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Your casket is cold when you wake.
It is not a strange thing, considering no body heat has suffused its sole occupant for however long, never once warming the brittle concrete beneath its back, and yet there is something dimly disconcerting about it at the same time, though you are in no place presently to articulate why.
There is a sound behind your eyes; low and droning that thrums against the back of your skull, humming through the hard surface below your head.
The vibration ekes through your thoughts, mingling with the thick wad of cotton packed inside your skull like long built up dust, those two factors combined making anything even remotely associated with thinking scarcely attainable.
Your brain feels like little more than aerated sludge in your head, desperately trying to slosh itself back together into something capable of cognisance and awareness.
Your senses are foreign and jumbled, as though they have all coagulated and fused together to make up the oppressive, chthonic darkness all around you.
You are drowned by the slow, lethargic weight of your own body forcing itself to reawaken from death, like nothing exists beyond the closed off box around you and the limits of your own slowly animating corpse.
And yet, the noise comes from somewhere far away from all of the darkness and the numbing cotton, as though the low hum of it is trying to rouse your fragmented soul, shepherding it into something alive again.
It is just before the sound fades out completely that the slush of your mind solidifies enough to make way for a single, conceivable thought. Vaguely, feeling as though you are thinking through tar, you finally ascertain what the sound is— the distant tolling of a bell.
And it is that unremarkable realisation that marks your very first thought as an awakened Undead, an Unkindled, a creature so far removed from whoever you’d been prior to the death that’d earned you your place in the stone casket surrounding you.
You don’t recall what your final thoughts before your death must have been, but you assume they were likely just as unremarkable.
The fading of the bell heralds the end of your slow return to tangible consciousness, and you rise slowly from your cold burial.
It’s a process that lacks any and all grace. The long grasp of rigour mortis that clung to your body like a cage is in no haste to depart your steadily warming limbs.
You are in a bleak, wasted valley, littered with coffins not dissimilar to your own, interred on both sides by steep, oppressive cliffs.
You don’t recognise it— you did not perish in a place that looks like this.
That being said, you can scarcely remember where you even died to begin with, nor can you even recall what the cause of your death actually was.
All you can salvage from the thick fog swallowing most of your memories is the sensation of collapsing, onto the hard ground of someplace barren and choked with ash, a formless darkness swirling around you like a cloud of bugs; insistent, hungry.
You arbitrarily choose not to examine the memory further, and as though drawn forward by an invisible string, you wearily leave your casket behind, and step forth into the insipid world that awaits you.
As you cautiously traverse the ashen graveyard, gathering your bearings and holding fast to your reluctance to not focus too much on the true and terrifying depth of the engimatic situation you now find yourself in, you wonder how you even got to this place to begin with, following your death.
You assume that some minstrel must’ve come across your pitiful cadaver and deemed you, a stranger, worthy enough for a proper burial. Perhaps to some, burying a nameless corpse may not have felt close to any sort of grand deed of virtue, what with the commonality of death plaguing every avenue of your small world.
But out there, in the forgotten spaces between settlements, where passing by nameless corpse after nameless corpse left out to rot in the waning sunlight was commonplace, you realise to have been entombed by a stranger was an act of stupendous kindness that you can scarcely fathom the nature of.
Who knows how long ago it happened— your time spent lying dead in that box is not something you will ever be able to recall with absolute certainty. There was no way to know if the stranger who had bestowed you with such an unseen kindness even still lived, or if they too had since joined the countless slew of discarded bodies decorating the lands. Regardless, you wish you could’ve thanked them, or at least provide them the same courteous burial.
Cliffs stand tall around you, tall and black, topped by the battlements and peaks of some distant and forbidding city, but you pay it little mind. There is something drawing you forward, pushing you to ascend the tall sloping hill out of your graveyard, and you follow that feeling numbly, willfully guided like a child in the dark.
Your thoughts come to you slow and hesitant, the content of them generally vapid and insubstantial, because you know in the back of your mind, if you think too deeply, and fully rationalise what is happening, this ghostly, unreal moment between death and undeath will disappear like smoke, and you will be forced to face a harsh reality you aren’t quite ready for yet.
