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"Alex, how do I attune a miracle?" Naruto held up the parchment, turning it over in his hands. The symbol on it sat above a block of text, dense and small.
"First, do not call me Alex." Alexander did not look up. "Second, I do not know the mechanics of attunement personally. What I know is that you sit at a bonfire, place your hand on the parchment, and if you have the capacity to use it, the miracle attunes. That is the extent of my knowledge."
"That sounds completely made up. How does sitting next to a fire and touching paper give you the power of the gods."
"If you want a theological explanation, Petrus is still upstairs."
"Ugh. Fine. I will try it out." Naruto sat down cross legged in front of the fire and placed his palm flat against the symbol.
And Firelink Shrine disappeared.
The darkness that replaced it was not the darkness of a room with no light. It was the darkness of a space with no edges, extending in every direction without boundary, floor, or ceiling.
Naruto floated in it without falling, which should have been alarming and somehow was not.
In front of him, drawn in red light, the fireball sigil turned slowly.
A tight central spiral uncoiling outward into three asymmetric tendrils, each one curling at the tip like a candle flame caught in wind. The longer he looked at it the more he could see the fireball contained within it.
I guess that the attuned fireball spell. Which meant the Force parchment worked the same way.
Naruto raised his hand toward the dark and tried to will the symbol into existence in front of him the way the fireball one had appeared.
Nothing.
He pushed chakra toward it.
Nothing.
He made a hand seal at it.
Still nothing.
"What am I supposed to do?"
The darkness did not answer.
He thought about it for a moment and then remembered that the symbol had not been the only thing on the parchment. He had almost skipped past the text entirely because the sigil had caught his eye first.
There had been a story.
A nameless cleric knight on a battlefield. The enemy line was too dense to break with steel. Rather than retreat, he had prayed. For the air itself to push back on his behalf. The gods answered with a single divine breath exhaled outward from the knight's chest the moment before impact. The line broke without a single wound dealt. Men flew. Arrows stopped. The knight walked through the space where the enemy had been, blade still clean.
Naruto began to speak it into the dark.
The Force sigil assembled itself ring by ring as he went. Each concentric circle expanding outward from the center point, the short radial lines filling the gaps between them, until the whole symbol held still in front of him, white and complete.
[You have attuned the Force miracle.]
"Kid."
Firelink Shrine came back around him all at once.
"What happened?"
"Naruto. You went completely still. What happened?"
"I did it." Naruto got to his feet and raised the talisman above his head. "Force miracle."
Silence followed by the distant caws of the giant crow.
"That absolute swindler." Naruto turned toward the stairs with genuine forward momentum. "Petrus sold me a broken spell. I am going back up there right now and I am getting every single soul back and then I am going to..."
"The prayer," Alexander said. "The last lines of the parchment. You need to say them."
Naruto stopped and found the words at the bottom of the story in a language he had never learned and somehow already knew.
"Oratio Vis.
Via mihi detur,
Frange quod obstat.
Non ut occidam,
Sed ut transeam."
The shockwave left the talisman in a clean white dome, expanding outward across the stone floor of Firelink Shrine.
"Yatta! I performed a miracle. Dattebayo!"
Naruto ran a full lap around the bonfire with his fist in the air, his cheers bouncing off the stone walls of Firelink Shrine, filling the rot and silence of the place with something it had not had in a long time.
Alexander watched him finish the lap and sat back down.
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"What are you doing now?" Alexander said, fully expecting the boy to finally pick up his things and leave for the journey of becoming the Chosen Undead.
Nope.
Naruto was doing pushups in full armor.
"One hundred pushups, one hundred sit ups, one hundred squats, and a ten kilometer run," Naruto said without breaking rhythm.
"How are you going to run ten kilometers here?"
"Run circles or back and forth on the stairs until I hit the equivalent distance." The squire finished the last pushup and stood up, picking up the Zweihander. Naruto was holding it across his shoulders for the squats. The added weight made each rep considerably more unpleasant than it had any right to be and he did them anyway.
Across the shrine, a row of shadow clones sat in a line reciting something in low rapid voices, over and over.
"What are they doing," Alexander said.
"Miracle training. My clones pass muscle memory back to me when they dispel. If they can recite the Force prayer fast enough, I learn how fast I can recite it, which means I can use the miracle faster in a real fight." Naruto finished his squats and moved into sit ups. "Efficiency."
"Right."
The noise level in Firelink Shrine had reached a point that Alexander found genuinely difficult to ignore. Pushup counts, clone voices cycling through the Oratio Vis in overlapping waves, and the clank of armor on stone. He could not tell Naruto to take it somewhere else because everywhere else in Lordran would attempt to kill him, which left Alexander with limited options.
He stood up.
"Alright, brat. I want to join in on the fun. Anything I can help you with?"
