The gates of Stormveil closed behind him, and the land fell away into a vast, glimmering basin.
Liurnia of the Lakes stretched out before him—an expanse of pale water broken by stone spires, half-submerged ruins, and towers clawing at the sky from distant cliffs. The air carried a chill dampness, heavy with the scent of moss and riverweed. Mist rolled across the surface of the shallows, and the faint cry of waterfowl echoed like ghosts in the distance.
He stood at the overlook for a long moment, hammer balanced on his shoulder, and let his eyes trace the breadth of it. This was no simple stretch of wilderness. It was a kingdom drowned, swallowed by its own expanse, still clinging to its grandeur in shattered towers and hidden academies.
And at the heart of it, Rennala. Queen. Shardbearer.
He clenched his jaw at the thought. Godrick had been an abomination, pieced together from corpses, a brute force of madness and graft. Yet even he had been strong enough to kill him a hundred times over before he finally fell. Rennala would not be weaker. If anything, her sorceries, her mastery of magic, would make her even more dangerous.
But she was the only one here. No half-dozen Demigods to stumble into, no gauntlet of rivals. Just her. That made the path simple. Direct.
—--
The slope into Liurnia was treacherous with loose gravel and weeds grown slick with mist, but he descended without pause, hammer balanced across his shoulders. The closer he came to the basin, the louder the world grew—the lapping of shallow waters, the croak of frogs, the distant hum of insects rising from the marsh.
Liurnia was not silent like Limgrave's open fields. It buzzed, alive with a restless energy that pressed at him from all sides.
The first figures he saw were soldiers. Not Godrick's rabble, but Carian men—better armed, better drilled. Their armor gleamed with polished steel, their crests etched with runes. A patrol moved along the causeway, three men with shields and spears, another with a halberd. They marched with a discipline the soldiers of Gatefront had never shown.
He didn't slow.
They saw him coming across the flooded stones, called out in sharp voices, and lowered their weapons. The hammer shifted in his grip, rising with both hands.
The first spear lunged. He sidestepped and swung. Stone crashed against metal, and the man's chestplate caved in with a sound like a drum splitting. He fell without a cry. The hammer came back around, and another soldier flew across the shallow water, armor crushed into ruin. The others tried to rally, blades flashing, but their strikes clattered harmlessly off the haft of the weapon. When his counterblow fell, bones broke like twigs.
Four men had stood against him. Four men lay broken in the mud before a minute had passed.
He breathed once, steady, and pressed onward.
The swamps thickened as he went. Trees jutted out of the shallows, draped with moss, their roots twisting like skeletal hands through the mud. Fires burned on distant embankments where other patrols stood watch. Their shouts echoed faintly, carrying warnings from one group to the next. Soon more came—shields locking, halberds thrusting, their numbers swelling.
It didn't matter.
He waded into them, the hammer rising and falling like a storm. Each blow tore through men as though they were stalks of wheat. Their training, their coordination, their polished arms—none of it could withstand the raw brutality of his strength. The shallows churned red as bodies sank into the muck.
—--
The mist thickened as he pressed deeper into Liurnia's marsh. The patrols thinned, their corpses left behind in the water, and for a time there was only the croak of frogs and the splash of his boots through ankle-deep shallows.
Then the air shimmered ahead.
A rider emerged from the fog, his armor dark and ornate, polished to a mirror sheen. A sapphire crest gleamed on his helm, catching what little light filtered through the clouds. In one hand, the knight held a long, runed sword, its edge faintly glowing with the trace of magic. In the other, he balanced nothing at all—until the air in his palm shimmered, and the light bent into a crackling sigil of blue.
A Carian Knight.
The rider raised his visor just enough to speak. His voice carried across the water, clear, disciplined:
"Turn back. Raya Lucaria is closed to you."
The hammer shifted in his grip. His answer came by stepping forward.
The knight did not wait. His hand snapped forward, and a bolt of glintstone shattered through the air. It struck him in the chest like a fist of iron, hurling him back through the water with a spray. The impact seared—his flesh knitting back together, yes, but slower, dulled by the magical residue.
The knight spurred his horse and circled wide, keeping distance. Another bolt screamed through the mist. He raised the hammer as a shield, the projectile exploding against it with a crack of raw force that numbed his arms.
Snarling, he surged forward. The knight angled away, weaving his mount between half-submerged ruins, keeping just out of reach. Another sigil bloomed. This time the bolt struck his leg, searing through muscle and throwing him sideways. He hit the water hard, regeneration fighting to seal the wound even as the knight wheeled about, unhurried, calm.
It was a duel of patience, the knight's skill sharpening the advantage of his range. Each strike was measured, never wasted, the sorcery landing cleanly more often than not. He could crush giants, yes—but giants did not keep him at arm's length with light and fire. Giants did not think like this.
