A Garden Where the Funeral Never Ends — Elden Ring

※ This essay contains spoilers for the central lore of the Elden Ring base game, Fia’s quest, and the related ending.

A Room to Return To

I sat by a site of grace and uncurled my fingers one by one. Even after I had uncurled them all, my hand still felt as though it were gripping a sword hilt. The rays of light pointed to where I should go next.

The grace we had once lost. People called us Tarnished, we who had lost the grace of gold and been driven out of the Lands Between. When the light that had long turned away from us appeared again, I followed it back to the Lands Between.

I could see the Erdtree. Branches reaching higher than the distant mountain ranges, golden leaves filling one side of the sky. Even the ruined buildings and castle walls beneath it were beautiful. Until I walked down the hill and found a body abandoned by the road.

They said the Elden Ring, which gave the world its order, had shattered. The goddess Marika’s children had claimed its fragments and fought for control of these lands in the war known as the Shattering, but in the end, none had become lord. They remained in their castles, and the lands below lay in ruins. Grace told me to cross those lands and stand before the Elden Ring. To become lord.

Yet I could barely get through a single stretch of road guarded by soldiers. I walked low to the ground, and whenever I heard metal clash inside the ruins, my first response was to grip the hilt. At night, I looked for somewhere to shelter from the rain and rested with my back against a crumbling wall. Still, it could not keep out the wind. On nights like those, I could hardly picture myself as lord.

It was after many weary nights had piled up that I met Melina and was guided to Roundtable Hold. She said it was where Tarnished who dreamed of becoming lord gathered. In the rooms and corridors, people went about their own work. From somewhere came the sound of a hammer striking iron.

It was hard to let my guard down even here. Still, there was a roof, and nothing was rushing at me just then.

I went past the blacksmith and into a small room farther inside. A woman in black, seated on a bed, raised her head. She introduced herself as Fia, then asked if she might hold me for a while.

I waited before answering, expecting a request to fetch something or kill someone to follow. Fia asked me to share a little of my life’s vigor and warmth. In return, she said, I would receive Baldachin’s Blessing. Of all those words, what I heard first was that I could rest against someone for a while.

I set down my weapon and lowered myself. Fia opened her arms. Unsure how much I could lean on her, I kept my shoulders tense for a while. Little by little, I relaxed within the arms around my back. The hammer was still sounding outside the room.

You’re warm, Fia said.

My body had barely made it through a long journey and several fights. It was strange to think that someone could find warmth even in a body as tired as mine.

Fia told me about the work she had done in her homeland. She gathered the warmth of life and the vigor she received from champions, then lay beside the dead of high birth. As a Deathbed Companion, her purpose had been to give the dead another life through the life she had gathered. But before she could finish that work, grace had guided her, and she had been driven from her homeland. Even so, she still wanted to be a Deathbed Companion.

It was a sacred rite to Fia, but I could not readily grasp the idea of lying beside a corpse and conceiving a new life. Still, I thought I did not have to understand everything to stay in these arms.

As I left the room, I took up my weapon again. Fia told me to return whenever I needed to; she would hold me as often as I wished. The thought that this room would still be in the same place when I next returned put me a little at ease.

The Man Who Hunts Death

D was apologizing to a body by the road. He was sorry he could not give the dead a proper funeral; he hoped their soul would return to the Erdtree. Wearing strange armor in which gold and silver were joined, he went on speaking to the dead for a little while after I approached.

He introduced himself as a Hunter of the Dead and warned me to be wary of Those Who Live in Death nearby. It did not take long to understand his warning to stay away.

Bones rose in the flooded ruins. They came toward me, dragging weapons in fleshless hands. Even after my sword brought them down, light gathered again among the scattered pieces of bone. I had to strike once more before they could stand all the way up.

D hunted them and collected Deathroot. Deathroot was a root that spread death and raised the dead again. The bones I felled with Litany of Proper Death, which I learned from him, never rose a second time. He said it was an incantation that summoned an image of the Golden Order and burned away improper death.

To D, the very existence of Those Who Live in Death went against the Golden Order, the order of these lands. If a death was not permitted, it had to be corrected. And to him, correcting it meant, in the end, destroying it. There seemed to be no other answer.

Whenever I returned to Roundtable Hold, I stopped by that room. I slowly grew used to setting down my weapon and resting in her arms.

Then one day, Fia handed me an old Weathered Dagger. She asked me to find its owner and return it. D looked at the dagger and said he knew the owner; he would deliver it for me. I left it with him.

The next time I returned to Roundtable Hold, another room beyond the blacksmith stood open.

D lay fallen inside.

He wore the same armor as when I first saw him. This time, though, he was not standing before a body.

Fia was beside him.