Naruto looked up mid sit up. "Can you also teach me the sword properly? Oscar did not have time to cover much."
"What do you already know?"
"Basic grips. Footwork. Some cuts."
"How many clones can you make?"
"As many as you need."
Alexander picked up his straight sword and rolled his shoulder once. "Give me a hundred. Send them to the flooded hallway in the church. I will teach them there and you will get the memory when they dispel."
He looked at Naruto directly.
"Grip first. Then stance. Then how to receive a blow without losing your footing. Then how weight distribution changes when your opponent is larger than you or smaller. Then cutting angles, thrust lines, the difference between a committed strike and a probing one, how to read which one is coming before it arrives, how to create openings rather than wait for them, and how to fight when you are tired, hurt, your technique has fallen apart and all you have left is the decision to keep going."
"SIR, YES, SIR!"
The hundred clones formed and moved toward the church hallway in a stream of yellow. Alexander followed them without ceremony.
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Time moved differently after that.
The physical training ran alongside the sword work without pause. Naruto cycled through the workout, healed at the bonfire, and went again.
His body was getting stronger with each cycle.
Yet not in any way the system was registering. Which he figured out soon enough with Alexander's help. A stat increase was a sudden jump rather than a slow climb. Before his strength had hit sixteen he had needed chakra just to lift the Zweihander off the ground. Now he could swing it clean without any reinforcement, and with chakra the blade moved like it weighed nothing at all.
He could just hunt for souls and level up again.
But stats and physical training were not the same thing. A stat increase gave his body the capacity. The physical training taught his body to use that capacity consistently, efficiently, and without thinking about it. Strength seventeen might let him swing the Zweihander faster. But if his shoulders, core, and footwork had not caught up to what seventeen actually demanded, the number meant less than it should.
Stats built the ceiling. The training built everything underneath it.
Meanwhile the clones were dispelling in steady waves. When Alexander decided the foundation was sufficient he called Naruto over directly.
"We spar," he said. "Straight sword against the Zweihander. Do not try to be impressive. Just apply what came back to you."
Naruto drew the Zweihander with both hands and set his stance. Alexander raised his straight sword in a single hand and came forward without announcement.
The crestfallen's blade went over Naruto's guard with a simple angle change that the Zweihander's width could not track quickly enough. The flat of it tapped Naruto across the shoulder hard enough to stagger him sideways.
"Your guard is too wide," Alexander said, resetting. "The Zweihander gives you reach and power. It does not give you coverage. A narrow blade will always find the gaps if you hold it like a gate."
Naruto adjusted and came forward this time.
Better. He used the Zweihander's length to keep Alexander at distance, making probing cuts that were more about controlling space than landing hits. Alexander tested the guard twice, found it tighter, and stepped inside the fifth cut instead, closing the distance where the greatsword became a liability.
Up close the straight sword was faster than Naruto could manage and he took a cut across the forearm before the boy managed to create space with a shove.
"Inside distance," Alexander said. "Your weapon needs room to work. If I close the gap your strength advantage and reach advantage both disappear. And I am faster than you at close range. Keep me out or get out yourself. There is no third option."
They went again.
This time when Alexander stepped inside Naruto dropped his weight and turned his shoulder into the man's chest to buy space the blade could not.
"Better," Alexander said, and came again immediately before the word had finished landing.
The next few hours looked like that.
Naruto taking hits he had not anticipated, adjusting and taking different hits while adjusting again. Each time Alexander waited without commentary until the young squire picked the sword back up.
Then they continued.
By the end Naruto was breathing hard. His arms were heavy with the accumulated weight of the Zweihander and the armor together. Alexander sat across from him, breathing evenly. A single mark on his shoulder where one of Naruto's better cuts had found something to work with.
"You are still learning," Alexander said. "But you are learning correctly. There is a difference between a student who learns from being hit and one who only learns from hitting. You are the first kind." He paused. "That will matter more than the Zweihander does."
"Same time next visit?"
"Lordran is the best teacher you will ever have," Alexander said, looking at the bonfire. "Every hollow, every trap, and every corner of these rotting lands will teach you something I cannot. I can show you how to hold a sword. Lordran will show you what happens when you hold it wrong at the wrong moment. There is a difference between learning and surviving. Only one of them sticks."
"But if I need training tips or a spar."
The Crestfallen Warrior nodded once.
Naruto reached into his inventory and pulled out his Estus Flask, turning it upside down. Empty. "Last question. How do I refill this."
"Place it in front of a bonfire. It fills on its own."
"That sounds simple but I feel like there is more happening than that."
"Probably, but I do not care enough to investigate."
The crestfallen warrior reached into his belt and produced his Estus Flask, setting it on the stone beside Naruto's without ceremony.
[You have obtained Estus Flask x10.]
Naruto stared at the message. He could sip from an Estus five times per flask. Ten meant two flasks combined which meant... "You're giving this to me?"
