Even at such a distance, its enormity stole the breath from him. The red hair like a living banner against the snow, the iron chains clattering with each slow step, the swollen, cursed eye blazing with unnatural fire. Every thunderous shift of its weight seemed to rattle the very bones of the world.
This one had endured where all others had fallen. A relic of an age erased, bearing strength so monumental that even the death of its kind had not claimed it. It was not a creature to be taken lightly. It was the last of its race—and the very image of durability itself.
His hand tightened around the haft of the Giant-Crusher. The bones of its kin lay all around him, silent testaments to their ruin. But this one remained. To claim the path forward, to bring the Elden Ring one step closer, he would have to kill what history itself had failed to erase.
And already, his blood burned for the clash.
The Fire Giant turned as if the very air whispered of his approach, its single cursed eye blazing as it caught sight of him. The chains rattled, the giant's steps shaking the basin as it lumbered forward, snow avalanching off the edges of the Forge's black stone.
He broke into a sprint. No hesitation. No fear. Just the hammer, his will, and the rhythm of his breath.
The first swing of the Fire Giant's great slab-like shield came screaming down with enough force to shatter a fortress wall. He slid aside at the last moment, the impact splitting the ground and sending jagged cracks spidering through the frozen earth. The shockwave lifted him from his feet, but he twisted midair, planting the Giant-Crusher deep into the fractured ice on landing, anchoring himself like a rooted tree.
His counterattack came in a blur. Both hands wrapped tight around the hammer's haft, he heaved upward and swung with earth-shattering weight into the Giant's ankle. Flesh and bone shook from the blow, the sheer sound of it echoing across the basin like thunder. The Fire Giant staggered a step, the ancient chains on its limbs grinding.
Another swing—this one overhead, both arms braced as he brought the hammer down onto the same leg. The earth groaned beneath them, snow leaping from the ground in waves. The giant roared, a sound that sent flurries screaming across the basin.
The creature retaliated with a sweeping kick, the colossal limb a wall of muscle and fury. He braced, sliding under it in a burst of raw speed, the hammer rising in a devastating upward arc that slammed into the Fire Giant's heel. The behemoth faltered, collapsing down onto one knee, its bulk sending tremors through the mountain itself.
And still, it endured.
Flames erupted from its eye, belching across the field in a wave of fire. He raised the Giant-Crusher like a shield, crouched behind its massive weight, enduring the storm. The heat licked at his skin, threatening to peel it from his bones, but he held firm, driving forward through the inferno step by brutal step. When the blaze faded, he emerged blackened with soot, eyes fixed and unshaken.
Another swing. Another quake. The Fire Giant reeled, but refused to fall.
Strength met strength—colossus against colossus. But where the Fire Giant's power was ancient and heavy with despair, his was rising, sharpened, unstoppable. Every strike carried the full measure of his cultivated strength, the weight of runes devoured and trials endured. Even the great remnant of the fire giants groaned beneath it.
He pressed on, unrelenting, a titan in his own right now, clashing against the last of a once-great race.
Each swing of the Giant-Crusher was an event in itself—land splitting, snow erupting, the echo ringing like a war-drum across the Mountaintops. The Fire Giant's shield crashed back, sending shockwaves that hurled boulders into the air, but he met it head-on, his hammer answering with force equal to the mountain's own bones.
Then came the crack.
A sound like the snapping of the earth itself.
The Fire Giant's left ankle buckled under the onslaught, bones shattered, the chains binding it straining as if they would split. With a roar that shook the Forge, the behemoth fell sideways, then began to roll. Snow, fire, and stone churned beneath its massive form, a living avalanche as it crashed back onto its stomach.
From its wound erupted flame—no longer a weapon of will, but of desperation. The cursed eye burned brighter, wild, spilling fire like blood. Its flesh split, and from the ruin of its chest flared a second maw, belching infernos that scarred the basin black.
He tightened his grip on the Giant-Crusher and advanced through the storm. Each fireball erupted like a sun, smashing into the earth, but his hammer swung them aside, scattering embers into the wind. His body, unarmored, took the heat raw, skin blistering, but he drove forward as if the flames themselves fueled him.
