More than an hour had passed. The three warriors carved their way along the edge of the Castle, through a cracked stone antechamber and walls heavy with a freezing wind that howled as if to warn them. It was not yet the heart of Stormveil, but the air proclaimed it: dense, electric, laced with a trace of sacred rot. The field was littered with enemies—Godrick's soldiers, frenzied and chaotic, and knights who held their composure only because the castle seemed to loom over them, watching.
A mechanical creature, akin to a scorpion, barred their path, launching fiery bolts that erupted like furious meteors upon the stone. The explosions left embers lingering in the air, as though even the fire hesitated to fully fade in this accursed place.
"Hestia, Rogier," Mitranis called out, his voice commanding yet devoid of theatrics. "Stay beyond that monstrosity's reach. I'll clear the way."
The Tarnished and the sorcerer gave no reply. They merely nodded with their bodies and carried out the order, dispatching infantry and knights with a synchrony that felt rehearsed. Mitranis, meanwhile, weaved through explosions with a dancer's grace, reaching the contraption and, with surgical precision, slitting the throat of the operator at its base.
"Let's move!" he shouted without looking back.
The trio hurried forward. The next corridor stretched out with awkward geometry, as if the stone itself sought to close in on them. Another knight fell to their blades, and then silence descended. An oppressive silence. Only the crunch of their boots echoed in the damp corridor.
And then Hestia felt it.
Not fear, no. Something more primal: a premonition that what lay ahead was irreversible.
"Something… unsettles me," she said, halting just before the corridor's exit, her gaze trembling among the shadows of broken columns.
"There's a Site of Grace. You'd better recover," Mitranis replied, pointing to the pale glow emanating from a cracked slab.
Hestia didn't hesitate. She approached the Site of Grace, brushing it with her fingertips. The golden halo responded with warmth, and the absorbed runes melded into her marrow, granting her greater power. Yet the chill lingered, as if the grace itself quivered before what was to come.
As they emerged from the corridor, the mist grew denser. The three advanced cautiously, skirting a steep path that rose like a bridge between two worlds. At their sides, a bottomless abyss whispered, as if the spirits of the fallen called out to the living from its depths.
And the path…
The path was an endless gravestone.
Swords, axes, spears, and halberds jutted from the earth like twisted crosses. They were not placed at random: some bore tattered banner scraps, others held fragments of bone embedded within. It was a graveyard forged in fury, where memory found no rest. Each weapon was a mutilated tale.
Mitranis slowed his pace. Something in that field spoke to him. A memory surfaced unbidden: Bernahl's voice, rough and bitter, describing the creature that guarded the borders of Leyndell, the sacred capital. "It's not a man, not a god. It's the rumor of a war that never died. The herald of Devastation…"
"Margit…" Mitranis whispered. His voice was a mere brush against the air, but it was enough to chill Hestia.
She looked up. One of the great towers guarding the castle's entrance seemed altered. Something had emerged there, rising like an impossible apparition.
It wasn't something.
It was someone.
A towering figure, draped in ceremonial rags. A fearsome presence, horns tracing its forehead and shoulders like a profane altar. A swaying, resolute tail. Disproportionate arm and leg. It needed no movement to impose its truth: it was Margit, the Fell Omen.
The air grew taut.
From his vantage, Margit scrutinized the souls of those before him. It wasn't their flesh he saw, but the very fiber that sustained them. His gaze lingered on Hestia: the Tarnished. A young bearer of ambition and madness, yet to grasp the magnitude of her desires. He, who had watched generations fall to that same fire, knew at once what spark he faced.
The Omen straightened. His shadow stretched at his feet, nearly engulfing the entrance itself. A deep voice rose from his chest, without shout or fury, only the weight of a judgment carved by time.
"I see a Tarnished… and her two companions," Margit said, with the solemnity of stone. "A reckless Tarnished, blind to the terror her ambition drags upon the Elden Ring. Yet…"
The chill ran down Hestia's spine, mirroring the one she'd felt before. But this time, Mitranis felt it too. Something ancient gazed upon them, and they could not escape its judgment.
Mitranis reacted with his body before his mind. He seized Hestia by the waist, lifting her in a desperate motion. Rogier stepped back. But it was too late.
Margit descended like a cursed star.
He leaped effortlessly from the tower, landing at the corridor's threshold with a sacred roar. The echo of the impact dragged like a divine sigh across the weapons embedded in the earth, as if they trembled in his presence.
"I will not let that flame burn further," he declared. "And the one to extinguish it will be none other than I: Margit, the Fell."
One strike.
A single blow.
Margit's staff-scepter fell like a verdict, opening a crater of jagged fragments beneath his feet. Mitranis released Hestia at once, placing himself between her and the Omen. Rogier could only muster a bitter laugh.
