He pressed the horse on, its hooves striking cracked red earth, every breath of wind carrying more of Caelid's stench into his lungs. The land sloped downward, and before long the terrain opened into a blighted expanse he knew must be the Swamp of Aeonia. Even from here, the air shimmered with decay, a red miasma rising from stagnant waters. He did not linger—his path veered south, skirting the swamp's poisoned heart.
Rot-gnarled trees clawed at the sky, their branches heavy with fungal sacks that sagged and burst in the wind, scattering rust-colored spores across the land. His eyes caught movement at the water's edge—bodies twisted into rot-blighted horrors, their limbs stretched and warped, writhing mindlessly in the muck. One raised a swollen head toward him, mouth dribbling scarlet fluid, but he spurred the horse forward, leaving it thrashing in the mire.
The road south was little more than stone fractured and half-swallowed by crimson growths. A collapsed watchtower leaned in the distance, its stone base cracked open, mushroom clusters sprouting where soldiers once stood guard. He passed broken siege engines coated in spore-flesh, their iron frames sinking into the soft, diseased ground.
Crows circled overhead—massive, hunched things, their feathers molting, wings heavy with dripping rot. They perched along skeletal tree limbs, their eyes glowing faintly, following his progress with slow, deliberate turns of their heads. One croaked, and the sound carried like a death rattle.
The air was foul enough to burn his lungs, and for a moment the sheer scope of it struck him. Not just the swamp, not just Caelid—but the truth that the entire world was fractured, bleeding out through wounds left by the shattered Ring. If this was what became of the land without order, without balance, then his goal was no longer ambition alone. The Elden Ring had to be remade. Torn from the hands of the Greater Will, reforged under his will alone. Only then could this decay be burned away, and life returned to the land.
At the southern cliffs, the air grew drier, but no less foul. The ground hardened into jagged stone, pocked with crimson tumors clinging stubbornly to rock faces. From here, he looked west, and the horizon was choked with dust and scarlet haze. Beyond it lay the coast and, further still, the jagged silhouette of Redmane Castle—black stone jutting out of the rot like a fortress of defiance.
Soldiers still walked these paths, though not like those of Limgrave. The men of Caelid were pale and ragged, their armor corroded, their faces blotched with sickness. When they saw him riding, they lifted blades, but there was no fire in their eyes, only the dull reflex of men already claimed by this land. He cut them down swiftly when they drew near, his hammer breaking bone and rusted steel alike, his body shrugging off the desperate swings they managed to land. None could stop him.
The horse's breath grew labored, flecks of foam and spit at its mouth, but he drove it on. Southward. Always southward.
By the time the coast came into view, the rot was a constant presence—on the cliffs, in the air, clinging to the very stones of the road. But ahead, past it all, rose Redmane Castle. Its great gate loomed shut, the walls dark and scarred from ancient war, yet its towers still stood strong against the wasting land around it.
He slowed the stolen horse as the battered path curved toward the sea cliffs. There, nestled at the road's edge, flickered a site of grace—its pale light swaying like a fragile flame against Caelid's oppressive red sky. He dismounted, boots crunching against brittle stone, and for the first time since entering this land of rot, allowed himself to breathe.
The horse collapsed almost instantly, sides heaving, foam and spit streaking its mouth. It would not last long, not here. He left it where it fell.
Kneeling before the grace, he let the warmth spill into him, not as comfort but as a tether—reminding him of life beyond the decay. His body still hummed with strength, runes burning within like molten iron, but here, under Caelid's suffocating air, even that power felt like it was being tested.
He looked southward, toward Redmane Castle. Its towers rose black against the scarlet haze, its banners ragged but defiant. That was where General Radahn waited. Not a crumbling beast, not a forgotten sorcerer, but a Demigod—one of the greatest warriors to ever walk the Lands Between.
He thought of the swamp behind him, of Aeonia's heart still pulsing rot into the air, of men turned into husks by its spread. This was the price of the Elden Ring's shattering. This was what became of the world when chaos ruled. And it hardened him.
The Ring must be remade. The Greater Will had abandoned this land, let it fester until the soil itself sickened. To leave it in pieces would be to let Caelid's fate spread until nothing remained.
His hand tightened around the Brick Hammer resting at his side. With this weapon, and the runes he had gathered, he had slain Godrick. He had endured Rennala's full moons. Now he would meet Radahn's strength, and see how far his resolve could carry him.