And so, as you fight your way through witless Hollow’s who must’ve lost themselves to madness a long time ago, in the quiet moments between you idly meditate on the feeling of walking, of simply breathing.
The air isn’t by any means fresh, if you can even recall what ‘fresh air’ even entails at this point. The breeze is clogged with dissipating ash and coagulated death, drifting down in sheets from the city far above you and swept up from the ashen graveyard at your back to create a ghastly mixture of dust, crumbled bone and dismal echoes of life since passed. It is unfit to be taken unto human lungs, unsustainable for anything more alive than a lowly Undead.
But you are Undead, and so the quality of it is a frivolous thing— it is not what sustains you, not anymore. What matters, you realise, is how much you missed the simple act of it; of breathing.
Your lungs are little more than corroded, useless sacks of flesh taking up pointless space in your chest, and yet breathing in pointless air is somehow…cathartic. It makes you feel real, for better or for worse.
However, as nice as a thought that may be in the moment, it takes you an upsettingly little amount of time to decide that maybe it is for the worse more than the better, because are you actually real in any sort of true and genuine sense?
You are awake, intelligently cognisant and presently aware, but you are still unequivocally dead, you knew this from the moment you woke from your casket.
You felt the certainty of it in the rotten sinew holding your muscles together, down to the crumbling marrow beneath your brittle bones. You are deliquescent ash masquerading a complete human form, nothing but cold and pitiful cinders left in the absence of a grand and blazing fire.
In time you learn not to worry about this, grimly resigned to it as your journey progresses, but in the moment after your waking it is disturbing. You focus again on the act of breathing as a distraction, but find the meagre comfort it brought beforehand not nearly as effective anymore.
It is only when you reach the dark shrine across the hill that it dawns on you, shattering your subconscious defence mechanism. It breaks through the wall of denial and insensate detachment from reality that your subconscious had carefully crafted from the moment you’d woken; you are awake for a reason, someone rattled your measly little corpse from the throes of eternal slumber for one, particular reason.
The Fire fades. The Lords have abandoned their thrones, and it is up to you and your fellow Undead, all cajoled into rousing by the tolling of the bell, to return the Lords unto them. The Fire must be linked, and the world preserved.
They call you Unkindled— Ashen One.
What came before your death matters extremely little to anyone, you quickly come to realise. You learn that you were returned to earth as a conduit for the greater good, an emissary revived to prevent darkness from swallowing the land in the fading of the Fire. But it does not take you long to pin it all as only grandiose, flowery jargon.
Because in truth, you are simply one of many tools to be thrown like fodder towards the stray Lords of Cinder, in hopes that one of you may stick it out long enough to wear one of them down and successfully drag them back to their charred thrones.
Hawkwood puts it the most candidly, as he laments to you from his solemn vigil on the shrine steps— how are mere Undead foot soldiers supposed to oppose the unfathomable power of the Lords of Cinder, who prior to their own deaths had possessed the might to link the fast dying flame, prolonging the Age of Fire when so many others had failed?
How were you supposed to oppose something like that; those who had opposed the all encroaching darkness itself?
It is a foolish act, a cruel and unjust weight to thrust upon a pack of lowly corpses who did not ask to be puppeted back to life, and yet you do not object, you do not divert from the path laid for you, because what else are you supposed to do?
There is no other place out there for you anymore. The world isn’t how you remember it, and you remember very little already.
Nothing is recognisable to you, no city, village or woodland scratches at a single plain in your memory. Even the sky is different; far muddier and red than you remember, like an old crusted wound that hasn’t quite healed properly.
Nothing at all strikes you as familiar, nothing helps to stir the hidden parts of your mind that were buried by your death. Even your name escapes you, some days.
The only thing you can recall with any sort of accuracy is the weight of your sword in your hand and how it feels to swing it.