He forced himself upright, hammer dripping with swamp water, and scanned the knight's movements. Timing. Distance. Predictability. Every sorcerer relied on rhythm. Every cast had a moment where their guard fell.
The next bolt came. He shifted—half a breath late—and the blast cracked against his ribs, searing him raw. He roared through the pain, regeneration flaring, and drove forward anyway. Another cast—he ducked, the glintstone searing past overhead.
Closer.
The knight's sword flashed, its edge lit with runes. Steel met hammer haft, sparks exploding as they locked for a heartbeat—then the knight wheeled away again, trying to reset the distance.
Not this time.
He hurled himself forward, closing the last few steps before the knight could summon another bolt. The hammer rose high, his whole body turning into the strike, and when it fell it was like the land itself cracked. The knight brought his sword up in a two-handed guard, runes flashing bright, but the sheer weight of the blow crushed the defense flat. Metal buckled, the horse screamed, and the knight was thrown into the water with a thunderous crash.
The armor splintered, his helm shattered, and the knight's body bent at an unnatural angle beneath the weight of the strike. Even in death, his hand twitched as though to summon one last spell—but no light came.
The hammer lifted, dripping with blood and water, and fell once more. The fight ended.
He stood panting, regeneration knitting closed the burns that still crawled along his ribs. His chest ached. His body smoked faintly from the sorceries. This fight had demanded more than brute force. It demanded timing, precision. Discipline.
He wiped the water from his eyes and looked down at the broken knight.
"Stronger than a giant…" he muttered to himself. "...sorcery is something else…"
And he pressed on toward the towers of Raya Lucaria.
The wetlands thinned, giving way to a stretch of half-sunken ruins. Stone arches jutted at crooked angles, their tops drowned beneath the lake. Shattered staircases climbed nowhere, and at the center of it all sat a wide, circular platform, its carvings nearly erased by water and time.
And sprawled across that platform lay a beast.
The dragon's body curled like a mountain in slumber, scales the color of frost-bitten stone, glinting faintly with threads of blue. Its wings draped across broken walls, vast enough to blanket the ruins in shadow. Mist hung thick in the air, stirred gently with each breath that rumbled from its chest.
Nestled at the base of its foreclaws, half-hidden by rubble, glimmered something faintly luminous. A key.
He froze where the water lapped at his boots, heart hammering. The very sight of it chilled his blood. The creature wasn't dead, nor was it fully asleep—one eye cracked open, revealing a glow that cut through the mist like lightning.
The ground trembled. The dragon stirred.
It rose slow as an avalanche, wings unfurling with a sound like the tearing of sky. Water cascaded from its body, raining down across the ruins. When it raised its head, the world itself seemed to shrink beneath it.
Then its chest swelled, and the lake burned blue.
Flame roared from its jaws, glintstone fire pouring out in a torrent that turned the air into a furnace. Stone melted to glass where the flames touched. He threw himself behind a half-buried wall, skin blistering in an instant, regeneration straining against the sheer, constant burn.
The sound was unbearable—thunder and shattering stone, the scream of fire eating air.
He rose, teeth clenched, hammer gripped tight. He had killed a Demigod. He had broken giants with his bare strength. But this—this was different. This was what men told stories about in trembling voices around the firelight.
The dragon shifted its bulk, claws gouging deep furrows into the stone, wings arcing high. Its eyes locked on him, filled with cold, mindless malice.
He ran—not at the beast, but at the shimmer at its feet. Sorceries seared past him, arcs of flame that blew chunks of ruin into the lake. His arm dissolved to bone as one blast caught him, but the flesh knitted back even as he sprinted. The altar loomed ahead, and the faint glow of the key resolved into shape.
His fingers brushed it—then clenched around it—just as the dragon's head slammed down like a hammer from the heavens. Stone erupted. His body was flung like a ragdoll through the water, bones snapping like twigs.
He came to rest among broken pillars, gasping, half-drowned. His skin sloughed away in sheets before it crawled back over him. The pain was unrelenting, deep, primal. But the key was his.
The dragon roared. The sound rolled across the lake like a storm, a challenge, a promise.
He staggered upright, smoke rising from his body, and fled into the ruins. Behind him, wings beat the air, stirring waves tall as walls. Flame split the mist. But he was smaller, faster, and desperate. Somehow, he lived.
When at last the ruin fell silent, when the sound of pursuit was gone, he collapsed at the water's edge. His skin still smoldered, his muscles still quivered, but his hands clutched the key as though it were life itself.
He had faced his first dragon.
And he had stolen from it.
He stopped before the seal, the key in hand.
