That vast and grotesque face belonged to none other than the Prince of Death. In ages past, he bore a title of brilliance—Godwyn the Golden.
Godwyn, firstborn of Elden Lord Godfrey and Queen Marika the Eternal, carried the most exalted lineage. But his nobility was not only in blood. His strength was peerless. He fought with valor in the war against the Ancient Dragons, turning the tide when hope faltered. It was he who forged a bond of kinship with the Ancient Dragon Fortissax, once a mortal enemy. Yet this paragon of demigods was struck down on the Night of the Black Knives, becoming the first of the demigods to taste death.
This face—Godwyn's face—should not have been here.
After that fateful night, Siluria, First Knight of the Erdtree, carried Godwyn's body into the Deeproot Depths with two Crucible Knights, hoping to return him to the roots of the Erdtree. None returned. But soon after, Godwyn's lingering blood within Leyndell began to fester, swelling into abominable growths of flesh. By the end of the first defense of the capital, one such growth had become a grotesque face the size of a banquet table. When Morgott rewarded Stormveil to Godrick, he commanded the wretch to bring that face here, and bury it deep beneath the castle, where the roots of the Erdtree coiled.
And now, broken and bleeding, his strength lost, Godrick dragged his mangled body before that deathly visage.
He could barely move, his severed stump exposing gleaming white bone. Yet that was all he needed. With shaking hand, he pressed the remains of his arm against Godwyn's hardened flesh. He pushed, forcing jagged bone into the death-swollen visage.
Rot and filth seeped forth first, followed by a slow trickle of black ichor. The instant the rot-laden flesh and his marrow met, a power unlike any other surged into Godrick's frame—a power that chilled even him, a demigod, to the marrow.
"Ghh—ahh—ahhh…"
For the first time, Godrick felt it: death. His body, his mind, his very soul seemed to drift away into nothingness. It was only an illusion, yet the terror it struck in him was real—his weakness as a demigod laid bare before the weight of destined death.
From the contact point, black thorns of death slithered outward, crawling up his limbs, coiling tight about his broken frame. Godrick forced his breathing calm. He knew there was no retreat. This would be his final graft.
If it failed, he would die regardless—just another corpse for his ancestor's grave. If it succeeded, he might wield a power beyond imagination, even if it killed him soon after.
Either way, he would die. He knew this.
He did not know why Godwyn's corpse continued to swell and change. But he knew one truth: only Destined Death had slain the Golden Prince. When Marika excised death from the Golden Order, life in the Lands Between had become undying—yet the Black Knives had carved into Godwyn that forbidden truth.
Now, through this vile graft, Godrick touched it as well.
The alien essence coursed through him, and the limbs he had stolen through countless grafts withered at once. From them sprouted black thorns and crawling patches of shadowed rot. Then, grotesquely, new roots erupted, their knots swelling into orbs—eyes.
One by one they opened. Eyes black as eclipses. And in that moment, all connection between Godrick and those limbs was severed.
The bodies of trolls and soldiers, long ago pressed into his form, were consumed and remade by the Death within. But Godrick clung desperately to his Great Rune, forcing its power through his graft.
His Great Rune was the foundation of all—one of the central fragments of the Elden Ring, prototype of the Golden Order's Fundamentalism. To him, it had always been more than strength; it was the key to wielding what was not his own. With its power, every grafted limb, every stolen strength could become his to command.
And so, under its pulsing radiance, his own blood mingled with Godwyn's. Perhaps because they were of shared descent, the fusion brought no pain, only a rush of alien vitality. Godrick's withered demigod body swelled and expanded, fattened by unnatural vigor.
But this was no gift. His form ballooned grotesquely, bursting apart in spasms of gore. Each wound, in turn, birthed fresh, writhing flesh, as if he were but clay reshaped again and again.
Soon, his body was nothing but a pulsing mound of living filth.
When he thought he could endure no more—when despair nearly crushed his mind, his Great Rune moved of its own accord.
It tore free from his body, floated high, and sank into the festering remains of Godwyn.
The abomination stilled. The graft was complete.
"Mercy of my ancestor…" Godrick whispered through broken lips.
Above, on Stormveil's bloodstained walls, the war had ended.
Half of Godrick's soldiers and knights lay dead. The rest were bound as captives. The Crucible Knight who had defended him was beaten down by Redd's blade, bleeding into the dust. The towering Tree Sentinel fell last, refusing surrender, cut down by Lucian's sword after a brutal struggle. Even its great steed, loyal beyond death, threw itself into a final, futile charge, dying upon Lucian's steel.
The Storm Knights cleared the battlefield. The corpses had to be burned before rot could claim the city.
Lucian returned to the edge of the abyss where Godrick had fallen. The chasm was bottomless. No path led below. The castle's layout differed from the memories of the Tarnished—he could not guess what lay underfoot.
Godrick had surely fallen into the dark. But whether he lived or not…
"Best not to leap blindly," Lucian muttered, sending knights for rope and ladders.
