The path plunged ever deeper into the earth. The Tarnished pressed on through caverns where the walls glittered with false constellations, Claymen crawling like supplicants in endless prayer, their malformed hands reaching for stars they would never touch. He left them shattered in his wake, the Giant-Crusher splitting their stone-thick flesh with every swing.
Past crumbling steps and the corpse-strewn Grand Cloister, he came at last to a vast chasm. A coffin lay waiting at its edge, half-buried in ash. Without hesitation, he stepped inside.
The descent was endless. Darkness swallowed him, pressing against his skin.
The Tarnished stepped out into a cavern vast as creation itself. The ceiling was no stone, but an imitation of the firmament, a vault of glittering stars suspended over endless black. The air was wrong here—thin, brittle, as though his lungs pulled at the void itself.
And then it moved.
From the far side of the abyss, Astel descended. It drifted without wings, its massive body curling like a centipede through nothingness. Its countless limbs flexed with quiet menace, each joint ending in chitinous claws sharp as razors. Its face—if such a thing could be called a face—was a hollow wound in reality, a cavern of jagged teeth and a crown of jagged crystal. Within its head flickered a galaxy's graveyard: lights of a thousand dead stars, shifting and burning out.
The Tarnished's hammer felt small in his grip. But the white flame within him stirred, as if to answer the abyss.
Astel moved first. Space folded inward, the cavern warping like fabric under strain. Stones lifted from the floor, drawn into a sphere that collapsed into nothing—an implosion that sent shockwaves tearing through the chamber. The Tarnished staggered, only barely bracing against the surge, and rolled aside as one of Astel's arms cleaved down, carving a canyon into the stone.
He struck back—hammer sweeping in a colossal arc, white fire bursting outward on impact. Astel recoiled, chitin cracking, void-born ichor spilling like smoke.
But the beast only shuddered and blinked out of existence.
A split-second later, space behind him tore apart. Astel emerged, falling like a star, its maw opening to release a beam of violet light that scythed the cavern in half. The Tarnished dove forward, the heat of annihilation licking across his back.
The hammer came down, fracturing another arm, but Astel did not slow. Its limbs stretched wide, grasping, rending the stone. Reality twisted, bending around it as if the creature were the center of a black hole. The Tarnished felt his body dragged toward it, his feet leaving the ground.
Snarling, he called his flame. White fire surged through his limbs, breaking the pull for a moment. He slammed the hammer down into the ground, anchoring himself in defiance, the cavern cracking beneath him.
Astel shrieked—a soundless vibration that rattled his bones and clawed at his mind. Visions bled into his sight: endless stars, dead worlds, oceans of glass. Things that no mortal eyes should behold.
His flame answered, searing the visions away. He tore the hammer free and charged, leaping into the void. The Giant-Crusher fell with cataclysmic force, slamming into Astel's crown. The creature reeled, crystalline horns shattering into dust.
It retaliated with fury. Its tail lashed, a whip of chitin and void energy that sent him crashing across the cavern floor. His ribs screamed. The next instant, a sphere of collapsed gravity formed where he lay, ready to crush him into nothing.
With a roar, he leapt out, the edge of the sphere consuming stone where he had just been. White fire cloaked him as he rose high, hammer raised. He brought it down on the tail, shattering the tip, the explosion of flame burning a swath of its void-flesh black.
Astel staggered. It convulsed, limbs flailing, and in desperation it drew down the stars. The false sky shuddered, points of light streaming into its body until it glowed like a collapsing sun. The cavern trembled, stone raining down from above.
The Tarnished steadied himself, his body burning with exhaustion. Yet the flame within him raged brighter than ever.
He charged.
Astel roared, unleashing its final beam, a lance of void that swallowed half the chamber. The Tarnished met it head on, his flame erupting into a pillar of white fire that split the abyssal torrent in two. Through the storm he ran, every step shattering stone, until at last he leapt.
The Giant-Crusher rose. White fire cascaded around it, not like mortal flame, but like the light of a star reborn.
With all his strength, he brought it down.
The hammer struck Astel's head. The explosion of fire and force collapsed the void-born skull inward, light spilling from the cracks. Astel shrieked—its body convulsing, unraveling, until it burst apart in a storm of stardust.
The cavern fell silent. The false sky flickered, dimmed, and went dark.
