The weight of the Rune of Destined Death sank into him like a cold stone, a gravity that pressed against every inch of his soul. It did not feel like strength, not like the other Great Runes. It felt like absence, a void—a reminder of the silence that follows all things. The inevitability that clings to every breath, every heartbeat, every flame.
He stood there, still as the shadows receded. The Sunlight Flame wreathed his shoulders in pale fire, no longer flaring violently, but pulsing with a steady rhythm, as though in answer. Death weighed him down, yet his flame rose to meet it. Life, will, defiance—burning white against the blackness that gnawed at the edges of his being.
He breathed in, and for a moment, felt the two forces gnash against one another. Death whispered of stillness. His flame roared of persistence. The clash of opposites threatened to pull him apart—but instead of breaking, he began to see.
This was not a contradiction. It was balanced.
The Erdtree's order, as it was, had sought to deny Death, to lock it away, to create eternity at the cost of truth. But eternity had bred stagnation, corruption, and rot. Life without its natural end had twisted into something grotesque.
And here he stood with both in his grasp—the new flame… of life, hope, and persistence, and the rune of death, inevitability and release. His flame was not meant to banish death. Nor was death meant to smother the flame. Together, they could temper one another.
The vision of his dream struck him then, sudden, vivid, and absolute: the Elden Ring, whole, but reforged anew. Its Great Runes reassembled not as tools for gods or outer will, but as the scaffolding for a truer order. Within it, the Sunlight Flame would burn eternally—a fire not of denial or greed, but of will and renewal. And against it, the Rune of Death, anchoring it, ensuring that no flame could consume forever, that no life would fall into rot, that all things could end and begin again in balance.
Life and death, bound within one order. The fire of persistence and the silence of release, not in opposition, but in harmony.
He tightened his grip on the Giant-Crusher. The vision lingered like a brand in his mind. This was what he was meant to forge. This was what his journey had been driving him toward. Not a hollow echo of the past, nor servitude to an outer god. But something new. Something balanced.
His flame flickered higher for a moment, responding to his resolve, pure white in the gloom. It no longer stood alone. Death had joined it now. And together, they would form the backbone of what was to come.
The Sanctum was silent now. Maliketh's body lay still at the far end of the chamber, but his presence—his weight—lingered like a shadow clinging to the air. At the center of the room, a Site of Grace shimmered faintly, as though it had always been there, waiting for this moment.
He moved to it slowly, lowering himself onto the stone floor. The golden light of Grace wrapped around him, steady and calm.
And yet, sitting there, his heart was not at rest.
The Rune of Destined Death pulsed inside him like a second heartbeat. Heavy, inevitable. He could feel it lodged into the weave of his soul, balancing against the flame he had forged. They did not fight each other. Instead, they circled one another like opposites, the flame of persistence standing against the black inevitability of death. Not canceling, but completing.
This was the balance he had been searching for.
Still, it was not whole. He knew that.
Two more runes waited to be claimed. Radagon's, locked in the thorns of the Erdtree. Marika's, hanging atop her crucified body at the heart of the Erdtree. And together, their twin fragments of divinity would tie the Ring back to its core structure. Without them, his order could not stand as he wishes—no matter how bright his flame or how strong his will.
He thought of the Great Runes he carried now, all stained by the scars and weaknesses of their wielders. And now the Rune of Death, older than them all, seeded into his soul alongside all the rest. Once, these runes had been fragments of a whole. He could feel it every time he gathered another, the tug toward unity. Toward restoration.
The Grace shimmered before him, steady and waiting. But its radiance felt dim compared to what burned within. His light, his fire, was not something to guide him along a path carved by others. It was the path.
The Erdtree still barred him, thorns impassable. But he would burn them away, one by one, until its heart lay open before him.
He left the Sanctum behind with measured steps, the echo of Maliketh's defeat still heavy in his bones. The night air outside Caelid carried the stink of rot, but the sunlight flame within him burned it away before it could take hold. Each stride was steady, driven, unhurried—like a titan who knew his destination would not vanish, only wait.
Past twisted trees and wasted fields, through the Altus Plateau and the long, solemn path of Leyndell, he walked. Not a word left his lips. His hammer rested against his back, his flame simmered deep within his chest. The city lay silent in his wake, its ash-heavy streets proof of what he had already endured. Step by step, he climbed the long stair, until there was nowhere left to walk.
And there it was.
