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The Firelink Shrine was hauntingly beautiful.
Crumbling stone archways and pillars draped in moss and vines, concentric rings of stone surrounding the bonfire at its center. A dead gnarled tree stretched up toward a misty sky where pale blue light filtered through in shifting rays.
A man sat near the bonfire.
Full suit of dull chainmail. Short black hair. An expression that communicated clearly that he had seen everything the world had to offer and had arrived at the conclusion that none of it was particularly worth the effort. He did not look up when Naruto arrived. Just sat there with a hollow, broken stillness.
"Yo."
Naruto hoped for friendly. After everything, seeing an actual human being was almost comforting enough to overlook the dead expression.
"Well, what do we have here? You must be a new arrival." The man still had not looked up. "Let me guess. Fate of the Undead, right? Well, you are not the first. But there is no salvation here. You would have done better to rot in the Undead Asylum." A pause. "But too late now."
"Geez," Naruto muttered to himself. "Real ray of sunshine."
Still, he managed a crooked grin and raised a fist into the air, more tired than triumphant. "Well, the Undead Asylum has been conquered. Dattebayo."
Something shifted in the man's face. Gone before Naruto could read it, replaced by the same hollow expression. "Oh? So you defeated the Asylum Demon."
Something in his tone suggested he found this mildly amusing lie.
"Yep."
"Kekekeke."
"Laugh it up. It is the truth."
"Sure it is, boy," the man said, still chuckling to himself. "No Undead has ever managed to kill that thing. Either you die, or you escape. Those are your only two options."
Naruto bit his tongue so hard he tasted blood.
Precept the Fourth, he reminded himself. Show virtue of patience, humility, and honor through your actions.
He took a breath.
"Whatever. Can you at least tell me where the Bell of Awakening is?"
"There are actually two Bells of Awakening. One is up above, in the Undead Church. The other is far, far below, in the ruins at the base of Blighttown. Ring them both and something happens." The crestfallen warrior gave Naruto a mocking smile. "Brilliant, right? Not much to go on. But I have a feeling that will not stop you. So off you go. It is why you came, is it not? To this accursed land of the Undead? Hah hah hah hah."
"Prick," Naruto muttered under his breath.
All he wanted, right now, was to go home. To sit at Ichiraku's with both elbows on the counter and eat ramen until Teuchi told him he had had enough, which had never once actually happened. To take a warm bubble bath. To sleep in his own bed.
Let's go back for now.
He made the decision quietly and turned back toward the crestfallen warrior.
"My name is Naruto Uzumaki."
"An Undead that actually has a name. In these parts, a name means nothing."
"Yeah, yeah, whatever."
Naruto swung into palm in a hammer motion. "I am going to call you Older Emo."
Blank stare.
Then back to the ground.
Wow, Naruto thought, genuinely impressed. This guy is even more emo than Sasuke. How did I end up talking to someone more depressing than Sasuke.
He shook his head and let his mind drift back to the actual problem.
Getting home.
The last time he had gone back to Konoha, how had that worked?
The Asylum Demon killed me. And then I woke up in Konoha.
He turned that over carefully.
Maybe that is the trick.
The thought sat in his stomach in a way he did not entirely like.
"Alexander."
Naruto nearly jumped out of his armor. "What?"
"You do not have to wait for my name," Alexander said. "It is Alexander. I have long since abandoned it alongside everything else. I am but a Crestfallen Warrior."
Part of him was relieved to finally have a name to put to the face. Another part recognized the particular sound of someone opening a door they had been keeping shut for a very long time and immediately regretting it.
"Now leave me alone."
There it was.
This is my problem with emos, Naruto thought while walking away. One second they crack open and the next they act like the whole world revolves around their misery.
He returned to the problem at hand.
Do I really have to die to go home?
He stood there with that thought for a moment longer than was comfortable.
Oscar had told him that dying stripped away memories. That each death chipped away at who you were until nothing remained but a hollow shell. But Naruto had died in Lordran and woken up in Konoha with every memory intact. Which meant either the rules worked differently for him, or something about being sent back to Konoha rather than to a bonfire was interrupting the process before it could take anything.
Or maybe I need to die a certain number of times before it starts taking effect.
He did not know.
He stood at the edge of Firelink Shrine and looked out at what lay beyond it, the dead kingdom sprawling below.
Now what do I do?
He already knew the answer.
He looked down at the drop below the cliff edge, unequipped his armor and jumped.
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Defeated the Asylum Demon, Alexander thought, staring at the bonfire. What a joke.
