The rot blossomed.
Malenia's body burst into full bloom, wings of scarlet fungus tearing from her back. A choking wave of rot swept across the chamber, searing the very air. The water hissed, blackened, as spores filled the lightless space.
Her voice rang out, doubled by something deeper, something less than human:
"I am Malenia. Goddess of Rot."
Then she moved.
Not a blur of steel this time, but a living storm. She dove at him, wings cutting through the air, every motion steeped in corruption. Where her feet touched, the ground rotted. Where her blade swung, the air itself seemed poisoned.
But he did not yield.
He drove his hammer into the floor, bracing himself against the flood of filth, and white fire surged from his chest. The sunlight flame burned outward, pure and clean, scattering spores into ash. The rot receded where the flame touched, but it could not erase her. She was not a sickness to be cleansed. She was will, sharpened to a blade.
Her katana met his hammer, steel screeching against iron. The clash sent cracks spidering across the roots beneath them. She twisted, sliding past his guard, blade flashing for his throat. He caught it in his bare hand, blood spilling—but his hand closed around the blade like a vice. She wrenched free, but too late—the hammer came, the air screaming as it descended.
The impact missed her body by inches, but the shockwave tore her wings to one side, forcing her to stumble. Still, she did not break.
Malenia adapted.
Her movements grew tighter, sharper. She no longer sought to overwhelm him with a storm of petals, but to slip through his colossal strength, cut him in ways that forced his regeneration to work overtime, to grind him down. She was the tactician, the living blade honed by centuries of war.
And he was the nightmare given flesh—raw will and strength unchained, striking with measured devastation.
He flung sunlight flame like javelins, white spears of fire searing across the chamber. She darted between them, her wings catching embers, her body weaving like water around stone. But one strike grazed her—just a touch of that flame—and the rot on her shoulder shriveled, turned to dust. Her eyes widened. She understood then: his flame was not destruction. It was life, and it would not allow her goddess-form to endure forever.
The fight escalated.
Hammer and katana clashed again and again, sparks and embers scattering in every direction. Roots split, water boiled, stone cracked. His strength shook the chamber with every blow, but hers was precision incarnate, each strike placed to exploit the tiniest gap. He bled, she bled, and both healed in an endless cycle, their wills refusing to falter.
Then she took to the air.
Her wings unfurled wide, scattering rot blossoms like meteors. They fell all around him, pools of death blooming across the roots. She descended with them, a goddess of decay, her blade a streak of scarlet.
But he had been waiting.
He roared, voice thunderous, and sunlight flame burst from his entire body in a blinding flash. Pure white fire roared outward, devouring every spore, every blossom, turning her descent into a plunge through cleansing fire. She struck through it, her blade carving a line of red across his chest—but the hammer was already in motion.
The Giant-Crusher met her in midair.
The blow caught her square in the torso, the sound like a tree snapping in a storm. She was hurled across the chamber, wings folding, crashing into the far wall with a shower of broken stone. She staggered, one knee dipping. Still she rose, still she fought—blade trembling in her hands but eyes aflame with unbroken pride.
She rushed him one final time, every ounce of her strength poured into a single strike meant to fell gods.
And he met her charge with both hands on the hammer, flame wreathing its head, body coiled like a titan. The strike came down, a pure collision of wills.
The katana shattered.
The hammer struck true.
The explosion of force buckled the chamber, water surging in waves, stone splintering, petals scattering like torn banners in the wind. When the dust cleared, Malenia lay broken in the pool, her body still, the rot receding like a tide.
She exhaled once, a whisper lost in the water, her eyes dimming.
And then silence returned.
Runes flooded into him, pale motes rising like fireflies. The Goddess of Rot was undone.
He stood still, chest heaving, flame flickering faintly in his hand.
The chamber was ruined. The water blackened. The petals are gone. And he, once again, remained.
Her chest rose, shallow, trembling. Blood and rot leaked from her lips, yet her gaze stayed sharp, unclouded.