The Erdtree rose before him in impossible scale, its trunk blotting out the stars, its golden boughs spread like a canopy over the world. But its gates were not open. The thorns stood as guardians—vast, unyielding, as though grown from the will of the tree itself. They twisted higher than towers, gleaming with cold golden light.
He came close, pressing his palm to them. The surface hummed, not with warmth, but with a cold so absolute it was painful. No mortal strength could break these vines. Not even his hammer, not even his flame.
A voice broke the silence.
"So. It is you, at last."
From the stair behind, Gideon Ofnir, the All-Knowing, emerged. His steps were measured, words whispering like dry parchment. The helm concealed his ruined face, but not his contempt.
"I know of the path you've walked. You thought yourself hidden, but nothing escapes me. My eyes watched as you hunted down each Great Rune. I know of your flame, white and unnatural." He finished with a disgusted curl of his lips.
The Tarnished turned, no words offered in reply. His hammer slipped from his back with a low groan of steel.
"You are dangerous," Gideon said, staff rising. "Too dangerous, for the world itself. I gathered knowledge to prevent exactly this. To prevent you and those like you from getting this far. And I will not let another pretender kindle ambition into ruin."
The air trembled. Sorcery swelled around him, not one school but all—glintstone, blood, rot, shadows, flame—woven from countless stolen secrets. A man made into a weapon of forbidden truths.
The Tarnished advanced.
Spells screamed forth—comets tearing the sky, rivers of scarlet rot bursting from the stones, curses that clawed at the very soul. Gideon wielded them all with ruthless mastery, his network of spies having brought him every scrap of lore, every weakness, every forbidden rite.
And still the hammer broke them. Each swing tore the air apart, the white flame bursting outward, burning the corruption away. The crash of steel against stone drowned the chants, the light of his humanity scouring each spell like paper in a furnace.
But Gideon was relentless. Every strike revealed another stratagem, another secret unearthed, another dagger of secret power hurled at the Tarnished.
Until the hammer struck true.
One blow drove him to his knees, his body pathetically weak in comparison to his sorceries. Another shattered the golden sorcery clinging to him in protection. Gideon's helm tilted back, his voice thin, bitter.
"I know… In my bones… A tarnished cannot become a lord… Especially… not… you…"
The flame answered him, white and pure. A final strike ended Gideon Ofnir, his vaunted knowledge scattering with him, ashes in the wind.
The Tarnished turned again to the Erdtree, to the wall of thorns. They loomed, unbroken, uncaring. Even with the All-Knowing fallen, the path remained barred.
But his flame did not waver.
His eyes narrowed, and he moved to the thorns. Within his chest, the fragment of Destined Death stirred, faint and whispering, as though called. He felt it clearly now: no power of fire nor brute force could undo this seal. Only the truth of death, the inevitability the gods had buried, could open the way.
And yet, his flame answered too—steady, brilliant, unfaltering. Life and death, no longer enemies, but two halves of the same law.
He stood before the thorns, their golden coils twisting endlessly upward, unbroken, eternal. For a long moment he only breathed, listening to the faint thrum of their barrier—an unyielding will, the last defense of the Erdtree. His hand tightened on the haft of the Giant-Crusher. His chest swelled, the flame inside him roaring to life.
This time, he did not hold it back.
The Sunlight Flame erupted from him in a torrent—pure white, radiant as the heart of the sun, carrying not destruction but the undeniable force of existence itself. And woven within it now was something new: the sharp, merciless edge of Destined Death. He had not taken it to unmake, but to temper. Life and death together, balanced, complete.
He raised his hand to the barrier, and the fire surged forward. The thorns shrieked. They writhed as the white blaze consumed them, no longer untouched by steel or spell. The heat seared through marrow and stone alike, while the weight of death gnawed at their roots. Golden fibers blackened, cracked, then fell to ash.
The barrier did not resist long.
As the last thorn crumbled to dust, something shimmered in the air before him. A Great Rune—Radagon's. It pulsed with a heavy, restrained power, jagged and fractured in ways the others were not. It radiated the sense of a god still bound within, of pain and duty woven tight.
But it did not resist him. Slowly, steadily, it sank into his hand, its light folding into the greater weave of runes already bound to him.
The path was open. The last walls of the Erdtree had fallen.
He stood tall in the silence that followed, the glow of the flame fading back into the steady burn within his chest. He had one more piece to claim.
And all he had to do was kill a god.
The roots of the Erdtree parted, and silence fell.
