Fallen leaves carried the news.
Far away, in the land we once called home — the Lands Between — the Elden Ring had shattered.
The Dark Moon Princess of Caria had set in motion the conspiracy known as the Night of the Black Knives, bringing about the death of Godwyn the Golden, firstborn son of the Elden Queen and heir to the Golden Order.
Unable to bear the grief of losing her son, the Queen had lost her mind — and in her madness, she shattered the Elden Ring that held the Lands Between together.
With the Ring broken, the Golden Order crumbled alongside it, and the hard-won peace of the Lands Between was irrevocably destroyed.
After the mad Queen was sealed away within the Erdtree by the Two Fingers, the war known as the Shattering swept across every corner of the Lands Between.
The demigods, children of the Queen, each fought for their own ambitions. And the opportunists who had long been lying in wait began to stir.
The people placed their hopes in the red-haired hero — the Queen's consort — to step forward and bring an end to it all. But the hero had vanished along with the Queen, sealed away without a trace.
— Such was the rumor and common understanding held by most who still lived on this war-torn land.
At the center of the great lake of Liurnia, within the halls of the Academy of Raya Lucaria perched upon its jagged rocky summit —
The one who had started it all, the treacherous schemer of Lands Between legend, the puppet girl known as Ranni, had appeared within the Academy at some point no one could quite pinpoint.
The demigod coalition still could not breach Leyndell, the Royal Capital atop the Altus Plateau, and no one knew what master the Golden Order would one day bow to.
But none of that had anything to do with her — the one who had abandoned her Great Rune and chosen to forfeit her claim in the Shattering.
"Your Highness. You've come."
"Stand down. No need for a welcome — I'm only here to see my mother."
Dismissing the Carian Knight who had come to greet her, the witch Ranni turned her puppet avatar's gaze to sweep the surroundings.
The Red Wolf left behind by her father, Radagon, still loyally guarded the only path leading into the Grand Library.
The Academy sorcerers who occasionally passed through this hall all quickened their steps — as though desperate to keep their distance from the Grand Library, which served as a place of confinement.
Her mother, Rennala — the Full Moon Queen of the Carian royal family, the former head of the Academy of Raya Lucaria — had been lost to madness for a long time now.
The situation had only worsened when the Shattering began, and her father Radagon — who, as Ranni's father, had abandoned her mother — vanished completely.
If once her mother had still been capable of the occasional lucid word, now she was wholly submerged in the cocoon of the "unborn" left behind by her father, beyond all reach of communication.
Had Ranni not left safeguards of her own in place, her mother might well have been quietly done away with by the power-hungry sorcerers of the Academy long ago.
But even so, things were far from well.
"My mother..."
Wait for me. Wait. Once I have broken free of the fate those fingers have forced upon us — I believe everything will be alright...
Moonlight filtered through the great doors of the Grand Library, falling upon Ranni's small puppet frame — ice-blue and clearly not flesh and blood.
She looked at her mother, sheltered within the magical barrier she herself had woven, and at the Amber Egg left behind by her missing father.
For some reason, she found herself thinking of Queen Marika — the Eternal — who was likewise said to have lost her mind.
— Though Ranni had a nagging sense that things were not quite so simple.
She, who stood in plain sight as the "mastermind" behind the Night of the Black Knives, had perhaps herself been calculated and used by something lurking even deeper in the shadows.
Much had already exceeded anyone's expectations — including this drawn-out Shattering. No one knew what fate awaited the Lands Between when the war finally ended.
Rustle... rustle...
"...?"
Pulled from her thoughts by a strange sound, Ranni raised her gaze, instinctively looking toward the source of the disturbance —
It was her mother. The Amber Egg cradled in Queen Rennala's arms.
An imperceptible tremor emanated from within it, stirring even her mother from her stupor. Rennala's eyes opened. She looked down at the object in her hands and murmured softly.
"Child... are you finally going to be born, child?..."
"What kind of person will you become... be good, now. Just like Ranni..."
Queen Rennala's mind was still in a wretched state. Ranni paid her mother's words little mind — her eyes were fixed, unblinking, on the Amber Egg her father Radagon had left behind —
She watched as a radiance gathered within it. Before long, a human silhouette took shape — as though about to be born from the Amber itself.
— Ranni knew that the Egg harbored the Great Rune left by her father Radagon. She knew, too, that it possessed the power of genesis — the ability to create or reforge the very essence of life, to a degree.
The sorcerers of the Academy of Raya Lucaria had long coveted that power.
