Air tore past him in a scream, pulling the breath from his lungs. His gut lurched into his throat. For a heartbeat he flailed, human instinct railing against the inevitability of the fall. The sea rushed up to meet him, vast and merciless.
Impact.
Stone and water shattered him in an instant. Every bone snapped, every organ burst. His body became nothing but broken meat scattered on the rocks. Pain flared white, total, absolute—then guttered out into silence.
Darkness claimed him again.
When he opened his eyes, he lay on a different stone floor, damp and smelling of rot. The ceiling above was vaulted and cracked, roots crawling through like veins. He gasped once, sucking in the stale air, then sat up. His body was whole again, knit together by that endless current running beneath his skin.
Ahead, a faint light beckoned down a narrow passage, but the Stranded Graveyard was not a place of rest.
Its stone halls were half-sunken into mud, slick with mold and brine, roots and moss clutching the walls like hands. Candlelight guttered in sconces long burned low, throwing shadows that twitched with every breath of stale air.
He followed the call of progress, feet splashing through thin rivulets of water, until he reached the cliffside stair spiraling down into the dark. Voices drifted up from below—muted cries, muttering, the shuffle of feet.
At the bottom, he saw them.
Men—or what had once been men. Zombie-like commoners, their skin gray and slack, clothes rotted to scraps. They wandered aimlessly, some clutching rusted tools, others bare-handed. Their eyes were glazed, unseeing, their mouths opening only to let slip pitiful groans. They weren't monsters. They weren't warriors. Just husks.
He froze. His heart drummed in his ears.
The Scion had been easy, in its way—grotesque, alien, a beast that demanded death. But these? They looked like beggars on a city street. Ragged. Lost. Broken. His grip on the ornamental sword faltered. The weapon felt wrong in his hand—too long, too finely balanced, as if mocking his lack of training. When he lifted the golden shield, its weight dragged his shoulder down; his arm quivered just holding it steady.
His throat grew tight.
But then one turned. The hollow eyes fixed on him, and with a wet, choking sound, the creature lunged, swinging its rusted blade wildly. Instinct took over. He heaved the shield up just in time. The impact nearly tore it from his grip, pain lancing through his arm as the weight crashed into him. The blow turned aside, but only barely.
He countered with the sword. Its edge scraped shallow across the commoner's chest—he had neither the strength nor finesse to guide it properly. He was slow, clumsy. The husk flailed again, and panic drove him forward. He shoved hard, blade sliding through yielding flesh by brute force more than skill.
The commoner fell, gasping, and from its corpse spilled faint golden motes. Runes.
They drifted toward him, seeping into his skin just as before. A fragment of life. Potential.
He stood still a long while, staring down at the body. His stomach churned. It was one thing to need the runes—to know they were the only way forward, the only means of growing stronger in this hellscape. But another to take them from something that had once been a man.
The hollow groans answered him from deeper in the dark. More of them. Dozens, maybe.
He closed his eyes. If I don't take them, I'll die. And if I die here… it'll be for nothing.
So he fought.
Slowly at first, each encounter was a ragged blur of desperation and guilt. The shield's weight dragged his arm down, every block rattling his bones. The sword refused to move the way he wanted—it was too strange for him to use, too light for brute hacking. His blows landed crooked, shallow, forcing him to stab and shove at soft points until the husks collapsed.
He felt their broken tools tear at his flesh again and again—but always, the regeneration sealed him whole. Wounds closed, bruises faded, bones knit back together.
The pain lingered, though. Every cut. Every break. Healing did not erase it. By the time he had slain the fifteenth, his hands shook, his body remembering every injury even as it stood unmarred.
The runes trickled into him, one by one, a slow flood. Warmth pressing into his soul. A fortune of potential, unusable still—but growing heavier with every kill.
After hours—though time had no shape down here—he stood among corpses. The ground was littered with them, the air thick with iron and decay. His breaths came steadier now, his body learning the rhythm of battle despite the mismatch of his weapons and his body. His shield no longer sagged quite as low. His blade no longer slipped from his fingers due to inexperience.
He looked at his hands, whole and unbloodied, though he knew how many times they had been cut, broken, crushed.
The moral weight pressed down, heavy as the shield on his arm. Yet so did the runes, glowing faint and golden inside him.
This was the Lands Between. Mercy was a luxury. Growth was survival.
At the far end of the graveyard, beyond the last hollow commoner, a great wall of fog loomed. Its surface was almost breathing with waves of mist, towering and radiant. He touched it, and it was cold beneath his palm.