The grace flickered brighter, catching his reflection in the steel of his gauntlet. His face looked harsher now, shadows deeper, eyes harder. He had no illusions—this battle might break him. But he would rise again, and again, until the Demigod fell.
He rose to his feet, turned from the grace, and started the walk down the cliffside road toward Redmane Castle.
The road bent downward, narrowing as it wound between cliffs and outcroppings of jagged stone. The air grew heavier with each step, saturated with the copper stink of decay. Wind pushed the rot-touched dust across the road in choking waves, and once or twice he caught sight of bodies half-swallowed by the land—soldiers who had marched too deep into Caelid, left to be claimed by the scarlet blight.
Far ahead, the towers of Redmane Castle came into focus, dark and broad, bristling with spiked battlements. Its silhouette was a jagged scar against the burning horizon. Torches lit its walls despite the daylight, their flames guttering strangely in the wind, as if even fire struggled here.
The Brick Hammer rested easily in his hand, not from weariness but readiness. His stride carried him past rotting siege engines and broken carts abandoned by armies long since consumed. Caelid's soil allowed nothing to survive; wood crumbled to dust, metal blistered with rust. Only the stone fortress endured.
Closer still, the cries of beasts carried on the wind—war lions, half-mad, chained along the ramparts. Their roars broke the silence, shaking the rot-thick air. He tensed at the sound, not in fear but in anticipation. Everything here was meant to deter the unworthy. And yet, this place called to him.
At last, the drawbridge came into view, lowered across a blackened chasm. No guards were there.
Behind those walls, he could already imagine the atmosphere: champions from across the Lands Between, waiting, preparing, their eyes all turned toward the legend of Radahn.
He tightened his grip on the hammer, the weight of his decision heavy in his chest. He would step into that place not as a guest, not as a supplicant, but as a challenger.
With a nod to himself, he crossed the drawbridge toward Redmane Castle.
The drawbridge groaned beneath his boots as he crossed into Redmane Castle. The moment he stepped through the arch, the air shifted—thicker, heavier, charged with expectation.
Inside, the great hall burned with torchlight. The rot and decay of Caelid stopped at the walls; here, the atmosphere carried not sickness, but anticipation. A gathering of killers, champions, outcasts.
His eyes moved across the room. A few faces only—yet each one carried weight. Blaidd stood tall, half-wolf form tense and still, greatsword at his back. To the side, Alexander the Warrior Jar rumbled with low, metallic laughter as he shifted his immense weight, the cracks in his clay body faintly glowing from the heat within. Near a table cluttered with discarded tankards, Okina sat slouched in silence, the mask over his face hiding whatever thought lingered behind the slits. And by the wall, a handful of lesser fighters, mercenaries with scarred armor and unpolished weapons, whispered among themselves.
There were not many. But each radiated the kind of strength only a life of battle could forge.
Above them, on the battlements, Castellan Jerren stood. His red robes and battered armor caught the torchlight, the steel of his staff gleaming faintly as he leaned against the stone. When he spoke, his voice cut through the hall like iron, carrying the weight of ceremony and finality:
"Make ready. The festival is nigh, and the General awaits. The combat is about to begin."
"The festival is a spectacle of war. As it should be! Dueling, combat, glory! And death. The calling of Radahn will mark the beginning of the festival. Are all soldiers prepared? Raise your arms for battle! The celebration of war! The Festival of Combat!"
The words rang through the chamber like a bell, every syllable soaked in ritual. Blaidd gave a slow nod, Alexander let out a booming clang that might have been approval, and Okina's masked face tilted ever so slightly toward the floor.
He stayed quiet, hammer heavy in his grip. This was no common gathering of soldiers. These were the chosen few, and the battle ahead would not be one of attrition or numbers—it would be slaughter, a trial against a godlike force.
He lifted his gaze to Jerren, the castellan watching from above. For a moment, their eyes met. The weight of it pressed against his chest like a silent demand.
Soon, the festival would begin. And with it, the battle against Radahn.
The castellan's words still echoed in the air when silence crept back into the hall. No one moved immediately; warriors of this caliber did not need to bluster or boast. Each sat or stood in their corner, waiting, conserving their strength.
The main character let his eyes linger on them, one by one.
Blaidd leaned against the stone wall, towering and broad. His wolf's head turned slightly toward the firelight, catching the glint of amber in his eye. His stillness wasn't laziness—it was coiled patience, the restraint of a predator who could strike at any moment. Even without a word, his presence was heavy, like the edge of a drawn blade.