"I have no intention of using it. Out there it may save your life, which is a more productive outcome than sitting on my person that will not leave the safety of this shrine."
"But what if you want to go on your own journey someday."
"If that ever happens, which I consider unlikely, I will take one from the numerous hollow wandering Lordran. They have no use for them." Alexander looked at the flask. "It is fine."
Naruto took it slowly, like he was still deciding whether to argue about it. Then he stored it away. "Where do these flasks even come from? Why do random hollows have them?"
"The Firekeeper creates them and gifts them to the Undead." Alexander's voice dropped slightly. "Unfortunately most of those Undead eventually go hollow. The flask remains. The person does not." He was quiet for a moment. "I feel myself moving in that direction. Slowly. But moving."
Naruto looked at Alexander for a long moment as his mind flashed through Oscar's last moments.
"Promise me something."
"What."
"Promise me you will not go hollow." Naruto met his eyes directly. "Do that and I will give you the food of the gods."
The Crestfallen Warrior almost laughed. But the look on Naruto's face stopped him. He found fear underneath the sincerity, the particular desperation of someone who had already lost people and recognized the feeling of being about to lose another.
"I promise," Alexander said.
Naruto produced a noodle cup from his inventory. Sealed on top, compact, with dried noodles visible through the thin paper. This was for Oscar but he did not mind giving it to Alexander instead.
"That is the food of the gods?"
"Try it before you judge."
Naruto boiled water with the bonfire and a pot then poured it carefully into the cup and sealed the top to let it steep.
After two minutes he handed it across.
Alexander lifted the cup and drank. He stopped. He looked at the cup again with the expression of a man recalibrating something fundamental. He drank again, slower this time, letting it sit on his tongue before swallowing.
"This is remarkable," he said quietly. "I have eaten many things in many places and I have never tasted anything like this." He looked at Naruto. "If this is what not going hollow costs then that is a motivation I can work with."
Naruto gave him a grin full of teeth. He reached into his inventory and produced the Homeward Bone. "Anyway. This was fun. But I have to go back. Cannot keep Team Seven waiting forever." He paused. "How do I use this?"
"Break it while holding the place you want to return to in your mind."
Naruto closed his fingers around the bone and thought of Ichiraku ramen.
He snapped the bone.
The light took him all at once and then Firelink Shrine was empty again except for the bonfire and the man sitting beside it, holding a paper cup of ramen that was still warm.
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The silence settled into Firelink Shrine. Alexander sat beside the bonfire and waited for the noise to come back.
It didn't.
Minutes passed. Then hours. Then what passed for days in a place where the sky never changed and the difference between morning and night was something you had to remember rather than feel. Lordran had broken its own cycle long ago and the consequence was a permanent grey noon that pressed down on everything underneath it without relief. Alexander had learned to sleep by exhaustion rather than darkness. He had learned to eat when he remembered to rather than when hunger told him to, because hunger in this place followed its own schedule and could not be trusted.
He had learned to exist in the particular way that Firelink Shrine demanded, which was quietly and without expectation.
The problem was that the boy had filled the shrine with noise for an entire day. Now the absence of it had a shape and a weight that had not been there before.
He was alone.
He had been alone before Naruto arrived and he had been functional. He would be functional again. That was simply the arithmetic of it. He sat beside the bonfire and watched the flame and did not think about the cup of ramen that had tasted like a world where things were still worth doing.
He did not think about it for quite some time.
The days that followed had the texture of the days before. He sat. He watched the hollow wander the edges of the shrine without enough purpose left to approach the fire. He checked his equipment out of habit rather than necessity. He considered the paths leading upward and downward but remained where he was.
He was not going hollow.
He had made a promise.
But the space between not going hollow and feeling human was considerable. And he was somewhere in the middle of it, closer to one end than he wanted to be. The only thing that had recently moved him in the right direction was a strange boy from another world.
Suddenly the bonfire went out.
The flame collapsed inward as though it had been closed in a fist. A barrier was forming. Alexander could see it at the edges of the shrine.
He was being invaded.
In response he drew his sword and brought his shield up.
White apparitions were rising from the ground at multiple points around him, solidifying into figures, each one armored in the manner of the Way of White. And at the center of them, walking forward with the broad faced composure, was Petrus of Thorolund.
"I did warn you," Petrus said pleasantly.
Alexander said nothing.
"You are a dangerous Undead who has committed blasphemy against the gods and their servants." Petrus gestured at the figures around him with comfortable authority. "An Undead hunt has been sanctioned. This is not personal, I assure you. It is simply work."
Alexander looked around the circle. Six clerics with Petrus at the center. The barrier trapped him in the shrine with no Estus Flask. He brought his shield up and banged the flat of his sword against it once, hard, the sound ringing out across the dead shrine.
The situation brought something back into his eyes, sharp, present, and dangerous.
