinct souls. Repairing Marika had proven troublesome.
But through that fight—brief as it was—he'd seen how she functioned when whole. He'd learned the mechanism of her being, making restoration far easier. And with their prior resonance, her soul would now cooperate with him during the process.
As for Gwyn and the remaining shard...
"I'll create a Dungeon in the meantime," Alice said. "You go gather the other fragments and open more Dungeons."
"When everything's ready, I'll connect them all into a single space—large enough for your next battle. You'll also need ritual materials. Through that fight, we can complete... something."
Lloyd understood immediately.
It was the calm before the final confrontation—the all-collection phase before the end.
He nodded, then left the Erdtree's inner chamber, carrying Marika's remains with him.
Outside, he began her reincarnation.
She had only recently died, and her data was still fresh, so the process went smoothly.
Of course, successful reincarnation didn't mean full recovery.
Suspended for so long and drained from battle, Marika was frail—too weak even to lift her hammer.
But for now, that was enough.
"I thought the Royal Capital had been reduced to ashes..."
After listening to Melina's brief explanation, Marika finally exhaled in relief.
As the one who had given Melina the mission to burn the tree, she knew full well what that entailed. She had long prepared herself for the destruction of the Capital. Hearing that Melina had only burned the Impenetrable Thorns without harming the city itself filled her with unexpected joy.
What she hadn't expected, however, was that something far greater awaited her after that. For example...
"...Godwyn?"
She stared blankly at the vibrant, very-much-alive figure of her eldest son standing before her.
The Night of Black Knives. The prince's death. The Shattering that followed...
In her memory, this child had long been dead—the direct cause of the breaking of the Ring. Yet now...
"Lord Lloyd's doing," Godwyn explained.
It took Marika several long seconds to process his words. When she finally did, she turned toward Lloyd and offered a deeply sincere word of thanks—only for him to raise a hand.
"Not so fast."
As he spoke, two large, horned figures appeared before her.
They were her own sons, and though instinctively she felt a pang of distaste, her joy over Godwyn's return dulled the feeling. She didn't dwell on it—until she heard what the brothers had been up to.
Then her expression changed.
Not because of Mohg.
While the Blood Dynasty's excesses were... extensive, Marika, the Formless Mother, understood the nature of that path. She didn't share it, but she could at least acknowledge it.
Morgott, though...
Even if he acted for the sake of the Golden Order, even if he meant to hold the Capital until his father's return, even if his loyalty was beyond question and his people praised him endlessly—this stubborn, clinging obstinacy... the more she looked, the more it reminded her of someone.
Especially with those heavy horns jutting from his head.
If the "village girl" weren't still weakened, she might've already swung a hammer at him by instinct.
Too damned horned for her liking.
And speaking of horned folk...
"Have you ever heard the name Midra?"
"Midra?" Marika blinked. "The mad sage?"
She remembered him—quite clearly, in fact.
Midra had been one of the reformists among the Hornsent Folk, shunned by his own kind for embracing new technologies. They had shared many ideas back then. Several of the innovations that fueled the founding of the Golden Order Dynasty bore traces of his influence.
Had things progressed smoothly, the end result might not have changed, but Midra could've swayed the less conservative among his people—and perhaps Marika's own hornsent-related trauma might have been a little less severe.
Unfortunately, his reforms escalated too far, too fast.
He'd turned his experiments toward the Frenzied Flame. Marika had been left utterly dumbfounded—thinking, perhaps, he'd gone too far off the deep end. Their contact ended there.
And now...
"Right—Midra."
After summoning Midra and Nanaya, Lloyd stated his intention plainly.
"Regarding the Hornsent after the Shadowlands, I plan to leave the matter to him."
Most of their kind were hopelessly obstinate, but in any race that large, there were always exceptions. Those who left behind the notes of the Great Vessel Master, who rejected the cruelty of Hornsent tradition, who chose to rebel rather than conform.
Lloyd didn't mind annihilating an entire race if it came to it—but if some individuals held value, and saving them cost him nothing, he was willing to extend a hand.
