Back in Windmill Village, Zhao Si had dealt with Gowris, the necromancer known as the "heretical sage."
Gowris had traveled all over the Lands Between without finding anything related to death. This era was awkward: the Gloam-Eyed Queen was already gone, and Godwyn had yet to become the Prince of Death.
There were no deities connected to death to be found, nor any servants of death to be seen.
According to the game's story, Godwyn was supposed to die and become the Prince of Death, Those Who Live in Death would appear, Marika would shatter the Elden Ring, and the Erdtree's system of life and death would collapse along with it.
The dead could not die properly and would crawl out of their graves as Those Who Live in Death. Only then would the cries of Deathbirds and the calls of the Mariners frequently be heard. What exactly they came for was unknown.
Fortunately, Zhao Si had already seen a Deathbird before the Elden Ring shattered, which gave him the motivation to search for Helphen's Steeple.
Flying through the sky on Flying Rabbit, he could see the corpses of Giants everywhere across the Mountaintops of the Giants. Visibility here was good even at night. Of course he had to head out at night; his chances of finding clues were better then.
The enormous corpses were covered in ice and snow. Perhaps because the mountains were so cold, many had not rotted down to skeletons, and he could still make out something of what the Giants had looked like in life.
The corpses all knelt on the ground, with tree roots thrust through their chests, displaying the unusual cause of the Giants' deaths.
They had not died by blades, but from the erosion of death.
Who had wielded the power of