Where D had fallen, Fia said that the stolen mark of a noble one’s death had returned to where it belonged. She also left words for me to pass on to Roundtable Hold. They were not to interfere with Godwyn’s death. Those Who Live in Death were waiting for their lord.

I had not seen the moment Fia killed D. I kept remembering the dagger that had passed through my hands, and my shoulders relaxing in her arms. Neither memory could erase the other.

Even after Fia disappeared, the hammer at Roundtable Hold did not fall silent. Whenever I passed through the corridor, I looked toward her room. I did not go in again.

A Death Divided

I wanted to know more about Godwyn, the name Fia had left behind. I sought out the sorcerer Rogier, who was investigating traces of death at Roundtable Hold. As we talked, I remembered the face I had seen beneath Stormveil Castle.

The face tangled in the roots at the bottom of the castle was enormous. It looked something like the carcass of a beast, or like something imitating a human face. I asked Rogier about it.

In that face, Rogier recognized a death from long ago. Before the Elden Ring shattered, Godwyn the Golden had been murdered on the Night of the Black Knives. Of the gods’ kin, who had seemed beyond death, Godwyn was the first to lose his life. The assassins’ blades had been imbued with the power of the Rune of Death, also called Destined Death. That power had been removed from the Elden Ring and sealed away when the Golden Order was established.

After hearing this, I helped Rogier with his investigation. As we examined the blades the assassins had used, the name of Ranni the Witch emerged.

Ranni received me in the body of a doll. She did not deny that she had stolen a fragment of the Rune of Death and, through a rite, forged black knives that could kill a god.

But Ranni said the mark of death I sought was not on her present doll’s body. She had killed and cast off her own flesh, she said, and the mark remained on the body she had discarded.

Later, while helping Ranni with her work, I reached the Divine Tower where that body lay. A burned body remained at the top of the tower. The semicircular mark carved into it was the Cursemark of Death.

Only after obtaining the cursemark could I understand what had happened that night. The first death of a demigod should have left one complete circle. But that night, Ranni and Godwyn had met different halves of death at the same moment. What remained of Ranni was her soul; what remained of Godwyn was his body. The cursemark of death that should have been a single circle was likewise left in two halves, one on each of them.

That was why Ranni, who had lost her flesh, could speak to me in a doll’s body. Godwyn, who had lost his soul, was left with only a body that could not fully die.

Godwyn was buried beneath the capital, in the deep roots of the Erdtree. It was a funeral meant to return a hero’s remains to the Erdtree. But the death that lingered in his body spread along the roots. Deathroot sprouted at their ends, and bones rose again in the graveyards.

I remembered what Rogier had said. He was searching for the cursemark of death to save Those Who Live in Death. The very beings D had hunted. He said they had committed no sin themselves; they had merely come into contact with a flaw in the Order and become what they were.

I still had to fend off those who came at me. But just because they were dangerous to me, could even being born that way be their sin?

I suddenly thought of us, too, driven from these lands after losing grace. When we saw the light again, my first thought was that we could return. Until then, I had never asked why we had been unable to stay here in the first place.

While we were without grace, had we also been without the right to remain in these lands?

The Unfinished Funeral

On my travels, I found a small straight sword in a graveyard on the outskirts of the capital. It was the Golden Epitaph, made in memory of Godwyn, the first demigod to die. The sword held a young boy’s prayer.

“O brother, lord brother, please die a true death.”

I did not know the boy’s name. Before the plea to die, he had said ‘brother’ twice. Resentment would have been easier to understand. In a sword commemorating someone already dead, there remained a wish for that death to reach its proper end.

After passing through a ruined underground city and an aqueduct, I reached the deep roots. There, before my eyes, was Godwyn’s body, which I had known only from the stories. The body, its skin almost like scales, was tangled in the roots. It was hard even to tell which part was the face or where the body ended.

When I saw that face beneath Stormveil Castle, I thought the castle’s depths had been contaminated. Only when I reached the deep roots did I begin to think that was not all. It felt as if the entire land were turning into a single corpse. I tried to see the prince once called Golden in the shape before me, but I could not.

I do not know what his voice sounded like, whom he laughed with, or what he feared. Only that someone called him brother and prayed for this death to reach its proper end.

I lowered the hand that had rested on the hilt. I did not know what had to be done for this funeral to end.

No, I Want to Be Held

As I approached the prince’s body, the spirits of the champions guarding Fia blocked my way. Only after defeating them did I face her again. Fia did not immediately hold me. She asked what I had come to do. Had I come, like the dogmatic followers of the Golden Order, to deny them and their ways?

I remembered D’s armor. Behind Fia lay Godwyn’s enormous body. I lowered the weapon I was holding.