That, however, wasn't what drew Marika's concern.
Despite her deep-seated hornsent trauma, she'd always believed a few good souls existed among them. Even at the end, she'd never truly resolved to lead an extermination against their kind. Lloyd's decision didn't trouble her.
But...
Her gaze drifted past Midra to the figure standing behind him—a woman with her eyes bound in cloth, faint tendrils of frenzied, sickly-yellow energy leaking from beneath.
Marika hesitated. Words rose to her lips... but she didn't speak.
"Um, she's…"
"Nanaya. The Frenzied Flame Witch. She's Midra's wife now. Any objections?"
"No, it's just that... Frenzied Flame, she..."
For a moment, Marika was at a loss for words.
Even for a goddess, the Frenzied Flame was a bit... too much to process.
As she struggled to find the right words, the air shimmered with feverish heat. From the rising blaze of the Frenzied Flame, a woman in a yellow-gold gown appeared. The faint madness in her eyes gave her an inexplicable allure.
"This is Chaos—the incarnation of the Frenzied Flame itself. Not a messenger, but much like you—one who carries the essence of what she represents."
Marika glanced at Chaos, then at Lloyd, then finally turned to Melina, her expression questioning.
Melina gave a small, knowing nod.
Silence lingered for several moments before Marika let out a long sigh.
"Marika above... what in the Lands Between happened while I was gone?"
At that, Lloyd turned toward Melina.
He didn't need to say a word—she already knew what he was asking.
"Well," Melina began, "when she mutters to herself, she often says things like 'Marika above,' or, um, 'By Marika's grace'... or occasionally... less polite versions."
"In her words, the 'Marika' she mentions isn't actually herself, but an abstract cultural phrase. You could replace it with 'Goddess above,' and it'd mean about the same. So she figured—why not say it like everyone else?"
Melina paused, recalling something, then added, deadpan, "Oh, and there's the famous one—'Marika's O-head be with us.' She came up with that one herself. It caught on pretty fast."
Marika's expression froze.
Lloyd barely stopped himself from blurting out a curse. Marika's what now?
After taking a second to process that absurdity, Lloyd remembered something else.
Once Marika finished lamenting, he told her about the Black Knives—and the Numen girls.
When she heard about her own kin and even saw a few of them for herself, everyone present could clearly feel the shift in her gaze toward Lloyd.
Forget that he'd just won the battle—at that point, even if he'd lost, she'd probably have forced him onto the Elden Throne as "punishment."
But the good mood didn't last long.
"Compose yourself," Lloyd said calmly. "There's someone else who's been waiting a long time to meet you. You should prepare yourself."
"Someone else?"
Marika blinked, thinking for a moment before her expression softened.
"Maliketh? I... do owe him an apology."
"No."
Lloyd shook his head, then with a flick of his hand, pulled something—or rather, someone—forth.
A gelatinous pool of flesh.
"It's her."
Everyone froze. Even in the Lands Between, such a bizarre sight was rare.
But—
"She is..."
Marika stared hard at the strange, amorphous girl before her, racking her mind but finding no memory of her.
Still, she could tell one thing—the creature knew her.
Because the moment she saw Marika, the blob visibly flushed crimson, heat radiating from her form. Her body twisted and writhed uncontrollably, emotions flaring like wildfire.
"She's Metyr," Lloyd said. "You should know her."
Marika blinked, stunned—then realization dawned, and she too flushed scarlet.
"You're Metyr? The Mother of Fingers?"
"And you're Marika? The Golden Goddess?"
After confirming each other's identities, these two—one divine, one abominable—both went bright red and immediately started shouting over each other, hurling accusations and complaints about the other's "outrageous conduct."
...
Lloyd quietly turned and walked away.
He'd been tempted to stay and watch the spectacle, but he, too, had someone he needed to meet.
And that person was...
"Long time no see."
He approached the figure with a calm smile.
"Or perhaps... not that long. After all, you've been by my side all along."
"Am I right?"
"Crucible..."
"...Lady?"