The Glintstone Key was cold against his palm, a jagged shard of azure stone set in aged metal. As he raised it, the barrier responded, rippling outward in concentric waves. The sound was like glass bending under strain.
Then—cracks spread. Lines of pale fire lanced through the barrier, and with a deep, resonant groan, the wall of light fractured. Shards of brilliance broke off into nothing, dissolving like mist until only faint sparks clung to the air. The great seal was gone.
The bridge stretched into the fog—narrow, ancient, its flagstones cracked and moss-stained. Statues of scholars and knights stood at intervals along the railings, their faces long worn smooth by wind and rain. In the distance, veiled by mist, the spires of Raya Lucaria pierced the sky, glinting faintly with the pale blue of sorcery.
The bridge stretched ahead, long and strangely empty. Mist curled low across the stones, wrapping the statues that flanked the causeway like burial shrouds. The spires of the Academy loomed in the distance, pale against the overcast sky.
At first, there was nothing—only the sound of his boots and the occasional caw of a crow circling far above. Then, from the shadow of a broken statue, a figure stirred.
A scholar. Thin, pale, clad in threadbare robes, face nearly hidden under a sagging hood. His staff trembled in thin fingers, but when he lifted it, the crystal atop sparked to life. A shard of glintstone light bloomed and shrieked across the bridge.
He moved, the hammer already in hand. The shard struck him in the side, pain lancing through flesh and bone, his regeneration smothering it. It forced his breath sharp—but not his stride. He closed the gap in a heartbeat and crushed the sorcerer flat with a single swing.
Silence returned, broken only by the wet crunch fading into the mist.
Further along, two more lingered nearby. They didn't rush to meet him, didn't even shout—just began their spells, movements slow but steady, as if bound to some duty that had long ago lost its meaning.
Projectiles screamed down the bridge. He ducked behind a toppled statue as shards of glintstone exploded against stone. Then he surged forward again, each stride carrying him through the gaps in their rhythm. One staff was still raised when the hammer struck, splitting bone and stone alike. The last sorcerer tried to retreat, robes dragging across stone, but he could not outpace the hammer's swing.
And then the bridge was quiet again.
The Academy of Raya Lucaria rose before him, enormous doors waiting, their wood blackened with age. The faint light of a Grace flickered just outside, visible before the threshold.
The Academy did not feel alive. It felt… abandoned, haunted. And what little life remained, weak and scattered, was clinging only to old duty.
He lowered himself before the Grace, the hammer balanced across his knees, its head resting heavy against the cracked stone. The light bathed him, soft, steady, almost like a heartbeat. For a long while, he said nothing.
Rennalla waited somewhere deeper within the Academy. A broken woman. Her mind fractured, her will long since drowned in memory and sorrow. She was not like Margit or Godrick. Not cruel, not power-drunk. She clutched her Great Rune like a child clutching a keepsake.
And her Rune… it was not like the others. No strength. No vitality. No endurance. Its power was rebirth, the remaking of form. A gift to those seeking change. To him, it meant nothing. His body already answered his will. His flesh remade itself with every wound and scar.
At first, he thought her Rune worthless.
But then the thought came.
All of these Runes—fragments of something greater. Not trinkets, not trophies. Pieces of the Elden Ring itself. He had known the words, but never felt their truth until now. The Elden Ring was not simply a crown or a title. It was the law. Order itself, woven into the marrow of the Lands Between. When it was whole, the world was whole. Now, shattered, the world was broken, its laws scattered like shards of glass.
The Greater Will had once ruled through it, binding all beneath its design. But if the Runes could be gathered, reforged… then the Ring could be whole again. And with it—power beyond gods. The power to shape the world entirely.
He felt the Grace hum beneath his palms, as though acknowledging the thought.
What if he took it all? What if the Elden Ring was not restored to the Greater Will, nor to any hollow vessel it chose, but to him? A mortal, unbound, answering to nothing but his own will. With the Elden Ring in his hands, he could cast down the illusions of these so-called gods. He could break the cruel cycle of war, hunger, and despair. He could remake the world—not into the madness that ruled now, but into something better. More peaceful. More alive.
For the first time, he saw a path clearer than the pursuit of strength alone. The Great Runes were not simply stepping stones—they were keys. Keys to the whole of creation itself.
His hand closed around the haft of the hammer. Rennalla's Rune, even if it meant nothing to his flesh, was still a fragment of that greater whole. A piece he could not leave behind.
The thought steadied him. For all her innocence, for all her sorrow, Rennalla stood in the way of that future. To hesitate was to falter. And he would not falter. Not now.
The decision lingered in him like steel fresh from the forge—hot, unbending, absolute. His path was set.