But fortunately, with Ranni's magical barrier in place, no one had been able to lay so much as a finger on her mother, or on her father's relic.
— And yet now, feeling the fluctuation of the Great Rune's power, Ranni was absolutely certain: at some point while she wasn't watching, someone had pilfered the power of her father's relic.
Who had done so went without saying. As she watched the figure preparing to emerge from the Amber, Ranni's gaze turned cold.
"Ugh... so dizzy...!"
"Is this really what it feels like to respawn in the game...? Ugh, this is absolutely foul!"
An unfamiliar male voice rang out. The light faded, the silhouette resolved, and what emerged was a handsome young man dressed in clothing of a distinctly foreign style.
Ranni was not foolish enough to think this was her newly-born "little brother."
Magical energy had already coalesced in her hand — a longsword glowing with a pale light the same color as moonlight. In the very instant the young man appeared, its tip was hovering less than half a foot from his forehead.
"State your identity and origins, intruder."
One of her puppet avatar's four arms held the sword. Her gaze was ice-cold as she stared down the stranger:
"You have trespassed in the domain of the Carian royal family, stolen the power of a Great Rune, and brought disgrace upon us — you have three breaths to answer me, before I take your life."
...
Not every moonlit encounter is a romantic one.
This was the Lands Between — not some cozy little town — and given Ranni's temperament, the fact that she hadn't hurled you headfirst into a dungeon already was practically an act of mercy.
But that didn't mean Shin could afford to be anything close to relaxed about his situation.
[Spreading Witch Factor (Temp Account)]: @Lord of the Lands Between
[Spreading Witch Factor (Temp Account)]: Respected Lady Marika, you're watching the live stream I shared to the group, right? Could you tell me what I'm supposed to do in a situation like this?
[Spreading Witch Factor (Temp Account)]: [You have shared a group livestream]
[Moon Princess]: Oh my, you've gotten quite comfortable with the group chat features already, little one~
In his mind's eye, Shin — simultaneously logged into two group accounts — triple-checked that he hadn't mixed up his aliases, then shared his field of vision through the account the Great Witch had temporarily lent him to the chat group.
Shin, who had come to the Lands Between via the [Boundary Breaking Talisman], had not arrived beside any of his chat-group companions the way characters did in those group-chat web novels he'd read in his past life.
Which made sense, if you thought about it — from the chat logs, Marika's current state was clearly post-Ring-shattering. If he'd been transported inside the Erdtree, that would have been a disaster.
Fight both Radagon and the Elden Beast? As if he could pull that off.
So Marika had chosen a relatively safe landing spot for him — in the midst of the war-torn Lands Between, the Academy of Raya Lucaria: a neutral ground protected by magical barriers.
[Spreading Witch Factor (Temp Account)]: Lady Marika, I touched the Amber Egg you told me to, but I didn't receive any kind of "guidance"?
[Spreading Witch Factor (Temp Account)]: And from the look of things, I've clearly been mistaken for an intruder. Do you know her? Should I explain myself, or should I just run?
All the while, he kept his face composed — no easy feat with a four-armed blue puppet aiming a magic sword at him.
The experience of touching the Amber Egg had left him nauseous. The best way to describe it: imagine being stuffed inside a front-loading washing machine running at full power for 45 minutes. Even with a Pillar Man's constitution, he had barely held it together.
[Lord of the Lands Between]: You have already received my "guidance." Look inward — sense your soul. I have bestowed upon you the Great Rune that was stored within that Amber Egg.
[Lord of the Lands Between]: Through it, you will be able to sense the whereabouts of My children who likewise possess Great Runes... It will also grant you a measure of power — consider it one part of the reward I promised you earlier.
Shin: ?!
Sure enough, Shin hastily opened the other system he'd nearly forgotten about — and sure enough, his stat panel had changed:
[New bloodline detected in Host. Evolution Points +200]
[Host: Shin]
[Age: 16]
[Race: Human (?)]
[Bloodlines: Pillar Man, First Witch, Demigod (Vestige)]
Alright — any lingering complaints Shin had about Marika telling him to touch the Amber Egg evaporated on the spot.
Say what you will, but as far as "mom" figures go, Marika's resources put the Great Witch to shame. She handed over a Great Rune capable of channeling demigod divinity like it was nothing.
Sure, this particular Great Rune had no corresponding Divine Tower activation in the game, meaning its power was severely limited.
But a Great Rune was still a Great Rune. Take Vyke, for instance — the man was called a "near-consort" just for holding two of them.
Now Shin had one in his hands. Was that not, in its own way, the mark of a king?
To be continued…