"…Brother…" she whispered, voice thinner than silk, weaker than ash on the wind. "Miquella… forgive me…"
Her eyes found him. No hatred lingered there now. Only the fierce, unyielding pride of a warrior who had met her end with steel in hand.
"You…" She coughed, scarlet spreading into the water beneath her. "…are no rot. No curse. You burn… like the sun."
Her arm fell. The light left her eyes.
Silence.
For a moment, the world itself seemed to pause—as though acknowledging her passing. Then, above her still body, light gathered. Not white, not pure, but the deep red-gold of her being. A rune—vast, jagged, radiant with lingering grace and ruin—formed in the air. The Great Rune of Malenia.
He stepped forward, water rippling beneath his feet, and extended his hand. The rune drifted down, silent as falling ash. When he grasped it, the weight of Malenia's legacy settled into him—not in fire or fury, but in quiet permanence. A resonance of her strength, her decay, her rebirth.
The power settled into place alongside the others, balanced, measured, yet unmistakable.
The Goddess of Rot was gone.
Her Great Rune was his.
—--
The Haligtree was quiet behind him, its hollow roots whispering with the memory of what had been lost. He stood at its base for a long while, the cold winds of the Consecrated Snowfield lashing against his skin. Malenia's Great Rune pulsed faintly within him, joining the chorus of power he had gathered. The next, Mohg's.
He turned away, forging across the endless white wasteland. The snow swallowed sound, each step pressing into silence. Frozen winds tore across the plains, but he moved with steady resolve, his bare flesh unmoved by cold that would have killed him long ago.
At the edge of the snowfield, half-buried in ice and stone, he found it: the waygate. An altar of pale stone etched with dark veins, its surface bleeding faint crimson light into the night. The air around it felt heavy, clotted—reeking faintly of iron and stained red. A portal, bound in oath to a Lord of Blood.
He studied it, grim and unmoving. The thought of Mohg's domain—a palace carved from blood, a realm feeding on sacrifice—would have frozen most in their tracks. But he did not hesitate. Another Great Rune waited, and with it, another step toward the completion of his purpose.
He set his hand upon the gate. The crimson light swelled, consuming the snowfield, and the world tore itself away.
When his sight returned, he stood in shadow. Before him stretched a cavern vast as the sky, its ceiling alight with a false, star-scattered firmament. Below him, rivers of blood churned and frothed, feeding a crimson land where the very air stank of sacrifice.
The air here was thick. Each breath clawed at his lungs with the copper sting of blood, as though the land itself bled into the air. The false stars glittered cold above him, a mockery of the skies he had crossed, their light paling against the endless crimson that stretched across the cavern floor.
He stood still, unblinking, watching. The rivers of blood moved like living things, sloshing against their banks with a steady pulse, as though they were fed not only by sacrifice, but by something deeper—older—beneath the earth. The silence of the Consecrated Snowfield was gone. Here, the land whispered. Prayers. Screams. Pleas swallow into the crimson tide.
For a moment, he let himself wonder what kind of will could shape a palace from blood alone. What sort of hunger demanded such offerings, and how far Mohg had gone to twist himself into the Lord of Blood. His grip tightened on the Giant-Crusher, the hammer's presence grounding him against the oppressive weight of the place.
He set one foot forward, the cavern floor crunching beneath him, and began his descent into Mohgwyn's domain. The Albinaurics stirred first, pallid shapes rising from pools of coagulated crimson, their eyes burning faintly as if lit by the blood itself. They moved in broken patterns, half-mindless, yet desperate to defend their new god's sanctum.
He didn't slow. Sunlight Flame sparked in his palm, a white blaze cutting stark against the suffocating red. His hammer followed, each swing shaking the cavern walls, splattering crimson earth with pale fire and broken flesh.
The path ahead wound downward, ever deeper, toward the heart of the blood-swollen palace—and toward Mohg himself.
The air thickened as he descended, the light of his Sunlight Flame casting pale clarity against the red-dark cavern. All around him, the ground gleamed with wetness—not water, but blood packed into the stone, as though the land itself had bled for Mohg's dominion.