"What a welcome, friends…" he said, slowly drawing his enchanted rapier. "What a refined host."
But there was no time for jests. Margit moved.
A leap.
Four daggers of light burst through the air like bloodied comets. Rogier barely dodged with a roll, Hestia shielded her face. Mitranis advanced, refusing to flee: he needed to discern who this fury truly targeted.
And he understood.
Margit was after him.
Why?
Why me, if I'm not a Tarnished?
The thought flashed through his mind as he dove to the side. Hestia, in a surge of magical desperation, summoned glintstone shards, but Margit evaded them without a glance.
Then Rogier, silent, slipped behind the Omen and drove his enchanted rapier into the giant's right ankle.
"Ghhhaagh!" Margit's reaction was immediate.
He spun violently, extending his left arm. A brutal shove sent Rogier hurtling through the air. His body spun like an enchanted rag, crashing against a spear embedded at the abyss's edge. He spat blood, clinging on with one hand.
And Hestia stood alone.
Face to face with the Omen.
She braced herself, raising her imbued shield. Margit struck. The impact was so devastating it hurled her back like a broken doll. Her back smashed against a gravestone, shattering it. The echo of the blow sank into her chest.
Margit raised his hand. A spear of light formed.
He advanced with the leisure of one who needs no haste to kill.
Then…
"Aaaah!" Mitranis burst forth, wielding a longsword plucked from the ground, using it to deflect Margit's projectile. The blade shattered instantly, but the act sufficed.
The Omen recoiled slightly.
Mitranis spun, hurling poisoned daggers. Margit dodged with a grimace—not from fear, but respect for the venom. The distraction was enough.
"I'll make an opening, Hestia!" Mitranis shouted. "Use the thrusting strike Bernahl taught you!"
She didn't reply. She only listened.
She breathed.
She felt the pulse of grace surge through her muscles.
She dodged. Rolled. Recalled every lesson.
Mitranis, knowing he had to risk all, launched into a reckless move. He slid across the ground like a war-fish, rolling to the Omen's ankles and plunging his dagger into the torn flesh still bleeding from Rogier's strike.
Margit barely flinched. Instead, he leaped. Raised his staff. Descended like a stone deity.
But the blow never landed.
A whirlwind of magical energy blocked the impact—a floating staff, spinning like an enchanted mill. Rogier, still bleeding, had summoned his final defense.
"Now!" he cried.
Hestia emerged from the left, her sword enveloped in a violet gleam.
She drove the blade with precision into Margit's flank, between ancient ribs and muscles hardened by centuries.
A shadowed roar. The Omen buckled. A laugh, laced with both pain and ancient yet fresh adrenaline, escaped his throat.
"Such teamwork…" he murmured.
And then, another leap. From the air, the Omen summoned a new weapon of light: a colossal hammer. The earth quaked as it fell, a shockwave sweeping the three warriors.
Rogier clung to a spear. Hestia rolled like a rag doll. Mitranis recovered with a backward somersault, still gasping.
But not in time. Margit stood before him. The hammer descended once more.
"AHHH!" Mitranis screamed as his body was hurled into the void.
Hestia cried out. Rogier cursed. But they didn't see him fall. The blow was unmistakably meant to cast the defiant one into the abyss—left to the whims of wind, mist, and carrion birds.
Then Margit lunged after him. In an impossible motion, he caught the boy mid-air with his left hand. Like a creature of another plane, he scaled the castle's walls and rocks with monstrous agility.
Between leaps, Margit vanished with Mitranis in his grasp.
"We have to find him!" Hestia shouted, throwing herself toward the path's edge, as if momentum could bridge the abyss.
"We will… but this castle isn't exactly forthcoming, Hestia," Rogier replied with effort, his voice dragging between gasps. His body still trembled from the magical energy he'd channeled.
Hestia didn't respond. Her body collapsed, kneeling on the ground. Her breathing was a stifled spasm. She clutched her abdomen: the pain wasn't merely physical—it was an internal jolt, as if her innards burned.
Likely an internal hemorrhage. Silent, lethal. She braced her other hand on the damp ground. Closed her eyes. And then… a different warmth.
A presence.
An embrace.
Not physical, but enveloping.
"Stop… and seek a lost grace," whispered a voice, so faint it seemed to rise from within her chest. "I sensed no intent in Margit to slay Mitranis. He didn't finish him. It wasn't hatred… It was choice. He's plotting something. And that gives us time, Hestia."
It was Melina's voice. Her silhouette barely took shape among the gravestones and mist. The weight of her words contrasted with the lightness of her presence.
"Restore your strength before doing anything foolish," she added, with firm gentleness.
Hestia gritted her teeth. Clicked her tongue. Her furrowed brow was more pain than pride. Melina was right. But the urge to act, to run, to stop whatever Margit was doing… it hurt as much as the wound itself.
