A loud clank of armor echoed in what seemed like an infinite void, as if the very air itself had form and mass, bending beneath the pressure of something immense. A man, clad in gleaming obsidian-black armor etched with glowing golden filigree, was hurled through the boundless dark, flung like a broken comet across the chasm of existence. His armored body struck the unseen floor with a deafening crunch, tumbling and skidding as momentum tore at his joints and the ragged edges of his resolve. It was a blow meant to kill. It should have.
But it didn't.
He rose.
Not as a man who had won—yet—but as one who refused to lose. Blood dripped in heavy beads from the jagged seams of his plate, sizzling faintly where it touched the scorched void. With a grunt, he staggered upright, swaying for a moment like a dying flame before catching himself. His fingers closed around a flask—no ordinary container, but a vessel wrought from royal crimson alloy, kissed with divine craftsmanship. Jewels of ancient make pulsed along its neck, as if they still remembered what it meant to contain grace.
He uncorked it with practiced precision, not trembling, not hesitating. One sip. That was all. A single draw from its shimmering essence, and then—his wounds began to close. The miracle was instant and violent. Bones snapped back into alignment, muscle reknit over fractured steel, and torn flesh flushed with stolen vitality. His breath evened. His vision sharpened. He didn't just heal—he reignited. He became something more than wounded, less than invincible. A revenant fueled by defiance.
Then the flask was empty.
Its magic faded, leaving behind only weight and the memory of what had been. There would be no second chance. No more lifelines. Only will. He slid the sacred relic into his satchel, adjusted the grip on his sword until the hilt felt like an extension of his arm, and raised his eyes.
Above him loomed a terror from the stars. A translucent, celestial mass, its form constantly in flux—at times like a whale adrift in a nebula, at others like a god coalescing from smoke and silence. Its body was a canvas of swirling galaxies and luminous golden lines that pulsed like veins. The Elden Beast. A creature born not of life, but of law. A manifestation of divine will, and the last line of defense for the Golden Order.
The final guardian.
The last judgment.
And it was charging its next attack.
Golden light pulsed through its immense form like blood. The Tarnished prepared to dodge—every muscle tensed in anticipation of the usual arc of energy. But then, unpredictably, the beast raised its sword to a sky that wasn't there and loosed a torrent upward into the void. Confusion flashed across his face, but instinct screamed louder than reason. He reached into his pouch and blew the whistle. A burst of ghostly flame erupted beneath him, and his steed, Torrent, materialized. Hooves hit the void with the weight of legend. Without a heartbeat's pause, they launched into motion, zig-zagging across terrain that shifted underfoot. Above, the heavens came undone. It was not a beam—it was an execution. A deluge of golden radiance began to rain in every direction. Massive spears of divine light stabbed downward, illuminating the battlefield in holy fire. An area-wide annihilation. Torrent dodged with elegant desperation, weaving through the radiant onslaught. Each hoofbeat was a gamble. One misstep meant obliteration. The Tarnished clung to the saddle, chest heaving, muscles aching, vision tunneling with fatigue. His essence was nearly spent. His flasks were dry. And yet, in this crucible, he found clarity.
This was the moment. He leaned forward and barked through gritted teeth, "Get ready, Torrent. Full speed ahead."
Torrent responded with a final burst of speed, the void echoing with every thunderous step. As they closed the distance, the Tarnished lifted himself in the saddle. Ahead, the Elden Beast ascended, luminous tendrils coiling inward as it condensed all its fury into one final strike.
But the Tarnished did not wait.
He launched. In a single, seamless motion, he leapt from the saddle and dismissed Torrent with a flick of thought, the steed vanishing into spirit mist mid-air. Now airborne, his sword raised high, every inch of his armor catching the stormlight and casting it back as fire. His battle cry tore through the silence like thunder. Divine light met mortal steel.
Then—
Silence.
Not peace. A void of motion and sound. The kind of pause that holds its breath before creation—or collapse. A second stretched into forever. Impact. The sky shattered. The ground ruptured. A white-gold explosion swallowed the realm, a sun erupting into life and death at once. Light spilled beyond the horizon. The laws of reality bent beneath the weight of the collision. When it faded, he lay broken—motionless, breath ragged. He gasped like a drowning man pulled from a sea of fire. Every nerve screamed. Every muscle begged.