From the shadows, the Albinaurics emerged. Not the pitiful, half-formed wretches he had cut through in Liurnia, but warriors. Their limbs carried strength where once there had been weakness, their frames packed with sinew honed by blood rituals and ceaseless training. Their eyes glowed faintly crimson, pupils drowned in devotion. These were not strays. These were chosen, sharpened for their lord.
They came in droves. Spears bristled. Sickles gleamed. Their war-cries, half-choked by malformed throats, rang together like the baying of a single beast.
He met them head-on.
The Giant-Crusher's fall was thunder incarnate. The first swing flattened three at once, bodies crumpling into the crimson soil as the shockwave rolled outward. Blood mist hung in the air, lit white by the halo of his flame. Another group rushed him, blades hacking, spears thrusting. He spun the hammer low, the sheer weight of the stone head smashing their legs out from under them. They toppled like stalks of grain before the harvest, and his flame devoured them where they fell.
Runes tore free. They came in floods—white-gold sparks bursting from broken bodies, swirling into him with every kill. It was not the meager trickle of other lands; it was a storm. His strength swelled with each clash, each strike, his soul becoming a vessel brimming with their devotion. It was clear now why Mohgwyn's Palace was different. These Albinaurics had burned their lives into purpose. All their discipline, all their stolen strength, bled into the runes he now claimed.
Through it all, the runes came. Endless. Ever-flowing. More than he could have farmed in weeks upon the surface. Each spark sank into his chest, mingling with his breath, his pulse, his will. His body had stopped straining beneath the power of runes—now it welcomed it, drank it down as if it were natural, inevitable.
---
He crossed the blood-soaked threshold, the stench of iron thick in the air. Mohg stood upon the dais, his trident in hand, his form glistening with crimson ichor. Twin horns curled grotesquely from his skull, and his gaze burned with fanatical devotion.
"Welcome, Tarnished… to the coming dynasty of Mohg, Lord of Blood."
His voice slithered through the chamber, a hymn to the formless mother that promised both exaltation and ruin. With a sudden lunge, Mohg swept his trident, a crashing arc of steel and bloodflame.
He met it head-on. Giant-Crusher roared through the air, the clash shaking the chamber as sparks and droplets of blood hissed against stone. The weight of Mohg's blows was immense—strength that could rival gods themselves—but his hammer met it without faltering, his muscles straining, veins corded, every motion defiant.
Mohg advanced, his strikes a dance of ritual precision, each thrust of the trident blooming with gouts of crimson fire. He countered with brutal, efficient swings, each hammer strike cratering walls, splintering pillars, shaking the floor. The Sunlight Flame flared white in his palm, lashing out to scatter waves of burning purity that clashed violently against Mohg's boiling bloodflame.
Blood hissed and evaporated in clouds of steam as crimson and white collided. The chamber filled with their echoes—stone shattering, fire shrieking, the two forces locked like beasts testing the measure of one another.
For long moments, neither yielded. Mohg's laughter rang over the din, twisted joy in every syllable.
"Yes… you will make a most worthy offering. With your blood, the Formless Mother shall be pleased. With your flesh, her dynasty shall begin!"
He drove forward with a grunt, hammer slamming down in an earth-splitting arc that nearly crushed Mohg into the dais. But the demigod twisted away, trident flashing up, the air suddenly charged with ritual weight. His chant began to rise.
The blood would answer his call.
He stepped forward into the crimson haze. Mohg's clawed hand rose, and the air filled with a sonorous chant that made the marrow quiver.
"Trēs."
The word was a blade. Blood exploded from his flesh in streams, as if every vein in his body had been slit open at once. His vision dimmed, his body reeled—half his strength gone in a breath.
"Duo."
Again the call, and again the rupture. His chest split, his arms and legs burst with sprays of crimson, blood writhing into the air toward Mohg like living chains. He staggered, his heart pounding in a rhythm close to failure.
"Ūnus."
The final utterance dragged the very core of him outward. His lifeblood surged from his throat, his pores, his scars, leaving him hollow and trembling, the ground beneath slick with a lake of red. Mohg drank in the torrent, his wounds mended, his skin shimmering with renewed strength.