Petrus noticed.
"My," the cleric said, tilting his head. "I was beginning to think you were already halfway hollow. That boy must have done something to you." He raised his mace. "Don't worry. I'll find him eventually. Clean up what you started."
Alexander let the anger carry him forward. Petrus swung the mace in a wide arc.
The parry caught the mace on the inside of its arc. A short sharp redirect that sent the head of it wide into empty air and left Petrus momentarily open.
Alexander's sword came across in a tight horizontal snap, the edge catching the side of Petrus's skull just above the ear. Suddenly the Force miracle hit Alexander from the left, stopping him from splitting Petrus's skull open.
The shockwave broke the crestfallen warrior's poise, his limbs locking in the brief terrible stun.
The clerics read the opening and moved.
Suddenly the ground stopped them.
An eye opened in the stone beneath their feet. Every figure in the shrine went still as a blue apparition rose slowly from the earth at the center of the space. It resolved into a bald man in black leather armor. A long spear in one hand and a greatshield with an eagle crest in the other hand.
Petrus took one step backward.
"Patches the Hyena. What business do you have here."
Patches looked around the circle of clerics with the easy expression of a man taking inventory.
"Oi, well." He tilted his head. "Six holy people of the cloth surrounding one warrior. I'll be honest with you, my friends, that's not a very good look. Believe me on this one. Greed is a sin. Your own texts will tell you the same, and I would know, I've sat through enough sermons." He looked at Petrus directly. "Did I not tell you, last time we spoke, to be less greedy in this life? Heh heh heh."
"This man is an enemy of the gods," Petrus said, recovering his authority. "Patches the Hyena, are you prepared to be judged under the light of Allfather Lloyd alongside him."
Patches scratched his chin thoughtfully, as though genuinely considering the offer.
"The gods are selfish bastards hanging on to whatever power they've got left in this dying age. If they want to judge me they're welcome to come down here personally and have a go. I'll be right here. Nyah hah hah." He planted his spear. "I'm not going anywhere."
"Friend or foe," Alexander asked.
"Neither, strictly speaking, mate." Patches settled his greatshield. "But an enemy of my enemy is a fine place to start, isn't it. And I do hate watching clerics be greedy. It offends me on a personal level." He glanced sideways at Alexander with a cheerful expression. "Try not to die. I'd hate to have to loot your corpse. You seem decent enough. Heh heh heh."
Alexander said nothing and rushed the Way of White together with Patches coming from the side.
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Author's Note: Yes, yes, I know. Boo me for the cliffhanger. Now let's get to the Q and A.
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Q: Can you explain the magic system as written in this fic?
Before I get into this I want to be upfront that most of what appears in this chapter is my own fanfic expansion of Dark Souls' magic system. The game itself gives us mechanics but very little explanation for how any of it actually works in lore.
In the game the system borrows heavily from the Dungeons and Dragons framework, where magic operates through spell slots. You have a limited number of attunement slots determined by your stats. Each slot holds one spell, and using the spell consumes one of your available casts for that rest period.
So here is how I built it out.
The core rule stays the same as in game. You need the stats, you attune the spell, and then you can use it.
That foundation from the game does not change.
But the how of the magic system works is mine.
Sitting at a bonfire connects you to your own soul in a way that normal waking consciousness does not. The bonfire is essentially a threshold between the physical and the soul, which is why it is also where you level up and where your Darksign draws you when you die.
I used that existing lore to justify the idea that attunement happens at the level of the soul itself. You are not memorizing a spell. You are inscribing its symbol into your own soul, making it part of you, so that when you reach for it the connection is already there.
For miracles specifically, the symbol alone is not enough.
Miracles in Dark Souls lore operate on the principle that they are stories. And that the power of belief is what makes a story capable of affecting reality. The miracle does not come from a god handing you something. It comes from you genuinely believing in the tale hard enough that your soul bends the world to match it.
The symbol is the shape of the miracle.
The story is the belief that makes the shape mean something.
And the prayer is the act of reaching toward the divine, the moment of genuine faith that closes the circuit.
The prayer Naruto recites is in Latin, in case anyone missed that.
Oratio Vis
Via mihi detur,
Frange quod obstat.
Non ut occidam,
Sed ut transeam.
Which translates as:
A prayer of force.
Let a way be given to me.
Break what stands in the way.
Not to kill,
But to pass through.
I chose Latin deliberately because it carries the weight of a liturgical tradition without belonging to any specific religion in the fic, and because the grammar of it forces a certain slowness and intentionality that felt right for the act of prayer.
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That's It… For Now.
I want to thank you all for taking the time to read, comment, and follow along with this story. Your feedback means more than you know, and it helps push me to make each chapter bigger, sharper, and more true to the worlds of Naruto and Dark Souls.
Until next time,
Praise the Sun.
\-Adam-/