He rose. And saw it. The Elden Beast, fractured, twitching. Then it began to disintegrate, golden mist rising like a fading constellation. One by one, the stars in its body winked out. The divine glow dimmed. And then it was gone. The false sky fell away. The arena unraveled like a dream ending too fast.And he stood alone, back on the altar of the Erdtree.But this time, the silence didn't echo. It endured. Heavy. Eternal.
Something had ended.
And something far stranger had begun.
Silence followed the fall of the Elden Beast.
Its massive corpse shimmered with the fading light of a dead god, golden ichor dissolving into the void, staining the soil of the Erdtree's roots with a radiance that no longer held power. That light—once so revered—now looked sickly, like the final pulse of a heart that had forgotten why it beat. It trembled, thinned by time and torment, the last breath of something once called eternal. The sky above flickered with the remnants of celestial battle, errant streaks of divinity unraveling into stardust, and still, no song of victory came. The Tarnished stood alone beneath the ruin of grace and glory, the shadow of what had once been divinity flickering over him like a dying flame, uncertain if it meant to warm or consume. His chest rose and fell slowly, like a man just remembering how to breathe, as if even that act was uncertain now, unsure whether he was meant to live or simply remain.
The path ahead—a twisted stair of roots leading to the empty throne—waited, silent and terrible in its expectation. It loomed not like a reward, but like judgment carved in bark and blood, daring him to ascend.
And yet, he did not move.
He felt no triumph. No euphoria. Only the weight. Heavy, eternal. Like the sky had collapsed inward and pressed its unseen shape against his bones. The end of a journey did not feel like an ending at all—it felt like the edge of something deeper, darker. A silence not of peace, but of withheld breath. It was not over. Something vast and unseen still stirred beneath his feet, whispering that endings, true endings, were myths crafted by fools who had never tasted consequence.
The air trembled. A strange wind, not cold but invasive, slid across his skin. The earth pulsed beneath his feet, not with celebration, but warning. There was something wrong—deeply, cosmically wrong. Like an eye had opened somewhere below the roots, and it was staring straight into him.
His hand twitched. A tremor, born not of fatigue, but of something more primal. His fingers curled, not of their own volition. Heat gathered low in his gut, slow and patient, like a breath before a scream. A kindling not his own—not yet. Something ancient stirred beneath his skin. Something that had waited for this exact moment, not days or years, but epochs.
It was waking.
He felt it watching.
Just before the first spark of gold-tinged flame rose from the cracks in his knuckles—thin and eager, like a child's first breath—memory struck him. Not soft and nostalgic, but like a blade between the ribs, dragging everything else away with it: the silence, the heat, the throne. Only her remained.
He saw her again. What was it? A past echo? A final flashback? Who can say for certain... but for those who cared to know, it was a memory, anchored deep and immovable. The kind of memory that doesn't fade with time or retreat with pain, but holds its ground, defiant and eternal. In a life rewritten by ash and glory, it was one of the few truths that hadn't withered.
Melina, walking just ahead of him beneath the skeletal canopy of a long-dead tree, their path shrouded in mist and quiet. She moved with wind through ash—measured, constant, always just far enough that he had to watch her, but never so far as to lose her. Cloaked in her quiet sorrow, she was both guide and enigma, a presence felt more than heard. Her footsteps made no sound, yet they carried the weight of fate with each step. She never spoke idly. But the words she did offer were carved into his thoughts like runes into stone. Even now, he could recall the rhythm of her voice, soft yet unwavering, and the way her eyes seemed to see both the world before them and the one that had long since burned away. It wasn't just her presence that haunted him—it was the silence that followed her when she was gone.
"My mother left me a task... to guide the one who would become Elden Lord. I was made for this," she had said, voice calm, almost resigned. Yet beneath it, he had caught something else—pride, or maybe fear. Perhaps both.
He hadn't known what to say. What could he say to a purpose woven into someone's soul since before memory? He still didn't. Even now, as embers clawed at his insides, he remembered that silence.
Everything was going fine—exactly the way it was supposed to. The Tarnished had been fighting for what felt like forever. Days? Weeks? Months? Maybe even years? He couldn't tell anymore. When you're undead and can't die for good, time stops making sense. Every day was the same—fighting enemies, cutting through waves of them, without sleep, without pause. The only way he could tell time passed was through the endless battles. He forgot seasons, the color of the sky, the sound of anything other than swords clashing and monsters roaring. He had become a machine of survival, grinding forward without thought, only purpose. But today was different. Beneath the golden light of the Erdtree, he finally defeated Morgott, the last of the demi-gods. The fight was intense, and it showed. Morgott's body started to rot right there on the battlefield, crumbling apart before it even hit the ground. The air around them felt thick, like it was trying to hold onto what had just happened. The smell of decay mixed with the strange sweetness of golden sap as Morgott's essence began to fade. As his body failed him, Morgott looked at the Tarnished and said his last words: "A Mortal... can not become the lord." Then he died—quietly, like a secret disappearing into the wind. There was no thunder, no sign from the heavens, just the quiet end of a god who once believed he ruled unchallenged.