And still he did not fall.
His body convulsed, but the regeneration burned within his marrow—not fire, not faith, but the sheer force of a body honed past limits. Torn flesh knit back together in jagged patches, blood replenished as fast as it was lost, enough to keep him upright. He swayed, a wreck of gore and pain, yet still gripping the Giant-Crusher.
Mohg, transfigured, rose in a blaze of scarlet wings and dripping bloodflame, the cathedral drowning in his dominion.
He lifted his head, blood trailing from his lips. His chest heaved. His hammer rose. His white flame flickered faintly at his back—not to heal him, but to remind him of his will, his defiance.
The true battle began.
The cathedral roared with flame and blood, Mohg's laughter echoing in the vaulted dark. His trident carved the air in a storm of bloodflame, every strike a tide that would drown a lesser foe.
He met him blow for blow, the Giant-Crusher shaking the ground with each swing, his Sunlight Flame blazing in arcs of pure white. But Mohg's ritual lingered. Blood wriggled through his veins like barbed wire, bursting from his pores in steaming rivulets. From the first moment of the ritual until this moment, it's been survival—every surge of hemorrhage nearly tearing his body apart.
And yet he endured. His regeneration snapped bones back into place before they could buckle, sealed torn veins as fast as they split, pulled life back into him in violent bursts of renewal. Mohg's gift from the Formless Mother was an avalanche meant to bury him—yet it could not keep him down.
The Lord of Blood pressed harder, fury burning as he realized the ritual's curse had failed to break his foe. Bloodflame wings flared, his trident crashing down like judgment itself. He planted his feet, caught the weight of it, and shoved it aside, his hammer rising with an answering howl of white fire.
Each clash shook the cathedral. Blood and sunlight raged together, staining the walls, burning the air. Mohg's intelligence showed in every strike—angled thrusts, sweeping cuts, a predator circling prey. But he fought through it all, each swing of the Giant-Crusher more consuming, each blast of white flame a denial of blood's dominion.
Mohg spread his wings wide, his roar splitting the air with a final bellow.
He lunged.
He answered with his whole being, driving forward, hammer wrapped in fire so bright it turned night into dawn. The cathedral disappeared in the light of impact.
The stone ground shattered.
Flesh tore.
Blood boiled to vapor.
Mohg staggered, his voice breaking into a guttural hiss as the white fire devoured him, burning through his bloodflame, silencing the Formless Mother's gift. His wings curled inward. His body fell, trident slipping from his claws with a metallic scream.
He stood above him, chest heaving. Blood still covered his frame, but his flesh sealed even as it split, each wound closing in moments, leaving him whole where any other would lie in pieces. He gripped his hammer steady, the tremors in his body already fading.
Above Mohg's corpse, a Great Rune flared to life—deep red, heavy with ambition and blood. Its aura no greater than the others, yet its weight pressed against the air with suffocating gravity.
He raised a hand. The rune descended. Its essence sank into him.
The Lord of Blood was no more.
And his Great Rune was his.
For a time, he stood in silence, letting his body mend, letting his mind trace the path ahead.
He counted what he had. Godrick. Radahn. Rykard. Morgott. Malenia. Rennala. Mohg.
Seven Great Runes, each one humming with fractured echoes of divinity. A chorus of stolen fragments.
And yet the circle was still broken.
Four remained.
Ranni's Great Rune, cast aside to an unknown location. The only one knowing the location, being Ranni herself.
Radagon's Great Rune, locked behind the Erdtree's cruel thorns.
Marika's own, suspended in her crucifixion at its heart.
And the Rune of Destined Death—woven into Maliketh's being.
Marika had feared the Rune's theft more than anything. She had torn it from the Elden Ring and given it to her shadow, who sealed it within his own arm after a small piece was stolen by Ranni. No blade, no talisman, no thief could reach it. Only Maliketh's death would free it.
He closed his eyes, seeing the path with sudden clarity. Next would be Ranni's rune. But how to get it?