The Tarnished stood amidst ruin, chest heaving, hammer blackened with ichor. Slowly, runes streamed into him, absorbed into his body. His flame flickered low, but endured—pure, unyielding.
At the far end of the abyss stretched a great arch of jagged stone. Across it shimmered a vast magical seal, a translucent wall of pale blue, shifting like moonlight on water. Its glow was absolute, untouchable, barring passage deeper still.
He approached, the air trembling with its power. Raising his hand, the Dark Moon Ring glimmered upon his finger, its cold light answering the seal.
The ward shivered.
Lines of pale script bloomed across the barrier, sigils of Carian sorcery so intricate and ancient that even the stars seemed to bend around them. One by one, the runes unraveled, their light bleeding into the ring.
Then the seal shattered, vanishing in a silent cascade of moonlight. The arch stood bare, revealing the winding path that led upward through the black stone.
The Tarnished exhaled, tightened his grip upon the Giant-Crusher, and stepped forward.
Beyond lay the Moonlight Altar.
The Tarnished crossed the silver fields of the plateau, the cold moon shining high above, until the ruined spires of the Cathedral of Manus Celes rose before him. Its crumbling walls glimmered faintly blue, and its air was heavy with silence.
Inside, the ruin was not still but marred. A raw wound split the floor—a great hole, freshly carved, its stone jagged and blackened as if torn open by some cosmic force. The tunnel descended deep into the land, a snaking path of rock that pulsed faintly with moonlight.
The Tarnished descended. The air grew damp, acrid, thick with the stench of blood and death. The walls shimmered faintly, veins of pale ore running through the stone.
At the tunnel's end lay a cavern, still and suffocating.
There, upon the cold ground, rested Ranni's doll body—limp, lifeless, cast aside like a husk. Its porcelain skin was cracked, its frame fragile, as though abandoned without care.
And just beyond it sprawled the thing that had once been a god's messenger: the Two Fingers.
They lay torn and broken, their pale flesh shredded and smeared with blood. The digits didn't so much as twitch. There was no voice, no gesture, no command left in them. Their majesty had been reduced to ruin, their power annihilated. What had once bound Ranni to the Greater Will now lay butchered in the shadows.
The Tarnished regarded them only briefly. His flame flickered, steady, cleansing.
There, upon the great slab of stone, he placed the Dark Moon Ring upon Ranni's pale finger.
Her body stirred, moonlight blossoming around her, banishing the shadow of death. Slowly she rose, her gaze clear and calm, her form restored.
"…Thou hast followed far," she said, voice even, quiet yet resounding with ancient weight. "Through shadow and void, through death and stars. Few indeed would dare such a path. Fewer still would endure it."
Her porcelain hands lingered over the ring now bound to her.
The Tarnished stood in the pale light of the cathedral, his hammer resting heavy against the stone floor. Ranni's form, renewed and whole, gleamed with the cold radiance of the moon.
He watched her in silence for a time, then finally spoke, his voice low but firm.
"I have given you back your life," he said, the white flame flickering in his eyes. "But I have yet one thing I seek to ask of you. The Great Rune. Where did you cast it aside?"
Ranni tilted her head, the calm veil of her expression never faltering. Yet there was a pause—a stillness—before she answered.
"…So that is the design of thine endless toil." Her voice was quiet, thoughtful, threaded with a hint of recognition.
Her gaze lifted, sharp as a blade of ice. "Dost thou grasp what thou askest? The Rune I spurned was not lost. It was branded into the very moon. I would see none claim it, lest the Greater Will reach its hand into the Lands Between again through yet another pawn."
The Tarnished stepped closer, unshaken. "I am no pawn. My path is mine alone. But, I require every shard to restore the whole, or else all my struggle shall be for naught."
For a long moment, Ranni studied him. Her porcelain hand brushed the Dark Moon Ring, its glow shimmering faintly against her pale skin. Finally, her voice softened—barely.
"…I see. Though such a thing as my hidden Great Rune is yet a monumental thing to give away, thou hast endured every trial, broken the will of the Fingers, and bore me back from death. I believe… to thee alone I may entrust it."
She lifted her hand. The air shivered, the stars above bending. The great moon that hung eternal over the plateau darkened, its light folding inward. From its argent surface a sigil glowed, vast and terrible—the rune itself, scarred into the celestial body.
