Night of the Black Knives

The Tarnished reached the summit of the Divine Tower. At the top, he found a finger-shaped corpse lying on the ground and a Great Rune shining with golden light.

"It seems the Two Fingers guarding this Great Rune died the moment Godrick did..." Melina said calmly, looking at the dead fingers on the ground.

"Fingers. Good riddance." The Tarnished spared them no further glance and walked straight toward Godrick's Great Rune. When he reached out to touch it, an extraordinarily powerful wave of repulsion surged against him.

"Oh...? Know your place. You're nothing but condensed power." The Tarnished squeezed hard, and the Great Rune stopped trembling, becoming perfectly docile. That was how power worked. When it raged, you had to rage harder. You had to master power, not let power master you.

"That's more like it." The Tarnished pressed the now-obedient Great Rune into his body. Seeing this, Melina immediately began facilitating the fusion of Runes. Integrating a Great Rune was far more complicated than absorbing ordinary Runes, but it was still only a matter of time.

As time passed, the Tarnished fully absorbed the Great Rune's power. "As I thought... Marika was right to leave the Tarnished behind. And just as I suspected, the Greater Will... or rather, the Elden Ring itself is encouraging the demigods to fight. That's why it distributed fragments of the Elden Ring to every demigod-to pit them against one another and select the next Elden Lord."

"That does seem to be the case..." Melina gradually came to understand their current circumstances as well. Seen in that light, the Shattering had been inevitable.

"This power seems to need something else before it can be activated..." Melina looked at the Tarnished. "The Great Rune inside you seems to be dormant."

"What's missing?" What a hassle.

"You must have seen the symbol of the Elden Ring... Beneath it lies an Arc that receives its blessings. When the Elden Ring shattered, that Arc shattered with it, scattering across the Lands Between. Awakening a Great Rune should require the power of an Arc," Melina explained.

"Oh, those things. Looks like the Elden Ring really was smashed to pieces. Whatever, I'll leave it to chance. I've already got the Great Rune anyway."

"One step closer to our accord..." Melina gazed at the distant Erdtree.

"If we follow this route, our next stop should be Liurnia, right? It leads to the Altus Plateau, after all. And I heard two battles broke out there before."

"That's right. One was a battle between gold and Caria. The other came when Queen Rennala lost her heroic spirit and the Academy turned against her. It seems the queen is still imprisoned in the deepest part of the Academy."

"I see. No hurry, though. I'll head back to the Hold first. With a Great Rune, I should count as a full-fledged member now."

"I seem to have forgotten to ask... You haven't done anything out of line, have you?"

"...Is that really the impression I give you?" In response to the Tarnished's words, Melina merely took a silent half step back.

"Oh... You're saying that Tarnished killed Godrick? Rather interesting. He does have some ability." Nepheli, who had returned to the Hold ahead of him, was reporting on Stormveil to a man.

"Yes, Father... His storm was the fiercest I have ever seen." Nepheli addressed the man before her with respect.

"Haha. As a senior member of the Hold, I'm delighted to welcome such a capable newcomer." The man closed his book and emerged from the unlit room, leaning on his Five-Fingered Cane. His unmistakable All-Knowing Helm gradually appeared from the shadows. This was none other than Sir Gideon Ofnir.

"Very good. This young man has caught my attention. Perhaps I can strike a bargain with him. I believe he'll agree. Heh heh heh." Gideon's laughter brimmed with confidence.

When the Tarnished returned to Roundtable Hold, the first thing he noticed was a new face. A man wearing golden armor and a red cloak sat beside the Hold's central grace, with a golden greatsword standing upright at his side. From those details alone, he seemed ordinary enough. But just below his right shoulder was a small silver head, which he was carefully cradling.

"Another Tarnished? Hello, pleased to meet you. You can call me D." The Tarnished approached the man and struck up a conversation.

"...Oh, wait. You carry the scent of Those Who Live in Death... Though I suppose that makes sense. There are so many of them in the Lands Between that fighting them is unavoidable. Still, I'd like to warn you... Stay away from Those Who Live in Death, and be especially careful when there's a boat nearby." The man's tone was solemn.

"Do you hunt Those Who Live in Death?" The man before him seemed to know a great deal about them.

"They're nothing but empty husks. There isn't much to know. All you need to understand is that they shouldn't exist in this world. Spare them no pity." As D spoke, his gaze involuntarily drifted toward the Hold's balcony.

"If they try to kill me, I'm certainly not going to hold back." The Tarnished shrugged.

"Ha, good... You do look powerful, but strength alone won't suffice against those accursed beings. As I said, keep well away whenever you see them."

"I'll say no more. We each have our own duties. It's time I left." D rose, glancing toward the balcony once more before departing.

D's rather unusual behavior caught the Tarnished's attention. Once D had left, the Tarnished went to the balcony he had kept glancing at. In a somewhat secluded spot, a man in a large hat sat quietly in a chair, looking down below.