Alexander, by contrast, was impossible to ignore. The jar-warrior shifted with a grinding of ceramic plates, his booming laugh spilling out as if war itself were something to savor like a fine drink. The cracks in his clay body pulsed faintly, heat rising from them with each exhale. He radiated an enthusiasm the others did not share—a joy in battle, almost childish, though his size and strength were anything but.
The swordsman Okina sat apart, mask tilted slightly down. His hand rested lazily on the sheath of his blade, but he felt no carelessness there. There was a tension in the stillness, a waiting readiness, as if Okina needed only the faintest excuse to draw steel and carve someone apart. His silence was sharp, heavier than words.
The mercenaries scattered through the hall were rougher, lesser things in comparison. Hardened men and women, scarred and battered, whispering low among themselves. Their armor was ill-kept, their weapons practical. They were not legends. But they had survived Caelid long enough to be standing here, and that was proof enough they were not to be underestimated.
His fingers tightened around the haft of the Brick Hammer. These were his companions in the coming battle, each strong in their own way, each drawn here for the same purpose: to face Radahn.
A fragment of unease gnawed at him. Godrick had power. Rennala, brilliance. Both had pushed him to the edge of what he could endure. And yet what awaited them now was something greater still—a warrior spoken of with reverent respect for his strength, a general whose legend loomed larger than castles.
The silence in the hall stretched taut, a collective breath held. Firelight flickered against steel and stone, shadows shifting across the gathered warriors. Then, from above, Jerren's voice boomed down, gravel-rough and commanding.
"Are you good and prepared?" He looks at everyone, one by one. "The festival begins!"
A stir rippled through the hall—heads lifting, hands tightening on weapons.
"Before we begin, allow me to paint you the full picture," Jerren continued, pacing slowly along the battlements overhead, his gaze cast down like a watchful hawk. "General Radahn is cursed ever to wander. Eaten from the inside, by Malenia's scarlet rot, his wits are long gone."
His voice carried, striking every ear like a hammer.
"Now he gathers the corpses of former friends and foes alike, gorging on them, like a dog. Howling at the sky!"
The words reverberated through the keep, painting the scene of the nightmare waiting for them beyond its walls.
The main character felt his grip harden around the Brick Hammer, the weight both a comfort and a promise. He looked once at Blaidd, at Alexander, at Okina, and saw in their stances the same thing reflected back—readiness, grim or joyous, but readiness all the same.
Jerren raised a hand, and the air in the hall seemed to shift with it.
"But now! We must make merry! O gathering of champions! The festival of combat is nigh! The festival is upon us!"
The words crashed down like a drumbeat, undeniable, absolute. This was no longer anticipation. It was a summons.
The warriors rose.
The last echoes of Jerren's words still clung to the air when the great doors of Redmane Castle groaned open. The storm outside screamed across the rot-stained plains, carrying with it the smell of blood and dust. One by one, the champions moved, striding with purpose, the heavy thrum of their steps shaking the floor beneath them.
He followed, hammer resting across his shoulder, breath steady, mind sharpened. Blaidd marched at the head, Alexander rumbled along beside him, the others fanning out—each drawn forward by the promise of combat that could shake the very world.
The warp-gate awaited at the base of the keep, its shimmering, distorted light rippling like a mirage. The air around it was charged, humming with power, like a storm barely contained.
They gathered in silence. No speeches, no prayers. Only grim faces and hands tightening on hilts and hafts.
He stepped forward without hesitation. The gate's pull wrapped around him instantly—icy, electric, absolute. The world stretched, twisted—stone and flame and castle falling away, replaced by horizon and sky.
And then—
Sand beneath his boots.
The battlefield of Caelid sprawled out endless and red. The dunes rolled like waves, and in the distance, silhouetted against a corpse-strewn plain, loomed a figure too large to be human. A rider atop a half-rotted horse, armored in iron as though the very earth had forged it, head bowed, shoulders massive, weight of doom in every motion.
General Radahn.
The star-slayer. The rot-eaten demigod of war.
The battle had begun.
The Caelid wind howled across the dunes, carrying the stench of rot and death. Silence hung for a beat too long. Then—
Thrum.