The sky quaked. Moonlight poured down in a single beam, striking Ranni's hand. She caught it as though it were solid matter, a lattice of pale light twisting into form. And there, small enough now to hold, gleamed the Great Rune, cold and radiant, humming with forbidden power.
She turned to the Tarnished and extended it.
"Take it, then. But know this. May thou prove strong enough to master it… else it shall master thee."
The Rune floated into his grasp, heavy as eternity, its glow searing against his skin, as if the stars themselves whispered their judgment.
The Tarnished closed his hand around it. His flame did not falter.
The Tarnished stood silent, the Great Rune pulsing in his grasp like the cold heartbeat of the moon itself.
Ranni lingered before him, pale and still, her silver hair stirring in the unseen current of her sorcery. For the first time, her gaze seemed to soften—not as a ruler to her vassal, nor as a god to a pawn, but as one soul to another, bound by trial and fate.
"…Thou hast given me freedom from the Fingers, and even my life anew," she said. "And in return, I have yielded what I swore never to surrender. Yet our paths do not entwine further. For mine eyes are set upon the boundless night."
Her hand drifted upward. The stars above stirred, constellations shifting as though called by her presence. Her form grew faint, dissolving into threads of argent light.
"Here, our companionship endeth. Tread thy path, Flame-bearer, and reforge thy ring as thou wilt. But know… upon the far horizon, where night is deepest, there shall my soul ever wander. I thank thee one last time for thy service. May our paths cross once more…"
The last traces of her voice echoed through Manus Celes, like moonlight breaking across still water. Then she was gone—her body unraveling into starlight, carried into the heavens.
Only silence remained, save the quiet thrum of the Great Rune in the Tarnished's hand. He stood alone in the hollow cathedral, the white flame in his eyes answering the cold radiance of the moon above.
His path was clear. With another fragment now his, the time of reckoning with the Elden Ring itself drew closer.
—
Most Tarnished, and even Demigods, cast their gaze skyward to the storm-wracked ruin of Crumbling Farum Azula, believing the Black Blade awaited them there. But the truth of Maliketh was far different. He had no need of that forsaken place. For Maliketh walked the Lands Between still, unseen and unremembered, shrouded in humble guise.
He wore the form of a pious beast, the Cleric Beast of Caelid, his visage hidden beneath the trappings of a servant of faith.
If he struck there, in the Sanctum, the outcome would be the same. Maliketh would meet his end, and the Rune would be his.
Through Caelid's scarlet wilds he walked, the air thick with rot and ruin. Fumes that once would have corroded his lungs, spores that would have eaten him from within, now broke uselessly against him. Each breath he drew, each step he took, the white fire within stirred—sunlight flame burning quiet and steady. Where rot sought to burrow into flesh, it was scoured away in an instant. Where the red plague crept against his skin, it hissed and crumbled, undone by brilliance.
Thus he moved unimpeded, not with arrogance but with a calm certainty, as though his very presence was an answer to this blighted land.
The Bestial Sanctum's gates did not stand unguarded. As he drew near, the earth trembled and stone split—one of the great Black Blade Gargoyles stirred from its perch. Wings like slabs of iron unfurled, eyes flaring with grim light. With a grinding of stone joints, it raised its twin blades, each etched with runes of ruin, and advanced, a sentinel meant to cull the unworthy before they ever reached the Clergyman within.
He did not pause. He lowered his stance, breath steady, hammer already humming with his strength. The Gargoyle roared, earth splintering beneath its charge. But in the same heartbeat it moved, so too did he. One strike, two hands locked on the haft, a full swing of the Giant-Crusher.
The hammer came down like a world's ending.
Stone and rune met unstoppable force, and the Gargoyle was not merely broken—it was obliterated. Its body exploded outward in a deafening crash, fragments raining across the sanctum steps, scattering to dust before they even touched the ground. What had been a monument of vigilance was reduced to rubble by a single, perfect blow.
He straightened, white flame flickering briefly in his chest, and stepped across the ruined threshold as though nothing at all had happened. The doors loomed ahead, heavy and dark.