It was then a young knight approached, bearing both sword and staff. He had led the Banished Knights who arrived in their aid.
"Ah, fortune smiles. To witness Stormveil reclaimed, I count myself blessed. When I heard the Tarnished chosen by the Ancient King had come here, I scarce believed it." He bowed. "I am named Lancelot. Thanks to your victory, I was freed from the dungeons. May I ask—your name, lord?"
"Lucian will suffice."
The Tarnished humored him, curious at this sudden ally. When the Ancient King whispered that this man bore the blood of Storm King's line, Lucian's interest grew keener still.
But their words were cut short.
From the abyss below came a hideous wail, echoing like steel on stone, reverberating through marrow and soul alike. It dragged on for minutes, before silence returned.
Then the lands shook.
"Back! Away from the cliffs!" Lucian cried.
He herded knights, captives, and villagers to safety as the tremor worsened. And then, before their eyes, a whole quarter of Stormveil collapsed, swallowed by the abyss.
From it rose a colossal shape.
A Tree Spirit, body wrought of roots, but twisted, its bulk scarred and seeping red ichor.
"A Putrid Tree Spirit?" Lucian hissed. "From beneath the castle?"
The abomination heaved onto solid ground—then collapsed prone, as if enslaved.
A skeletal hand followed, pale and monstrous, gripping the other side of the chasm.
Then it came.
A warped body, black as charred bone, climbing free of the abyss. Its head was reversed—eyes below, mouth above. And clinging upon its face like a parasite, fused and writhing, was a mangled, pitiful frame.
Godrick.
He had grafted himself upon the corpse of Godwyn the Golden. And not only that, he had taken the Putrid Tree Spirit as well, binding its form to his own.
The scream they had heard before had been the Tree Spirit's thrashing agony. The quake—the corpse of Godwyn, dragging itself free of stone and root.
What stood before them was no demigod, no man—It was a blasphemy beyond reason.
Godrick uttered no words. His mind was broken, stripped to its final obsession.
He raised his grafted hand; the Tree Spirit's maw opened, and flame belched forth. A tide of yellow fire swept across the battlefield.
Lucian and the Storm Knights summoned the winds, storms surging to hold back the blaze.
But the other hand fell. The colossal palm crashed down, ignoring storm and fire alike, flattening two Storm Knights into crimson paste.
Blood and pus rained from the wounds carved into its flesh, splattering across the field. Where it touched, it killed.
One bound soldier caught a splash upon his skin. He screamed—black thorns erupted from within, impaling him inside-out before he collapsed lifeless.
Even Lucian's breath caught at the sight. This was not rot. Not flame. But the withering curse of Destined Death, lingering in putrid ichor.
The Tree Spirit's flame never ceased, smothering all sight. Only Elyssa's conjured ice storm cooled the air enough to breathe.
Every strike of the corpse's hand was ruin. And with each wound inflicted upon it, more of that deathly ichor spilled, spreading across the stone in creeping pools.
"Fall back!" Lucian barked. "I will hold the storm—free the prisoners, and flee!"
But the Storm Knights did not move. Though they had not sworn oaths, they had already chosen him as lord of Stormveil. To abandon him was unthinkable.
"Go!" Lucian roared again. "Would you leave me a kingdom of corpses?"
One knight obeyed. Then another. Soon they all did, unbinding prisoners and leading the captives away beneath the widened cover of his storm.
None of Godrick's soldiers resisted. Who could serve such a monstrosity? They fled as readily as their foes.
But Godrick cared not for deserters. His broken will drove him to strike only at Lucian.
When all innocents had gone, only a handful remained; Elyssa, Lancelot, Redd, and one Crucible Knight.
"You three, sustain the storm," Lucian commanded.
They nodded. Together they held the winds, freeing Lucian's hands.
He drew forth his phials and draughts, quaffing them all—sacred tears, healing crimson, even tinctures of rot he had long scorned. Strength and flame surged within him, body near to bursting.
He turned to the Crucible Knights. "Can you bear me through the fire?"
"Without fail."
"Then carry me aloft. Hurl me down upon him."
Their wings unfurled. Great shields before them, they bore him skyward, through the torrent of fire, unscathed.
At the peak of their flight, Lucian signaled. They released him.
He plummeted like a falling star, blade in hand. Below, Godrick raised his hands, fire and flesh reaching to consume him.
Lucian lifted his sword high.
And he unleashed everything.
The blade erupted in a pillar of blinding force, a storm-forged wave that tore heaven from earth.
Across the Lands Between, all looked up, seeing a column of light where none had been.
The storm cut through fire. Through rot. Through flesh. Through the Prince of Death himself.
The abomination was unmade. Ichor, pus, roots, blood—obliterated without trace.
Nothing in the world could withstand that stroke.
The land trembled with its passing.
Not dawn, nor starlight, but a sudden Sun—burning, merciless, undeniable.
And the world cried out. The heavens thundered in answer. For in that moment, the New King was born.