A sound like the sky itself tearing apart. The ground shook as an arrow the size of a tree trunk ripped through the air, trailing a shriek that rattled teeth. It buried itself in the sand not twenty paces from them, the impact throwing a wall of grit and dust into the air.
"Scatter!" Blaidd's voice cut through the chaos.
Another thrum, and another arrow blotted out the sun. One of the warriors—an axe-wielder from the far south—tried to dodge too late. The shaft punched through him like paper, pinning him to the sand in a spray of blood before shattering into splinters.
He moved fast, instincts sharpened by months of slaughter and battle. Each colossal shot was a thunderclap of death, and only constant motion kept him alive. His hammer weighed heavy in his hands, but he clutched it tight, teeth grit, eyes locked on the distant giant.
Radahn loomed at the far end of the battlefield, standing tall atop his sickly horse, bow drawn with an ease that mocked its size. The demigod's armor glistened under the bleeding sky, and with each pull of his massive weapon, the dunes trembled as though the world itself feared him.
Another arrow screamed toward him. He threw himself forward into a roll, feeling the wind shear the back of his cloak as the missile thundered past, smashing a crater into the dunes behind. Sand rained down like ash.
They pressed onward. One by one, the warriors drew Radahn's fire—arrows chasing them like spears hurled by fate itself. Blaidd howled defiance, Alexander roared with unbreakable cheer, even as sand geysered around them.
Then, at last, Radahn cast aside the bow.
The battlefield went still, the only sound the ragged breaths of those still standing.
And then the demigod moved.
He charged.
The earth shook with each thunderous stride, horse and rider tearing across the dunes with impossible speed. His twin greatswords—blades broad enough to cleave boulders—rose high, catching the sun.
And in that moment, the weight of what he faced struck him fully.
This was no soldier. No giant. No stitched-together weakling like Godrick.
This was a true demigod of war, a beast of iron and fury, riding down on them like the hammer of a vengeful sky.
He braced his hammer. Set his stance. And waited for the clash.
The battle began as chaos, but not without order. Each warrior had their moment to shine, to prove their strength against the demigod.
Blaidd darted through the dust like a shadow, blades flashing, his wolf's snarl carrying above the clash of steel. He fought with a feral rhythm, weaving between Radahn's massive swings, carving shallow lines into armor thicker than most walls. His strikes drew blood—barely—but it was blood all the same.
Beside him, Alexander roared, iron body slamming forward like a living fortress. His massive bulk absorbed strikes that would have flattened mortal men. When Radahn's greatsword came crashing down, Alexander held the line, his arms trembling as cracks split across his ceramic form, but still he stood, bellowing in defiance.
The sorcerers loosed glintstone fury from a distance, streaks of blue fire lancing through the sky. One unleashed a shower of crystalline shards that shattered against Radahn's helm, forcing his head back. Another conjured a comet that blasted across the battlefield like a falling star, exploding against the demigod's chest with enough force to stagger even him.
For a moment, they seemed like a true army. Each attack fell in rhythm with the others, each warrior covering the gaps of another.
And he was there in the thick of it—hammer raised, every strike a thunderclap. When his weapon connected, it wasn't just sound. Armor plates buckled under his blows, dented deep enough to bite into flesh. A downward smash into Radahn's thigh made the massive limb buckle for a heartbeat, forcing the demigod to adjust his stance. Another blow struck his ribs with enough force to send blood spattering from Radahn's mouth. The hammer didn't just ring against the general's body—it hurt him.
For all Radahn's scale and power, the cracks were beginning to show.
But Radahn was no ordinary foe. He was a demigod—more than flesh, more than steel.
With a sweep of his twin swords, he sent Alexander tumbling end over end, iron shell caving in on itself with a scream of grinding metal. The great jar groaned, his voice weakening, before he rolled clear of the battlefield, too battered to rise again.
Blaidd fought on longer, every strike fierce, every dodge near-perfect. But Radahn's reach was endless. A backhanded swing caught him mid-leap, hurling him into the dunes. The wolf knight spat blood, struggling to rise, but his leg bent wrong, and he could not.
The sorcerers pressed him hard, but Radahn's bow ended them. Arrows larger than ballista bolts tore through their wards, reducing spell and sorcerer alike to mist and rubble. A single comet still burned through the sky, but when it struck, Radahn answered with a flaming meteor of his own, swallowing the mage in his fire.
One by one, the warriors fell.
Until the dust cleared.
And he stood alone. Body whole, but covered with grime and muck from the rot of Caelid.