The heavy doors of the Sanctum groaned as they swung inward, torchlight spilling into the gloom. The vast chamber smelled of old incense and dried blood, its vaulted ceilings echoing with the scrape of his steps. At the far end, hunched over a shallow stone basin, was the Beast Clergyman.
He did not turn at once. His clawed hand dipped into the bowl, fingers sifting through dust and ash as though searching for something lost. The hide of his back shifted with every labored breath, muscles taut beneath his matted fur. When at last he straightened, his head turned slightly, one golden eye catching the intruder in its gaze.
No words. No question. No greeting. Only the weight of silence, heavy as the stones around them. The Clergyman's jaws tightened, a faint growl rumbling low in his throat—instinctive, restrained, but dangerous.
He held that gaze without flinching. His hand settled on the Giant-Crusher's haft, the other igniting with a brief shimmer of pure white flame. He could feel it already—the resonance, the hidden power knotted deep within this beast's form. This was no simple cleric. This was Maliketh, the Black Blade, guardian of Destined Death.
Resolute, he drew the hammer free, its weight cracking the flagstones beneath his feet, and leveled it toward the Clergyman. His chest burned steady with the Sunlight Flame, his intent clear.
The silence snapped.
The Beast Clergyman's lips peeled back, baring fangs as his stance shifted, one clawed hand flexing, the other braced against the stone. The growl deepened, becoming a snarl.
He took one step forward.
The chamber cracked open with violence.
He surged forward, Giant-Crusher sweeping in a wide arc. The first impact thundered through the Sanctum, the shockwave splitting flagstones and sending ash scattering like dry leaves. The Beast Clergyman reeled under the blow, clawed arms raised in desperate defense, stone splintering beneath his footing. He countered with a bestial slash, black fur bristling, his movements unnervingly fast for such a hulking form.
Another strike followed, the hammer hammering into his guard with the force of an avalanche. The Clergyman staggered, claws torn bloody against unyielding stone. The disguise was fraying—every bone-rattling collision forcing something deeper to the surface.
He pressed the assault, his Sunlight Flame bursting against the beast's flank in a flare of white brilliance. The light burned into him, searing through hide and sinew. A guttural roar shook the chamber, echoing through the vaulted ceilings. The Clergyman's body convulsed, his form unraveling beneath the relentless pressure.
Then the truth ripped free.
With a shudder, his ragged fur split and fell away. Gold-forged armor gleamed where rags had hung, and a wolfish helm shadowed his face. A long, black blade tore itself into his hand, exuding an aura colder than any grave. The air turned heavy—choked with the scent of ash and endings.
The stone walls groaned as the clash deepened.
The Beast Clergyman was gone. In his place, Maliketh stood unveiled—Marika's shadow, black fur matted beneath armor that seemed more like a carapace than steel. In his hand, the Black Blade burned, its light not of fire but of death itself, coiling in shadow-flame that devoured warmth and air alike.
He lunged, the Blade scything down, and the chamber screamed as its edge dragged reality thinner. His hammer met it with an earth-splitting crash, but the force carried more than weight. It stripped vitality, stealing strength and resolve in invisible threads. The strike left him gasping, not for lack of stamina but for the sensation that death itself had already passed its judgment on him.
Maliketh pressed forward, faster than the eye could follow, every blow suffused with the Rune sealed in his arm. Black fire exploded at each impact, washing over him like waves of ash. His body screamed under it—blood slowing, flesh graying where the shadow touched. His regeneration clawed to keep pace, knitting him back together, but the Rune's power fought to leave each wound lingering, dragging him closer to the grave.
And yet, he endured. The Sunlight Flame roared out from within him, pure white brilliance spilling across the floor in defiance. Each burst of light stripped the black fire from his flesh, burning it away before it could root deeper. He forced life back into his veins, breath back into his lungs, each heartbeat loud as thunder against Maliketh's smothering silence.
Maliketh circled, eyes aflame, movements weaving blade and claw in seamless ferocity. Every strike tested his soul, not merely his body. Each clash of steel and hammer bent the Sanctum's foundations, cracks spiderwebbing through stone, walls collapsing under the weight of their fury.
The Rune of Death pulsed from Maliketh's arm, the black flames surging higher, feeding the storm of shadow. Death was inescapable, inevitable—yet he refused, pressing forward through the void's pull, wielding life and flame against the abyss itself.