The Fire Giant rolled again, flattening ridges of stone in its fury, the air boiling with every turn. But he was already there, hammer raised high, slamming down into its chest with such force that the second mouth's fire sputtered and coughed. The basin shook like it might collapse entirely, cracks yawning wide to swallow the flames.
It screamed—not as a warrior, not even as a guardian, but as a dying relic of a forgotten age. Yet still, it fought, hurling itself against him with endless fire, as though determined to burn the world rather than submit.
But he did not yield. His strength was inexhaustible, born of countless battles and sharpened against monsters and demigods alike. Blow after blow rained down, his hammer falling like the judgment of the earth itself.
The final strike came as the Fire Giant staggered on its elbows, fire gushing from every wound. He leapt, both hands gripping the colossal weapon, and brought it down upon the cursed eye.
The sound was beyond thunder. The mountain itself seemed to recoil.
The flames sputtered, choked, then died. The giant collapsed, body going still, its bulk half-sunken into the basin it had long guarded. Smoke curled weakly from its wounds, fading into the frozen air.
---
He sat before the Forge, its hollow vastness swallowing even the mountain winds. Black stone. Silent, unlit.
He needs something to kindle a fire here. To burn the Erdtree was his path forward now. But he knew. The forge would not accept any normal, mortal flame.
His reflection shimmered faintly on the Grace's gold, head bowed, shoulders still heaving faintly from the battle with the Fire Giant.
But his mind had gone elsewhere. Beyond the battlefield. Beyond the mountain. Beyond even the Lands Between.
He looked into the void of the forge and pictured it: a Flame of Hope. A Flame of Determination. A flame that mirrored the sun itself—unyielding, steady, eternal.
Could it be made?
His jaw set hard. Why not?
He stood at the Forge of the Giants, staring into its dead, black basin. The air here still smelled faintly of ash, but no fire stirred. Without Melina, there was no one to offer themselves to the flame. And he would never turn to the Frenzied Flame. That path was ruin.
He thought of all the fires he had seen in his journey. The Black Flame of the Godskin Apostles, stolen from the fell god destined to slay gods themselves. Twisted, hateful fire. The Fire Giants' own flame, bound by curse and oath, scorching even themselves as punishment. Corrupted fire. Even Rykard, with his grotesque Serpent Flame, had taken fire and bent it to gluttony and excess. All of them… fire warped by hunger, by vengeance, by despair.
And beyond even that—he knew this world's history was not sealed. It had roots in a greater truth, connected to the Age of Fire itself, when souls kindled the First Flame beneath a distant sun. The memory of that still lingered here. He had felt it in the runes, in the very strength that grew within him each time he consumed them. Souls and flame were bound together.
If the First Flame could be sustained by souls, then perhaps his own soul could ignite a flame worthy of the Forge. Not a flame of despair or corruption—but a flame of will. Of endurance. A fire born not of gods or curses, but of a man who refused to break.
He closed his eyes, and in the dark behind his lids, he imagined it: a flame not black, not red, not twisted—but bright. As bright as the noonday sun. A flame that gave warmth, not ruin. A flame that endured, as he endured.
That was the fire he would forge.
Not here, not yet. He would need fragments of knowledge, pieces buried in the Lands Between: the prayers of the Fire Monks, who still carried ancient truths; the rites whispered by giants before their fall; the subtle connections between soul and flame. All of them would serve as kindling.
But the fire itself—he knew—would come from him.
He turned from the Forge, the weight of his decision clear. The path was his alone. He would not take a god's flame, nor a curse's flame. He would build his own.
And with it, he would burn the Erdtree's thorns away.
He returned again and again to his thoughts by the Grace's golden glow, piecing each fragment together. The monks' prayers, the prelates' rites, the giants' covenant, even the frost-bound truths of Zamor. Each was an ember. Alone, they were scattered, weak. But in him they began to take shape as something more.
Incantations were always a prayer, reaching outward toward a greater power. Flame of the Fell God. Flame of the Fell Giants. Frenzied Flame. Golden Flame. Every spark demanded allegiance to something higher, something alien.