At the heart of the hollow chamber, a body hung suspended—Marika herself, the Eternal. Her arms stretched wide across the broken lattice of her own Great Rune, bound within it like a prisoner of divine order. Her golden hair hung lifeless, her expression neither wrathful nor merciful—only still, eternally caught between fracture and eternity.
The chamber trembled. The body convulsed. Marika's divine frame twisted, her form cracking like porcelain as another presence forced its way forward. Flesh reknit, reshaped—limbs narrowing, her face hardening. Golden light bled from her eyes as the goddess's body shifted into the male form of Radagon.
His long hair burned with amber fire, his scarred face set in silence. No words passed his lips.
Only the raising of his hammer.
The same hammer that once shattered the Elden Ring. Now wielded as judgment.
The hammer fell.
The first blow struck with such force that the shallow water beneath the Tarnished's boots rippled outward, silver waves rolling into the infinite black that surrounded the battlefield. Radagon fought without a word, without fury or glee—his silence was its own judgment, the unyielding hand of Order given form.
Each swing was cataclysmic, each strike carrying the weight of divinity. The water splashed upward in radiant arcs as gold light and white flame collided, hammer ringing against hammer. The Tarnished's Sunlight Flame burned against Radagon's brilliance, every clash sending shockwaves across the dark horizon.
But Radagon was tireless. For every strike he endured, his return was swifter, more precise, a golden hammer descending like divine decree. The Tarnished was thrown down again and again, the shallow waters shattering with each fall, rippling outward into the void. And yet—each time, he rose, white flame kindling anew, defying the god who sought to break him.
It was a cycle of death and return. A mortal wielding the fire of his soul against a god of absolute Order.
Then—Radagon faltered.
The final strike of the Giant-Crusher landed, and the crack was deafening. Radagon's form shuddered, fractures of gold racing across his flesh. Light burst through the cracks, his body unraveling as though too fragile to contain what dwelled within.
He dropped to his knees, the shallow water rippled around him. A divine claw arose from the water below, pulling the body beneath the dark water.
The beast rose, serpentine, nearly draconic, but undeniably divine. Where Radagon had knelt, there now unfurled the Elden Beast—the vassal of the Greater Will.
Its body was a tapestry of starlight, its blade forged from Radagon's broken form, the Sacred Relic Sword. The dark space beyond the shallow waters filled with a radiance almost too much to bear, as though the cosmos themselves had descended.
The Tarnished stood there, battered and bloodied, water lapping against his boots. He gazed up at the immensity of the god before him, the weight of the cosmos pressing down.
The Sunlight Flame flared pure and white within him.
The beast of the Golden Order had risen.
And he would rise against it—again, and again, until even the gods respected his will.
The Elden Beast soared and twisted, a living star-chart made flesh, its sword cleaving arcs of golden law through the shallow waters. The Tarnished staggered under its onslaught, body shattered and remade, again and again, by sheer will and the relentless rhythm of his regeneration.
Each strike from the beast was divine command, each blast of holy light a decree that no mortal should withstand. Yet the Tarnished endured. He struck back, hammer blazing with white fire, every blow a contradiction to the Greater Will. The Sunlight Flame flared brighter with each death, each rebirth, each moment of defiance—his will burning against eternity.
And then the void began to change.
Where the Elden Beast's golden radiance had filled the heavens, another light began to bloom. At first a shimmer, then a glow, then a brilliance so pure the stars themselves seemed to recoil. A vast, white sun ignited above the arena, its light washing across the endless dark.
It was no fragment, no weapon's tool. It was the Sunlight Flame revealed in its truest form.
Not borrowed, not gifted, but born of a mortal soul.
The Elden Beast turned, its golden frame thrashing, its roar shaking the waters. The very cosmos bent beneath the descending brilliance.
The Tarnished raised his hammer, not as a conduit but as a declaration. His flame, his will, his very essence, had called forth this sun.
The star fell.
The heavens cracked with its descent, the shallow waters hissing into vapor. The void quaked as that vast sphere of white fire, blinding and absolute, crashed down upon the Elden Beast.
There was no sound. No scream. Only light.
The beast's body disintegrated, constellations torn apart, its sword splintering into ash. The vast, golden form dissolved under the sheer purity of the sun—no shadow left untouched, no law left unbroken.
The white sun consumed everything.
And then, slowly, it waned.
The white sun guttered out, leaving only darkness. The void, once alive with the Elden Beast's holy constellations, now lay still and lightless. The waters around the Tarnished calmed to glass, unbroken but for his own reflection.