Now there was nothing left in the way. No enemies, no gods, no doubts. The Tarnished had proven himself. He had made it all the way here. To the Erdtree. To the place he was meant to be. He wasn't just some nameless warrior anymore—he was the one. The one chosen to save the world. The one who endured, who persisted when every step should have broken him. And this was his chance to become Elden Lord and end the suffering that had gone on for so long. The winds around the Erdtree stirred as if sensing the shift. All his trials, all his sacrifices, had led to this moment. And yet, despite the victory, something about Morgott's final words lingered like a warning. He couldn't shake the feeling that fate still had another twist waiting ahead.
He took his steps toward the opening of the Erdtree, where he would be officially crowned as the Elden Lord by the grace of the Golden Order itself. His footsteps were slow but steady, the kind of walk earned only through unthinkable trials. For the first time in what felt like ages, he allowed himself to breathe easier. A sense of peace, unfamiliar and fragile, began to settle in his chest. Countless days, months, maybe even years of relentless struggle had brought him here. All the blood, the pain, the sacrifices—it was finally leading to the reward he had always believed in.
He approached the great thorns that blocked the entrance, towering like nature's own gatekeepers. He reached out and touched them. His fingers brushed the bark, expecting them to respond to his presence, to sense their rightful lord and pull back. The thorns were massive, ancient, and still radiating a faint pulse of golden light. His hand lingered there for a moment longer, hoping, believing. In that instant, he felt something rare: the fading memory of being human. Not a warrior, not a weapon, but a man.
The silence was comforting at first, like the calm before a coronation. He let his eyes wander up the trunk, imagining the histories it had seen, the grace it had dispensed, and the kingdoms it had outlived. This was the tree he had fought so hard to reach. The goal of a thousand fallen heroes. And now, he was here. Ready. Worthy. He took a small step back, watching closely for movement—any sign that the tree recognized its new master.
But it remained still. Unmoving. As if nothing had changed. As if he was still just another fool in armor. And something deep inside him began to twist.but they didn't even flinch.
The Erdtree had rejected the Tarnished. It wasn't supposed to end like this—not after everything. This wasn't how the prophecy was meant to unfold. He hadn't fought through countless battles, crushed every demigod, defied fate, and clawed his way to the peak of the world just to be cast aside by the very force he was promised to command. The rejection wasn't just cruel—it was blasphemous. It mocked the foundation of everything he had believed in. This moment marked not just a failure, but a fracture—the first and last mistake of the Golden Order's divine will. From here began a path the Order had always feared, a future it had done everything to prevent. And now, nothing could stop it.
Melina appeared beside him. Her voice was quiet, touched with sorrow. "I am sorry," she said, looking away. "I didn't tell you the whole truth. I wanted to see if your resolve was strong enough—to see if you truly desired to become Lord, no matter the cost."
She hesitated, then continued, "My mother gave me another purpose. If the Erdtree refused, I was meant to burn away the thorns myself. That was always the hidden task—to make way by fire, should the Tree protest the rise of a new Lord."
Her words didn't sting—they struck like thunder, cracking through what remained of his trust. A part of him had always sensed something was being kept from him, but now that it was confirmed, the silence between them grew heavier than the air before a storm.
Tarnished said in a suspicious but serious tone, "Protest?? Isn't the Erdtree in need of an Elden Lord? Isn't that why grace guided me in the first place? Why would it reject what it supposedly chose?"
Melina caught the doubt rising in his voice, subtle but sharp like a splinter buried deep. She hesitated, her face showing a flicker of something more than discomfort—was it guilt? Or fear? "That isn't something I have an answer to," she replied quietly, her eyes avoiding his.
Tarnished could feel it now—not just doubt, but certainty taking form. Something was off. Too much had gone unsaid for too long. "You speak of your mother," he continued, stepping closer, his tone gaining a rare firmness. "In all our years of traveling together, you've never told me who she is. Why? Why have you never even mentioned her name?"