Nobody beat that monster. You died, or you ran. Those were the options available to Undead in the Northern Asylum, and everyone who had ever passed through Firelink on their way to whatever pointless end awaited them had confirmed it one way or another.
So why could he not dismiss it?
The warrior heard running, causing him to look up. His brain, which had long since stopped being surprised by anything Lordran produced, went completely blank at the boy's suicide attempt.
Maybe going hollow really is better than the hell that waits out here. Maybe I should do it too.
But he was too much of a coward to act on it. Too much of a coward to die and too much of a coward to live properly either.
He looked back at the bonfire.
And waited.
Waited for the inevitable rush of essence reforming, the Darksign pulling another Undead back from the edge of finality and depositing them at the nearest bonfire whether they wanted it or not.
It was their curse.
Death, rebirth and another piece scraped away each time until the loop was all that remained.
Yet the boy did not respawn.
Alexander frowned as a minute passed. Then another. The flames gave no indication that it had received anything at all from the cliff below. Something uneasy stirred in his chest, which surprised him because he had assumed that particular capacity had been scraped away some time ago.
"Why is he not respawning?"
Then he felt it.
A surge of souls at the cliff edge. Larger than it should have been for a mere child. The crestfallen warrior's eyes widened at the colour of the soul drop.
Green.
Not the pale yellow of a common Undead's soul.
Alexander had heard about green soul drops once. In stories about souls from other worlds that were called to Lordran's lands. The warrior had dismissed it as the kind of thing people invented to make the darkness feel more interesting. The size of the soul drop told a different story.
The kid was telling the truth. He actually killed the Asylum Demon. And he actually is from another world.
"Wow, guess I have seen it all now."
And the brat has absolutely no idea what a soul drop is or what will happen if something else absorbs it before he comes back.
The hollow at the far cliff had already turned toward the green glow like moths to a flame.
Alexander cut it down with a single swing.
Another came from the left. A third emerged from the shadows near the broken wall and he dealt with those too. He stood his ground over the green soul drop and waited.
Great, Alexander thought, bisecting a hollow that had gotten too close to the green glow. Now I am a soul drop guardian. This is what my existence has been reduced to.
Another hollow. He cut it down.
If something absorbs that drop before the boy comes back, whatever it becomes is going to be my problem. My problem, because a stupid child did not go to the firekeeper to absorb his soul.
Alexander shoved a hollow off the ledge with his shield.
Brat. You owe me for this.
Yet as he cut down another hollow he noticed his breathing had changed.
The battlefield had always been the one place where the hollow weight behind his eyes went quiet and left only the present moment, only the next hollow, only the dance.
Alexander was here because an empowered hollow would be his problem.
That was all this was.
But as he blocked a hollow, there was a quiet gratitude sitting in his chest for a strange boy in armor who had accidentally reminded him of his humanity.
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Author Note: This was a quieter chapter than the last two, but I think it did a lot of necessary groundwork. Relationships are being established, mysteries are being layered, and pieces are being put in place that are going to matter considerably later. I hope it landed the way I intended.
Onto the Q&A.
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Q: Naruto spent three days traveling to Firelink Shrine but only one day passed in Konoha. Was that a mistake?
That was completely intentional.
There is a time dilation between Lordran and Konoha. The ratio is three to one. Three hours in Lordran equals one hour in Konoha. This applies in both directions.
I built this in deliberately because without it the two storylines would create a logistical nightmare. Lordran is a massive world with enormous distances between locations and a lot of things that need to happen before Naruto can move through it meaningfully. If time moved at the same rate in both worlds I would either have to rush through Lordran to keep pace with the Naruto timeline or stretch the Konoha side so thin it became filler.
The dilation solves that problem cleanly. Naruto can spend days in Lordran accomplishing things while only hours pass in Konoha. Both storylines get the breathing room they need to develop properly.
It also opens up some interesting narrative possibilities down the line that I am not going to spoil here.
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Q: What is the green soul drop? Is that in the game?
Sort of. It is my own addition to the lore but it is directly inspired by a game mechanic.
In Dark Souls, when you die you leave your accumulated souls behind at the point of death as a green smear on the ground. You can retrieve them by returning to that spot before you die again. Lose them a second time and they are gone permanently.
That green smear is where the idea came from.
In this story, soul drops manifest as visible orbs of light rather than a smear, and their color indicates their origin. Every Undead in Lordran produces a yellow soul drop when they die.
Naruto's is green because he is not from Lordran.
What exactly that difference means for Naruto in terms of the curse, the hollow process, and how his soul interacts with Lordran's systems is something I will be exploring as the story develops.
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As always, thank you for reading and for every comment and review. See you in the next chapter.
May your flames never fade.
Adam