But he had never bent the knee. He had never prayed to gods.
So his faith turned inward. Into himself. Into the unbroken will that had carried him this far, the body that refused to break, the soul that burned hotter with every trial. He placed his belief not in gods, but in his own spirit—in the humanity within him, the thing more constant than any fickle divinity.
And there, in the silence of the Mountaintops, as the wind tore against his scarred body, he realized the truth: faith in himself could shape flame as surely as faith in gods.
Not black flame. Not cursed flame. Not a godly flame.
A flame of man. Bright, unyielding, eternal as the sun.
He sat before the Grace, the dead silence of the mountaintop broken only by the whistling gale. His body was still, though the air stung like knives against bare skin. He closed his eyes, listening to his own heartbeat—slow, powerful, like the deep toll of a great bell.
Not the fire of giants. Not the frenzy. Not cursed flame. My flame.
He repeated it like a mantra.
His will sank inward, past muscle and bone, past even the ancient strength carved into him by countless runes. To the place no god had ever touched. His soul. His humanity. His faith in himself.
It began as warmth in his chest, so faint it could have been breath. Then it grew, not with heat, but with brilliance. Light pressed outward from his ribs, a radiance that felt older than the Erdtree, brighter than gold. It coursed down his arm, into his palm, veins throbbing as though filled not with blood but with living light.
His hand opened.
A spark rose.
It was not orange, nor red, nor black. It was white—pure as the noonday sun. Its glow made the frost retreat from his skin, banishing the cold, filling the air with a weightless, unearthly stillness. It did not burn. This flame illuminated.
The spark wavered, guttering in the wind. For an instant, it threatened to vanish like a dream at waking. But his faith tightened around it, unyielding. The spark swelled, a radiant mote of pure sunlight, hovering above his palm.
Then, slowly, it faded. Not consumed, but returned inward, sinking back into him, as though it had never left.
He opened his eyes. The world was as it had been—frozen, gray, hostile. But his chest still carried the echo of that light, and he knew it was real.
A white flame. A flame of hope, of endurance, of self. Not borrowed. Not given. His.
At first, it was only sparks. Little glimmers of white light that winked into being in his palm, then scattered into nothing against the wind. Each time, he steadied himself, set his breath, and tried again. Hours blurred together into days. The mountaintop did not change—always the same gray sky, the same frost-laden silence—but something inside him sharpened.
He learned to hold the flame longer, to coax it steady. Not through worship of a god, nor by drawing on powers beyond himself, but by faith that he alone was the source. His strength, his soul, his endless will. The flame bloomed in his hands as a steady orb of pure sunlight, pure white brilliance spilling across the snow. The ground itself glistened, crystals of ice refracting his radiance like diamonds.
When it wavered, he did not despair. He drove himself harder, as he always had—striking the earth with the Giant-Crusher until the land trembled, then sitting cross-legged, sweat steaming from his body in the freezing air, calling the flame forth again. His training was brutal and unrelenting, his faith tested with every falter of the light. But it always returned. Stronger each time.
Soon, it was no longer a fragile ember, but a fire he could shape. He willed it into a lance, thrusting it forward—beams of sunlight tearing across the white expanse, searing through boulders, leaving molten scars. He willed it into a shield, a halo of light around him, banishing frost and storm alike. He willed it into fire, pure fire, burning white-hot in the snow, flames so bright they blinded him when he lost focus.
Each form, each expression of will, was another step toward mastery.
Still, the Forge loomed. Its basin was vast, carved to hold the fire of giants. His flame—though radiant, though pure—was not yet enough. He could feel it.
So he pushed further. He let his flame roar, pouring everything of himself into it. His faith, his strength, his very soul. When his body trembled, when exhaustion clawed at him, the fire only grew brighter, as if his limits were nothing but fuel for its brilliance.
At last, it came. Not a spark, not a flicker, not even a sun contained in his hand. But a blaze. A storm of white flame, erupting around him in a circle of dazzling radiance, so fierce that the frozen ground wept into steam.
He stood within it, his silhouette swallowed in brilliance, a lone man in the snow burning like the dawn. The light pulsed with him, alive with every heartbeat. It was no longer practice. No longer theory.