Melina looked truly uneasy now, more than she ever had on the battlefield. It wasn't that she didn't want him to ask—perhaps she had been waiting for it—but the timing was cruel. This wasn't a moment for secrets, and yet secrets were all she had. Tarnished wasn't asking out of curiosity anymore; he was demanding truth. The weight of destiny pressed between them like a wall.
"That is something I can't tell you," she said at last, her voice barely above a whisper. "Forgive me. It's an old oath. One I am still bound to keep, even now."
Her refusal hit like a closed door in a burning house. He felt trapped by silence, but pushing further would only lead to more deflection. For now, there was no gain in pressure. The fire in his heart burned hotter, but it was a controlled flame. With a deep sigh, his voice softened, laced with weariness.
"Alright... I understand. Then tell me—what do we do now? What path lies ahead of us, if the one we followed leads only to rejection and riddles?"Melina tell tarnished about the Mountain-top of giants and the flame of the fire giant. the flame which can burn even the thorns of erd tree. Tarnished stood up and with that started following the way melin told him to finally arrive in sealed corner of Lyndell, The Forbidden Courtyard. Tarnished navigated to the far end of the courtyard, his boots crunching softly against frostbitten stone, until he found himself at the base of a towering, snowy mountain. The path ahead was blanketed in thick, swirling mist that danced like spirits over the cliffside. The trail was dangerously narrow, bordered on both sides by sheer drops that vanished into an abyss of cloud and shadow. One wrong step meant certain death. Walking this alone on foot would be a death sentence.
He reached into his pouch and blew into his reed whistle. From a burst of shimmering blue light, Torrent emerged—his trusted spectral steed, his only constant in a world that shifted like dreams and nightmares. Torrent was no ordinary mount. He was one of a kind—an echo of ancient loyalty and mystical resilience. For a lesser steed, the mountain path would've been a challenge, but for Torrent, it was merely terrain. The air may have been thin, and the rocks unstable, but Torrent moved with silent confidence, guided by instinct alone. The wind howled and the cliffs creaked, yet together they pressed onward.
The hours slipped by as they climbed steadily higher. Frost gathered on Tarnished's armor. Even the birds had fled this place. Eventually, they reached a landing nestled against the slope, where an ancient staircase jutted from the snow like broken teeth. The stairs were covered in frost and centuries of stillness, leading to a massive circular platform carved from blackstone, half-buried under layers of ice. Tarnished dismounted, patting Torrent once on the side in silent thanks, and with a shimmer, the steed vanished into spectral mist.
Tarnished stepped onto the platform, heart pounding slightly from the altitude or the anticipation—he wasn't sure. This was it. The very place Melina had spoken of. The Grand Lift of Rold. Towering pillars lined the edge of the platform, and at its center lay a worn pedestal with ancient etchings. He reached into his satchel and pulled forth the medallion—the twin halves reunited—and held it high. The ground began to tremble.
With a roar of awakening gears, the great lift stirred. Dust scattered as ancient mechanisms shuddered to life, and the massive stone platform began to rise. Slowly at first, then faster, lifting Tarnished high above the mists and ruins, toward the Mountain Top of Giants. Toward the flame. Toward the truth.
As Tarnished took his first step into the snow, a sharp chill met him like a wall. The wind carried whispers, and the air was laced with a dense, ghostlike fog that curled around his feet and blurred the mountain's shape. The mist was thicker than any he had faced before, clinging to every surface, masking ledges, hiding dangers. He tightened his grip on his sword as the silence around him deepened, unnatural and heavy.
With the help of his ever-loyal companion, Torrent, he moved forward cautiously. The spectral steed's hooves crunched the frozen ground with purpose, its spirit-born instincts guiding them through the treacherous path ahead. The trail narrowed quickly, leaving little room for error. Both sides of the path dropped into sheer cliffs vanishing into clouded abyss, and the snowy ledges crumbled at their edges with every passing step.
They pressed on until, through the swirling fog, a crumbling stone bridge emerged—narrow, fractured by time, and dangling like a lifeline between two realms. It led toward the true base of the mountain, where the climb would truly begin. The bridge groaned beneath Torrent's weight as they began to cross, each step echoing into the depths below.
Then the sound came—a low thud in the distance, then another, and another. Before he could fully register it, the sky split with the screaming descent of arrows the size of ballista bolts. Stone Titan Arrows. Ancient and monstrous in scale, they came hurtling from an unseen enemy perched somewhere high above the cliffs. One direct hit would mean instant death—not by the arrow itself, but by the fall it would bring.