The chamber beyond the fog was still and vast, its floor cracked with roots that drank from seeping water. A pale light trickled from the ceiling, spilling across the figure waiting at its center.
The man—not husk, not beast—stood straight, armored in a dented brass plate armor, sword in hand, shield steady. His helmet was plain, visor lowered, his stance practiced. Not an erratic thrall, not a stitched-together abomination. A soldier. A warrior who had once bled and trained and survived battle after battle.
The Soldier of Godrick.
He felt the difference immediately.
The man advanced with calm precision, shield raised. Each step was measured, grounded. When the first swing came, it was not wild—it was an angled cut, shield pressuring forward at the same time to batter and control.
He raised his golden shield, and the impact nearly disarmed him. His arm screamed. The sword strike flowed cleanly around his guard, slicing across his ribs. Hot pain seared him as blood spattered the stone.
He staggered, but regeneration already surged, and the wound closed in moments. Still, the pain lingered, raw, teaching him in ways no sparring lesson ever had: this is what a clean cut feels like, this is where your guard failed.
The soldier pressed on. He moved like water—sword in, shield out, never wasting motion. Every time he swung his ornamental blade, the soldier caught it on his shield, redirecting with effortless angles. Every block rattled through his bones; every counter made him flinch.
This was different. This wasn't a beast. He knew how to fight.
The next thrust came faster, sharper, and instinct screamed. He twisted his wrist, letting the sword slide along his own, feeling the weight, the line, the way to turn it aside. A parry in everything but name. His body remembered. The Scion had taught him pain. This soldier has taught him rhythm.
The Soldier stepped in to punish, shield bash slamming forward. It struck, cracked against his jaw. Stars burst behind his eyes. He crumpled, ribs crushed under a follow-up slash. His body closed again, knitting flesh and bone, dragging him upright. Pain lingered, but knowledge grew sharper.
He adjusted.
The next exchange was different. His sword no longer swung wide—it cut tighter arcs, conserving momentum. He watched the soldier's feet, the shift of his weight before each strike. Twice he blocked poorly, twice his arm screamed—but he corrected. Step by step, he borrowed from the soldier's form, drinking in technique with every wound.
Finally, the moment opened.
The soldier overcommitted—one step too far on a thrust, shield pulled wide to press advantage. He slid in, low, his own blade driving up beneath the guard. It wasn't graceful. It wasn't perfect. But it was enough.
Steel sank into flesh.
The soldier staggered. His breath rattled once, then faded into silence. Armor slumped against the stone, and the golden glow of runes seeped from the body, flowing into his chest.
He stood panting, body unscarred, but covered in the memory of a dozen injuries. His arms ached as though splintered, his chest burned where blades had carved. He flexed his grip on the sword, rolling it in his hand, and for the first time it didn't feel wholly foreign.
The fight had been short in truth—but within those moments, he felt he had learned months of lessons.
—
The stone lift groaned as it carried him upward, roots and moss sliding past the walls of the shaft. Dampness gave way to wind, faint and cool. For the first time since his fall, the air smelled of open sky.
With a final jolt, the platform locked into place.
He stepped forward, feet echoed against stone, and pushed open the heavy doors.
Light struck him.
He froze.
The Lands Between unfolded before him.
There was no game map now, no stitched textures nor painted skyboxes. The world stretched outward in all directions, vast and alive. Rolling fields of green bent beneath the breeze, swaying like a living ocean. Trees rose from the earth in tangled crowds, their canopies whispering in waves. Beyond them, rivers carved silver scars across the land, reflecting the heavens above.
And the heavens—
The Erdtree blazed, vast beyond comprehension, its golden boughs burning in the sky like a second sun. Its light poured over the land, scattering across every leaf, every blade of grass, until the world itself seemed gilded. The air hummed with it, a divine presence that pressed against the skin, seeped into the bones. He had seen the Erdtree on a screen before, looming as background art, but nothing—nothing—prepared him for this.
His knees threatened to give. He swallowed hard, unable to look away.
Castles clung to distant cliffs, spires piercing the sky. Stormveil rose most of all, a fortress like a scar on the horizon, its towers lost in cloud. Between here and there, broken ruins jutted from hillsides, ancient stone arches and toppled statues whispering of empires long dead.
And scattered across it all, tiny motes of gold drifted in the air like fireflies, settling and vanishing before his eyes. The leaves of the Erdtree itself.
He breathed deep, chest tight, throat burning. It was beautiful. It was terrible. It was too much.
For the first time since waking, he felt small. Truly, utterly small.