“No, I want to be held.”

Fia said she was the guardian of Those Who Live in Death, a woman called a foul, rotten witch. She said the hatred and loathing directed at them were also hers to bear. Even so, she asked, would I truly come into her arms? I moved closer.

The arms around my back were the same as at Roundtable Hold. Even with my eyes closed, I thought of D’s death, the spirits I had just defeated, and Godwyn’s body behind us. It felt as though they, too, were here in these arms. I wanted to hear why Fia remained beside this body.

Fia called Godwyn the Prince of Death. What she said she had recovered after D’s death was the cursemark that had been carved into Godwyn’s body. But it was only half. She said she had to find another cursemark of the same shape before they could welcome the lord they were waiting for.

When I took out the cursemark I had brought from Ranni’s discarded flesh, Fia recognized it at once. Now, she said, she would be able to give Godwyn new life. The new life she spoke of was a rune of Those Who Live in Death. Fia meant to lie beside Godwyn and conceive that rune. That rune would be born when the two divided marks of death joined as one. She called it her child.

I looked down at the cursemark in my hand. Remembering how I had left the dagger with D, I could not readily offer it to Fia. I could not see what had happened to him as right. Even so, I wanted Those Who Live in Death to stop being hunted. Just as I had been called back to these lands, they, too, needed a place to remain.

I handed the cursemark to Fia.

Fia asked me to become lord. She wanted me to mend the Elden Ring with the rune she would bear, so that Those Who Live in Death would no longer be persecuted.

When I first looked up at the Erdtree, becoming lord had seemed just as distant. But now the person who had held me sat before my eyes, speaking of what I would do once I became lord.

The Last Farewell

Fia said she was content. Rather than lying beside remains chosen for her by someone else, she was choosing of her own will to lie beside Godwyn. As she said her last farewell, she told me that the child would inherit my warmth as well.

When I had briefly rested my tired body in the small room at Roundtable Hold, I had not imagined the warmth I gave would reach this far. I wanted to ask whether she could return to Roundtable Hold. To ask her to sit in that room again. Mixed in with my wish for Fia to be safe was my wish not to lose a room I could return to.

But Fia was already saying goodbye. I hesitated over what to say, then said nothing. Even after she fell asleep, I stayed beside her for a while. The moment I gently laid a hand on her sleeping body, the scene before me changed. I was inside the Deathbed Dream.

An enormous dragon was waiting there. Fierce bolts of lightning fell around it, and red lightning split the earth. Where the lightning had swept through, a mist of death remained. Whenever I saw an opening, I slashed and withdrew. I had no time to go on thinking as I had beside Fia.

After I defeated the dragon, I obtained the Remembrance it left behind. Only then did I learn the name and story of the being I had just fought.

Fortissax. An ancient dragon who had been Godwyn’s friend.

Even after Godwyn became the Prince of Death, Fortissax fought the death within his friend. But for all that long struggle, he could not drive it out. In the end, he too was consumed and became a lichdragon.

The boy who left his prayer in the Golden Epitaph had prayed for the prince to die a true death. Fortissax fought the death that remained within the prince to the very end. I had no way of knowing what was in his heart as he held out for so long. Could that resistance have brought Godwyn even a little comfort?

Now Fortissax no longer called down lightning.

I returned to Fia.

After Returning from the Dream

Fia, lying beside Godwyn, did not raise her head even when I came close. I called her name. The greeting I had heard so often at Roundtable Hold did not come back.

On her body remained the Mending Rune of the Death-Prince. The two divided halves of the cursemark of death had joined as one. I carefully received the rune Fia had called her child, the rune she had said would inherit my warmth as well.

If I became lord and used this rune to mend the shattered Elden Ring, I would be able to change the world’s laws so that those who had been hunted under the Golden Order could also remain in these lands.

But obtaining a single rune had not changed everything before my eyes. Above me, Godwyn’s enormous body was still tangled in the roots. He had not returned to his former shape. I did not know whether this power would also remove every danger of Deathroot, or how we were to live alongside the dead who had rushed at me with swords above ground.

I was not yet lord.

Even so, I decided to use this rune if I ever stood before the Elden Ring. For the first time, I had a reason to want to stand there.

I looked at Fia again. It seemed I would never again hear her say that she would hold me as often as I wished if I returned.

I held Fia’s hand and stayed that way for a while. As though waiting for strength to return to her fingers. Instead of asking whether she could come back, I called her name once more.

Even after putting the rune away, I left my weapon on the floor and sat beside her. When it was time to rise, I finally laid the hand I had been holding against Fia’s chest. I pulled the black cloth that had slipped from her shoulder up a little, and checked that it would not slide down again.

Only then did I pick up the sword I had left on the floor.