"Rogier? It's been a while. How did you break your legs?" Indeed, the man in the large hat was Rogier, and his legs had suffered serious injuries. To the Tarnished, however, wounds like those would take little time to heal, and even less with a Crystal Tear Flask.

"Ah, it's you... Haha, how should I put it? There was a little accident." Rogier gave an awkward laugh. "After we parted, I kept searching for what I wanted. In the end, I found it beneath Stormveil Castle... Things turned out a little differently than I expected." Rogier took the Pustule he had collected earlier from his pocket.

"What is that?" The Tarnished looked at the rotten, revolting object in confusion.

"It's a Pustule."

"What kind of weird fetish is this? You spent all that time looking for that?" The Tarnished was dumbfounded.

"No, no, that's not it. This is no ordinary Pustule. It came from the Prince of Death's remains."

"From Godwyn?" The Tarnished frowned.

"You seem to know something about this. Yes, this is one of the things produced by the dead Godwyn. It's closely connected to Those Who Live in Death. Godwyn is the source of Deathroot, after all."

"Wait, you're just carrying that thing around? Aren't you afraid of becoming one of Those Who Live in Death?"

"Hahaha, no need to worry. I've taken precautions." Only after hearing Rogier's words did the Tarnished notice the faint layer of golden light covering the Pustule.

"Death was removed from the Erdtree, and its existence is forbidden. Thus, Holy Law naturally suppresses dead things. You must have fought Those Who Live in Death. Their weakness is holy power."

"I see. But you still haven't told me what happened to your legs."

"That... was my own carelessness. I spent a great deal of time finding the lowest depths of Stormveil Castle. There, I discovered a truly terrifying monster-a twisted tree spirit."

"You mean a Putrid Tree Spirit?"

"I didn't expect you to have seen it too. That thing was truly strong." Rogier still felt a lingering fear as he recalled it. "After a fierce fight with it, I pressed on without much rest. I could sense that what I sought was just ahead, so I stopped worrying about the strain on my body."

"But I underestimated the curse carried by the Prince of Death's Face. I only approached it briefly, yet I nearly died from the curse. Just then, a violent wind sprang up and swept me into the sky." At this point, Rogier glanced at the Tarnished.

"Don't tell me the wind swept you up and you broke your legs when you fell?"

"Exactly... How utterly embarrassing. Haha." Rogier scratched his cheek sheepishly. "But you summoned that wind, didn't you? It was truly fierce... every bit as savage as you."

"How am I savage? Don't lie through your teeth," the Tarnished protested.

"Haha, just a joke. Still, it was thanks to your storm that I escaped Deathblight. I owe you my thanks, and congratulations on defeating Godrick." With a bright smile, Rogier extended a hand toward the Tarnished.

"Just a coincidence." The Tarnished returned the gesture. "You seem to know a lot about Those Who Live in Death. Can you tell me exactly how Godwyn died? Though I already have a few suspicions."

"My friend, I actually overheard your conversation with that man outside, the one called D."

"You two know each other, right? He kept looking over here while he was talking."

"Yes. We were once friends and companions. We explored death together, but in the end, we went our separate ways... Perhaps that's simply how friendship goes. He's a good man. Though his words may be harsh, his convictions are steadfast, and he presses forward without hesitation."

"And you can probably guess why we parted ways. D loathes Those Who Live in Death, but I'm different. I want to save them. As D and I delved deeper, I discovered that most of them don't attack people unprovoked. You must have seen the Wandering Nobles in Limgrave. They have no intention of attacking anyone; they simply wander endlessly... Some of Those Who Live in Death do attack others, of course, but isn't the same true of us humans?"

"The Golden Order excludes death, while Those Who Live in Death are born of death. For that reason alone, the Order rejects them. That was what gave me the desire to save them. But to correct this distortion, I first had to learn how it began. Through my investigations, I discovered..."

"In the past, someone stole the Rune of Death guarded by Maliketh the Black Blade. Through some sort of ritual, they infused its power into weapons, and those who wielded these weapons became known as the Black Knives. They were rumored to be descendants of the Eternal City-a group of female assassins clad in Silver Armor that could turn them invisible.

"In the end, these Black Knife Assassins used Black Knives infused with the Rune of Death to assassinate Godwyn. This was the first death of a demigod, and it also set in motion the subsequent breaking of the Elden Ring and the Shattering."

"So it was the Rune of Death..." The Tarnished had suspected as much long ago. The Golden Order forbade death because the Rune of Death, which governed it, had been sealed away. Only that Rune could restore death. His main reason for asking Rogier was to confirm who had done it.

The Black Knives... A band of female assassins, and descendants of the Eternal City at that. He remembered Marika telling him that the people of the Eternal City were Numen, just like her. But something they had created incurred the Greater Will's wrath, bringing catastrophe down upon them. How did these survivors steal the Rune of Death from Maliketh? The matter was plainly complicated. One thing, however, was certain: this Night of the Black Knives could not have been accomplished by a single person, or merely a handful of descendants of the Eternal City. Someone must have been pulling the strings behind the scenes.

Then who could that person be...?