The flame of sunlight was his. A true incantation. A true power.
And it was ready to meet the Forge.
The Forge of the Giants loomed vast and silent, a black bowl carved into the heart of the mountain. No smoke rose from it. No ember glowed within. It was as though the world itself had forgotten the fire that once dwelled there.
He approached slowly, each step echoing against the hollow stone. The body of the Fire Giant lay far behind him now, a colossus stilled, its final breath long gone. What remained was this—an empty forge, waiting.
For a moment, he stood at its edge, staring into the void of it. A forge meant for gods, kindled only by their flames. No mortal could ever hope to light it. No outer god's power had been lent to him. No maiden had guided his hand. It should have been impossible.
And yet—he raised his hand.
The flame bloomed at once. White, pure, radiant—sunlight itself, drawn from his soul. The brilliance spilled outward, illuminating the frozen cliffs, staining the night sky with pale fire. It roared against the silence, alive and willful, burning with determination alone.
He stepped into the Forge.
The stone trembled beneath him as the fire in his hand grew, answering the call of the vast basin. He poured more of himself into it, every ounce of strength, every drop of faith, every shred of will he had honed across this shattered world. The flame leapt from him, cascading like a wave of white fire, latching onto the walls of the Forge.
At first, there was resistance. The Forge was ancient, built for a fire beyond mortal reach. The stone itself seemed unwilling to awaken.
He roared. And the flame surged and was strengthened by the ancient power of the forge.
The Sunlight Flame became a torrent, a storm of pure brilliance, searing the basin until it glowed white-hot. The air split with heat, the mountain groaned, the frost turned instantly to steam. And then—
The Forge in its entirety.
Light exploded upward, a column of blinding flame, not red, not gold, but white as the heart of the sun. It stretched into the heavens, scattering clouds, tearing across the sky. The mountaintop shook beneath the power of it, a living flame reborn not of gods or giants, but of man's unyielding soul.
He stood at its center, chest heaving, sweat turning to steam against his skin. The fire answered him, and him alone.
The Forge of the Giants was lit.
The burning of the Erdtree had begun.
The column of white fire shot into the sky, unyielding and radiant. Not the cruel red of giantkind, nor the frenzied yellow of madness, nor the blackened smolder of death. This was something new. A flame of light, of heat, of brilliance—alive and unchained.
In Leyndell, the guards patrolling the walls faltered. They looked upward as the sky shifted, clouds torn apart by a vast glare. The Erdtree's thorns cast long shadows against its trunk, shivering as the white fire's glow touched them. Some of the soldiers dropped their spears, blinded by the sudden brilliance. Others fell to their knees—not in worship, but in awe, their hearts stirred by something they could not name.
In the sewers below the capital, the omen-dwellers lifted their heads. For a brief moment, the stench of rot and confinement felt less heavy. They pressed their foreheads against the bars, straining toward a light they could not see but could feel warming their skin.
Far across the Lands Between, sorcerers in Raya Lucaria paused at their studies. The flame did not obey sorcery, nor glintstone, nor the logic of the stars, and yet it was undeniable. They whispered to one another in disbelief. This was not the flame of the gods. This was… something else. Something born of flesh and soul.
Even the beasts stirred. Wolves on distant plains howled, their voices rising into the heavens. Crows took wing, their black forms scattering like ash beneath the glow. In the depths of Caelid, where scarlet rot festered and consumed, there was a brief hush. Even rot seemed to hesitate before that brilliance.
The Erdtree itself flickered in the light. Its golden boughs glowed brighter, but it was not an embrace—it was resistance. The thorns remained, unyielding. Yet the Sunlight Flame pressed against them, its warmth seeping into every fissure, into every root.
And in the Forge, he stood at the heart of it all, the fire pouring endlessly from his soul. This was not borrowed power. Not the gift of an outer god. Not a burden forced upon him. This was his flame. A flame that bore no chains, no hidden rot, no curses buried beneath its glow.
The flame of life itself.
And as its brilliance spread, all who saw it felt the same quiet truth rise within them—this world might yet endure.