Tarnished weaved and guided Torrent between impacts, the wind of each near-miss screaming past his armor. Snow and stone flew into the air as the bridge splintered behind him. There was no time to think—only react. He rode like a shadow of lightning, muscle and reflex blending into motion. Finally, after a final desperate surge, they reached the other side.
Breathless, he dismounted. The silence returned, punctuated only by the crackle of frost. He had survived. Barely. But the mountain wasn't done with him yet. There he found the grace, glowing faintly beneath a brittle frost. He sat down beside it, the warmth of its aura thawing the cold in his bones. The ache in his limbs lessened, though the weight in his chest remained. Melina joined him, appearing as she always did—soft-footed, quiet-eyed, and marked with a presence that never asked for attention, yet always commanded it. As the wind whispered across the icy plateau, she spoke of the Mountaintop's forgotten history—of ancient battles and sealed gods, of the giants who once ruled and the fire they kept buried. Her voice carried fragments of loss, not just for the land, but for what had been lost in the shaping of it.
Tarnished listened, though part of him already knew the truth. This place wasn't just a waypoint. It was a threshold—a passage into something far worse than war. The stories told here were not warnings. They were premonitions. The cold was not just weather, it was omen.
What lay ahead was not just dangerous—it was inevitable. And the dread that had long stalked the edges of his thoughts now stepped into the open.
Things really were as bad as he had feared—worse, even. And whether by fate or choice, the moment he'd been running toward—and perhaps running from—was now upon him.
Destiny wasn't coming.
It had arrived.
That was before the Forge. Before they stood on the threshold of fire. Before choice twisted fate into a shape he could barely recognize. Before the madness began to murmur.
They had crossed lands no man was meant to endure. Frozen peaks where the wind howled like wolves, dungeons swallowed by Rot, graveyards where even Death itself had forgotten the names of the dead. He remembered her hand steadying him once on the Haligtree's branches, when his foot had slipped. He remembered the rare flicker of a smile she gave him when he refused to kill a merchant cursed into madness. He remembered how she never said what she felt, and how, in her silence, he began to understand it anyway.
And yet, for all the closeness carved from fire and fury, the true distance began the moment he met Shabriri.
The mad prophet had appeared like a wound splitting open the world, his voice oozing like tar, smooth and toxic. It was at the worst moment—when doubt had already begun to root itself inside the Tarnished like a splinter. And he had listened, not because he believed, but because something inside him needed to hear what was offered.
"You love her, don't you?" Shabriri had crooned, voice like oil poured over flame. "You are about to sacrifice something precious.The life of a fair maiden,that you would toss into the fiery forge.Only so that you may be Lord.What a horrible thing to ponder.Your ascendency requires her sacrifice,whether she wishes it or not.But how would the Lord, crowned so, be looked upon?"
Tarnished was no fool. He had been steeped in the musk and gore of countless battles, his blade having tasted the blood of demigods, monsters, champions, and tyrants. He had not survived all this by being gullible or easily swayed. His mind was battle-hardened as much as his flesh, his instincts honed by pain and betrayal. He knew the scent of manipulation when it drifted close—and Shabriri reeked of it. The words, though dressed in poetry and conviction, dripped with venom.
He narrowed his eyes at the mad prophet. He was not deaf to doubt, nor immune to temptation, but the thought of yielding to a force like this churned his gut. No. Not yet. Not with Melina's fading image still lingering behind his eyes.
He turned without a word, muscles tense, ready to leave.
He would walk away. He should walk away. "Chosen Tarnished and would-be Lord, dare to tread the path of true rigor." said Shabriri.
"Spare the poor girl, and singe your own flesh in her stead."
"If you are prepared to show resolveand attain Lordship through righteous hardship,then heed the words of I, Shabriri."
Madness doesn't scream at first. It whispers. It coils itself around the soul with the gentleness of a lullaby, offering not fear, but comfort. It finds the cracks in logic, the wounds in memory, and seeps in like water through stone—quiet, patient, inevitable. It offers freedom draped in goldfire, convincing the listener that sacrifice is mercy, that burning is cleansing.
He had listened. Not with blind trust, but with the desperation of a man who had seen too much death and carried too much guilt. He listened the way one listens to the soft voice of a ghost—both fearing and needing what it might say.