Painful and contradictory: an hour ago, Hestia wanted to strike Mitranis for his words about Roderika. Now, she wanted to save him. Perhaps these weren't opposing impulses. Perhaps they weren't impulses at all. Hestia had no time to unravel what stirred within her.
In another nook, time flowed strangely.
It was a lapse without logic, like a dream between death and respite.
Mitranis breathed, but couldn't recall how.
His body was weight without center.
His mind, a shattered mirror.
That was how he dreamed.
He dreamed of battles amid marble columns that crumbled underfoot.
He dreamed of cold hands caressing him without pity or duty.
He dreamed of women—all distinct, all shadowed—gazing at him with distant tenderness.
One, the eldest, cared for him. She didn't speak. She simply was. But he sensed both hardness and tenderness in her alone.
And under a starry sky, he walked. He knew not where, but he wasn't alone.
A sense of companionship. Of purpose. A purpose like a child's dreams, certainly—fanciful, heroic. Climbing atop a dragon to ride it, making it unleash golden lightning from its eyes.
They were children's dreams, feeling like rumors of solitude and amnesia. Amnesia that shadowed Mitranis in life.
When he opened his eyes, the pain returned gently. Not the violence of the fall, but a steady sting, a reminder he yet lived.
The ground was cold, slightly damp rock.
The fog, thick enough to blur whether it caressed or suffocated him.
Mitranis wasn't precisely in the castle. It was another place… more liturgical.
He rose slowly. Before him: a statue of Marika.
Behind him: a wooden suspension bridge linking to another rocky isle. A chapel loomed on the far side, its stained glass dulled by the mist.
He didn't know this place.
But he knew Margit was near.
"Why have you brought me here, Margit?" he said, voice broken, still kneeling. "What's your intent? If you want a fight, here I am. Alive, thanks to you."
The statue of Marika seemed to listen. Mitranis didn't move.
Yet he knew:
Margit was behind him.
He hadn't heard him land.
He hadn't felt his shadow.
But his body knew before his mind.
"I fight for a purpose, not pleasure," said the grave voice, mere steps away.
Mitranis didn't turn. He didn't rise. He only breathed deeply. Then, the faint sound of a body settling on the stone. He did the same, back to the Omen.
They breathed in unison.
"I understand," the boy murmured. "Then your purpose now is for us to speak."
"Correct," Margit replied. "And I'd prefer it face to face."
Mitranis turned. And saw him. No longer the monster who descended like divine punishment. He was an ancient creature. Far too ancient. Flesh hardened by centuries of battle, yet firm. His gaze was now a controlled flame.
His marks—visible horns, some torn away—revealed the strength of a warrior bearing scars from birth. For an Omen, every horn, mark, scale, or hair was a punishment seared in fire: punishment for being heresy, even if that soul had done nothing but defend the Golden Order with every breath.
At this sight, Mitranis chose not to look away.
Now, face to face, he could see the decay. Margit was a warrior of another era, a relic bowed by history. Yet there was no defeat in him—only permanence, like a thorn that refuses to be plucked.
"Why spare me?" Mitranis asked, blunt, without diplomatic shield. "And above all… why speak with me, who isn't even a Tarnished?"
Margit didn't answer at once. His muscles didn't stir. He seemed carved from frozen time. Yet his gaze pierced through.
"I…" he said at last, "am but a withered illusion, child."
His words were stone worn by centuries of wind, tinged with a brief laugh—perhaps trust, perhaps mere self-pity.
"I am a weapon, the weapon of a warrior stationed on another front. While you fight here, I stand elsewhere, the last bastion of what was once golden."
The mist quivered around them. Mitranis grasped little at first. Margit was a faded echo of another being, fighting a greater battle elsewhere. Or perhaps it was mere ornamentation.
"Then why me?" Mitranis pressed, voice low. "What did you see in me?"
Margit tilted his head slightly. His eyes sharpened.
"That gleam," he said. "That mote of gold… in one not chosen by grace. A nameless, unherited radiance. It's not in your eyes, as with the Tarnished, that girl. It rises from your hands, your breath. Something pervasive… intoxicating."
The boy held his breath.
He felt the echo of those words sink into him.
Not as a warning.
But as a mirror.
Margit leaned forward, hands clasped over bony knees. His staff rested aside, dormant for now.
"I wish to understand it," he continued. "To know who—or what—you are. For if what you bear is neither blessing nor ambition, but something new, then I, even as a shadow, must decide what to do with you."
Mitranis didn't know if he had the strength to answer.
But he knew this conversation was a greater trial than any battle.
Silence.
And in that silence, the chapter closed with the image of a nameless, lineless child speaking with a living ruin.
The past before the divergence.
Grace before the void.
Judgment yet to be passed.
"So… where do I begin?"