He stood in that emptiness, hammer heavy at his side, flame receding into his chest. His breaths came harsh, each one a reminder that though his body had endured the impossible, it was still mortal. The silence pressed on him like the weight of eternity.
Then, from the darkness, it appeared.
Suspended above the still waters, faint but undeniable, the last Great Rune shimmered into being.
Marika's Great Rune.
The very rune upon which she had been bound—crucified not on wood or stone, but upon law itself. Her crime: the shattering. Her punishment: to hang eternally in judgment, body and soul a reminder of broken order.
Now that rune, vast and pale, drifted down before him. The threads of its design reached outward, each line a memory of what once was. Unlike the others he had claimed, there was no corruption, no warping from demigod influence. It was raw. Absolute.
The Tarnished reached out. His hand closed around its radiance.
And in that moment, the void was torn open.
The runes he carried—Godrick's, Radahn's, Rykard's, Morgott's, Malenia's, Mohg's, Rennala's, Maliketh's, Radagon's—and now Marika's—each one answered. They rose from him like burning stars, circling, converging. Their fractured essences, once tainted by war and ambition, were pulled into alignment by his will alone.
The Sunlight Flame surged from his chest, not as a weapon, but as the hearth upon which the runes could be reforged. Pure white fire licked through their broken lines, burning away rot, blood, madness, and corruption. One by one, the stains of demigods and outer gods alike were stripped clean.
The void blazed.
Before him, the Great Runes intertwined, their arcs and lines reforming into a whole. The pattern wove itself like destiny remembered—circles within circles, laws upon laws. The Elden Ring.
But not as it had been.
Not as it was when Radagon and Marika bound it with the will of the Greater God.
This was his vision. His order.
Within the perfected Ring, the Sunlight Flame burned alongside the Rune of Death. Life and Death in harmony, not opposition. Light not as golden law, but as white, untainted fire—unyielding, pure, mortal in origin. The influences of gods and parasites alike had no place here. Outer gods were silent. Their claws could not reach.
The Ring pulsed, whole and true, its radiance not gilded but blinding white. It was balance. It was finality. It was freedom.
The Tarnished fell to one knee, not in worship, but in exhaustion. The hammer at his side cracked the water's surface. The great light of the Ring washed over him, filling every breath, every wound, every scar of his countless deaths.
He had done it.
A mortal had taken what gods broke, what demigods corrupted, and remade it in his own image.
The void trembled, as though the very fabric of the world waited for what came next.
The Tarnished rose, the Elden Ring complete before him. His flame burned steady, no longer desperate, no longer writhing. For the first time, it was at peace.
His order was ready to begin.
The void quaked around him, the completed Elden Ring blazing in its perfect form. Its lines pulsed with harmony, not fracture—life and death, flame and shadow, bound by mortal will. For the first time since its shattering, the Ring was whole.
The Tarnished stood before it, chest rising and falling, his hammer hanging loose in one hand. He stared into its endless white light, and for the first time in all his long road, he felt no urge to fight, no weight pressing him onward. This was the end of the journey. The answer to every death, every victory, every broken wall of his body and spirit.
He stepped forward.
The Elden Ring opened to him. Not as a master to a slave, nor as a god to a vessel, but as equal to equal. The Runes did not resist. They answered. His Sunlight Flame, born of his own soul, reached outward and wrapped the Ring, binding it not to the Greater Will, nor to the Formless Mother, nor to any force that whispered from beyond. It was bound to him.
Light engulfed him.
The Ring dissolved into fire and sank into his chest, each rune searing into place as though etched into his very bones. He felt them all—strength and faith, death and rebirth, order and chaos—woven into balance by his will alone. His Sunlight Flame swelled, no longer a weapon, but now part of the foundation of all things.
The void was set ablaze.
White sunfire erupted across the endless dark, not in destruction, but in creation. It swept across the still waters, igniting them into radiant seas. It burned through the endless night, and stars blossomed where the fire kissed the void. It touched the ground beneath him, and the Lands Between was born anew.
From his soul, a new world began to take shape.
He was no longer merely Tarnished. No longer mortal clawing at divinity. He was the vessel of the Ring. The lord of a perfected order. The God of Sunlight and Balance.
The flame within him burned eternal, not for war, but for harmony. Death and life, fire and dark, mortal and divine—each bound, each respected. No god could twist this order. No outer voice could mar it. For this was a flame born of man, tempered in struggle, and made pure by will alone.
The void knelt before him. The cosmos bent. The age of his order began.
The man who had surpassed every limit ascended, and the world was his.