The gods had made a world not just to live in, but to crush men beneath.
The crunch of hoofbeats carried faintly across the plain, steady and heavy. His eyes shifted, and there—patrolling the golden road—marched a knight of impossible stature. Armor polished like sunlight, cloak trailing behind, a halberd as long as a tree in one hand. The Tree Sentinel.
Even from this distance, he felt the weight of the warrior's presence, like gravity itself bent heavier around him.
He licked dry lips, forcing himself to breathe again.
Golden motes swirled before him, gathering into a faint pool of light at the foot of the crumbling stone path. It pulsed gently, warm, like a heartbeat pressing against his skin.
He knelt, brushing fingers across the golden current. It seeped into him, subtle and strange. A tether pulling faintly toward something he couldn't yet see.
"Well, well…"
The voice made him stiffen.
He turned. A man in white robes leaned casually against a ruined wall nearby, a mask of pale porcelain hiding his face. Slender, almost priestly, though the posture was too loose, too mocking for true reverence. The figure inclined his head with a polite flourish.
"Oh, yes. Tarnished, are we? Come to the Lands Between for the Elden Ring, hm? Of course you have. No shame in it. Unfortunately for you, however… you are maidenless."
The words struck sharper than they should, laced with amusement.
He narrowed his eyes, pulse quickening. He knew this man. White Mask Varre. Courteous now, but a servant of Mohg, the accursed Lord of Blood. His "kindness" was a mask, hiding rot and devotion to a demigod who enslaved Tarnished souls in rivers of scarlet.
Still, knowledge was not power. Not yet. He had no strength to oppose the man, nor a reason to provoke him beyond his knowledge. He forced a slow breath, then managed a tight smile.
"So I've heard," he said, voice steady despite the unease gnawing at him. "No maiden, no guidance. Just me, standing at the edge of a world that wants me dead."
Varre's chuckle was low, rich with false sympathy. "Just so. Without the guidance of grace, the Tarnished are lost. Adrift. Doomed to wander… until madness claims them. Most unfortunate."
He studied him carefully. Every word was designed to undermine, to push him toward despair. Classic manipulation. He'd read it all before in lore threads and wikis—but hearing it now, seeing the tilt of the masked head, the almost playful tone… it was unnerving.
"Yet here you are," he said softly, "standing beside this Grace. Not lost. Not adrift. So why linger, if you pity us so much?"
Varre tilted his head further, mask catching the Erdtree's glow. "Why, to offer counsel, of course. You may lack a maiden now, but perhaps you will find one yet. Or one will find you." He leaned forward, voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. "Until then, take care. Without guidance, it is all too easy to stray."
His hand hovered near the scavenged sword on his hip. He almost wanted to say it—I know who you serve. I know what you are. But the words lodged in his throat. What could he gain now, so weak, so untested? Such actions would only lead to his death.
Instead, he inclined his head in return, feigning gratitude. "Your counsel is… noted. I'll manage, one way or another. With or without a maiden."
Varre's laugh echoed in the air, light and cruel. "Oh, brave words. Very well, young Tarnished. Follow grace, if you can. Seek your fortune. And when you find your path too heavy to walk alone…" He let the sentence hang, unfinished, like a knife pressed just shy of the skin. "Well. We shall speak again."
The man in white drifted back, robes brushing stone, and was gone as though he had never been.
He let out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding. His hands trembled, and he curled them into fists.
Grace pulsed again, golden and patient. Ahead, the wide-open plains waited, dotted with ruins, with wandering soldiers, and beyond them—the Tree Sentinel, armored death astride his steed.
He kept to the grass. Low, careful, crouched.
The golden giant patrolled just beyond a ruined wall, each hoofbeat shaking the earth. The Tree Sentinel's halberd gleamed with a light that wasn't just sunlight—it was like the glow of grace hardened into steel. Every step of the armored war horse was precise, disciplined, the gait of a knight who had spent centuries in the saddle of his steed.
He pressed himself into the brush, heart hammering in his throat. If he was quick, quiet—just a shadow slipping through green—he could reach the next slope, down into safety, and skirt past entirely.
But the Sentinel turned. Not fast. Not sudden. Just… aware.
The golden visor angled down, meeting him through the grass as though it had seen through every leaf, every shallow hope of stealth.
"Shit."
The horse surged.
The halberd came down like a falling tree. He rolled—barely—but the shockwave slammed through his ribs, rattling teeth. Before he could recover, a second swing tore the air. Steel shrieked across stone as the weapon bit into the earth where he'd been a breath before.
He ran.