Maliketh's blade carved great arcs of death across the sanctum, each swing tearing air and stone alike. The Black Flame writhed in his strikes, clinging like a brand, eating at flesh, bone, even spirit. Each time it struck him, his body dimmed, as though his very existence were being carved away piece by piece.
But he answered in kind. The Sunlight Flame erupted from him in waves, pure white brilliance that burned like the midday sun. It was no fire meant for gods, nor for ruin. It was the flame of life—unyielding, radiant, forged from his own soul. When the Black Flame coiled to linger, the Sunlight Flame flared brighter, washing it away, not simply searing but restoring. Where Maliketh brought erasure, he brought renewal. Where death sought silence, life thundered.
The sanctum became a storm of opposites. White light and black flame collided, searing shadows onto the walls, burning afterimages into the stone. The air itself quaked, caught between annihilation and defiance. Maliketh pressed harder, his speed unholy, the Black Blade shrieking as though the Rune within demanded release. Each strike fell like a decree: All things must die.
And yet he held his ground, hammer raised high, sunlight fire wrapping his body in a mantle of radiant heat. Every swing of the Giant-Crusher answered Maliketh's blade with earth-shattering force, the hammer's weight carrying not just destruction, but the sheer will to endure.
Finally Maliketh, driven to the edge, unleashed his full strength. The Black Blade howled, shadows engulfing him, his arm alight with the Rune of Destined Death itself. It bled through him in torrents, filling the chamber with death so thick it strangled breath, seared blood, and made the heart falter.
But his flame surged higher in defiance, his soul ablaze. The white fire cloaked him fully, brighter and purer than ever before. Life itself stood against Death—not borrowed from gods, not gifted from outer powers, but drawn from his very essence.
The collision of the two forces shattered the chamber. The stone burst apart. Shadows screamed. Flame and death warred in one blinding crescendo—pure sunlight against the abyss of death.
The sanctum trembled as the clash reached its breaking point.
Maliketh's Black Blade cut through the air in a final, furious arc, its edge trailing shadows so dense they seemed to devour the light around them. The Rune in his arm pulsed like a dying star, its power spilling into every strike—an unrelenting decree of mortality, a promise that even this warrior before him would be undone.
The Tarnished met it head-on. His hammer rose, cloaked in Sunlight Flame, white fire so intense it blurred the shape of the weapon itself. With a roar that shook the air, he brought it crashing down.
Steel met stone. Light met shadow.
The collision split the chamber in two. A blinding detonation of white fire burst outward, washing across the sanctum like the break of dawn. Shadows hissed and tore apart, the oppressive death lingering in the air burning away under the brilliance of life itself.
Maliketh staggered. His Black Blade, still burning with that fragment of Destined Death, shuddered in his hands as cracks of light spidered across it. His arm—the arm that bore the Rune itself—flared violently, the seal failing, the ancient power within bleeding free at last.
The Tarnished did not falter. He pressed forward, hammer striking again and again, each blow carrying not just force but defiance—his will crashing against Death itself. The white fire ate into Maliketh's shadows, peeling them away, exposing the beast beneath the armor, his form buckling under the weight of the blows.
With one final strike, the Giant-Crusher smashed through Maliketh's guard, tearing the blade from his grasp and driving him to the ground. The Black Blade clattered across the stone, its flame sputtering into silence.
Maliketh roared, his voice deep and broken, echoing like a prayer to a goddess who would never answer. His body convulsed, the power of the Rune flaring wildly, until at last he fell still. The blackness around him faded, leaving only the massive, broken form of Marika's shadow lying lifeless upon the sanctum floor.
Above him, the Rune of Destined Death appeared. Not flaring, not grandiose—but steady, cold, and absolute. Its presence was undeniable, as though the very concept of mortality itself had coalesced into a single, eternal sigil.
The Tarnished stood before it, his Sunlight Flame still burning faintly along his arms and chest, the only light left in the ruined sanctum. He reached out, resolute, and the Rune descended into him.
For a heartbeat, the world went silent. Then he felt it—an ancient weight pressing into his soul. Not a flare of power like other runes, not a surge of strength or vitality. But a certainty, immutable and final: the knowledge of death, of endings.
And yet… within him, his flame endured. White, unwavering, defiant.
He exhaled, steady. The Rune of Destined Death was his.