You swing your weapon with an unconscious confidence and purpose, feelings that are definitely yours, though detached in places; unwhole. They belong to your old self, someone who was likely trained in swordplay, a knowledge that must’ve been imparted in depth to you, long ago.
You feel lucky that from all the meagre dredges of pre-death memory your stubborn mind has allowed you access to, you were lucky enough to recall your battle prowess, without that, you may as well have crawled back into your casket and waited to die again.
But still, there is some comfort to be found in retrieving that memory, of knowing something so assuredly, when everything else seems to escape you like mist through your fingers. Though small and ungainly, you grasp tight to that comfort, holding it close to the gaping pit of frigid cold in the centre of your chest.
But it does not take away from the overwhelming reality of it all, of you returning to this world having nothing, remembering nothing, being nothing, nothing except a mantle you are expected without question to uphold.
The person you were before your death is like a faceless phantom at your back, breathing cold air against your neck, and whenever you go to turn around, to try and catch even the barest glimpse of it, to try and bare witness to even the smallest inkling of your life before your undeath, you find nothing at all, like it was never there in the first place.
Now, you are little more than a vessel for the souls of your fellow fallen, relinquished unwillingly from dead flesh. They do not belong to you, and yet you must siphon their strength all the same, all for the sake of persisting where they failed.
And so you persist, trudging through the converging kingdoms with heavy steps, following the single minded goal placed upon your shoulders like a shackle around your neck. Exacting your purpose, the duty of a Lord Seeker, a purpose you abhor and never wanted, and yet carry out regardless.
Because what else can you do, but persist?
Even if it is a miserable path to follow, even if you detest it so, you are directionless outside of your ordained purpose. It is either enduring it, or crawling back up inside a casket again, which perhaps other Unkindled, (Hawkwood for instance) may have found alluring, but for all your turmoil, you do not think the same.
You do miss it; the dark, velvety contentment of true death, that much you will not deny. Yet at the same time, returning to it does not excite you— even living a cursed, half-existence as you are now, forsaken to a perilous quest you would not have chosen willingly, in the moments between fighting through Lothric you find enough small comforts to keep those thoughts at bay.
Talking to people is the big one, mostly. Firelink Shrine is your haven, your place to discard the heavy thoughts of your duty and everything it entails (a tricky thing, considering the huge thrones that indicate your end goal are always present, but through your ever developing knack of suppressing and ignoring that which disturbs you, you are able to dismiss the worst of their connotations too).
The people you have found along your journey who you have either liberated from an unfair prison or merely invited through the offer of a refuge from the unforgiving world outside fill your pitiful existence with meaning, separated from the ever present chains of your purpose.
The first you met was Greirat of the Undead Settlement, freeing him from his cell in the depths of Lothric High Wall. Possibly the most amiable and thoughtful thief you’ve ever met (then again, you can’t say you know many thieves to begin with), the easy going conversations you have with him prove fulfilling and engaging.
Greirat has many a story to tell, delighted to regale you with tales of his infamous exploits. Plus, you can tell it keeps him grounded and less fidgety— you know he dislikes being kept in one place for long, he has expressed as such many times, and though you can understand his feelings, you fear what may become of him if he were to strike out into a territory that is too dangerous for even his skilled prowling to handle.
Irina of Carim is gentle and kind, and you spend many an hour with her, listening to tales of her far away land and miracles from the rare books written in braille that you discover on your travels for her.
You know that she enjoys your company, and you are more than happy to lend it to her, for even the smallest chance that it may help dispel some of her evident loneliness, just as it does your own.
Her knight, Eygon of Carim, calls her a piteous, frivolous thing, but in no world can you even imagine sharing in his distaste for her, when she is simply one of many who are struggling to even just survive out there in this dying world. You certainly understand the feeling, the struggle, as closely and intimately as the ribs beneath your sallow skin.
Cornyx of the Great Swamp shows much enthusiasm at being your teacher in the arts of pyromancies, so dedicated to his choice of study as he is, and thus you enjoy his lessons thoroughly, captivated by his wisdom and earnestness for the craft.
Orbeck of Vinheim teeters more on the aloof side, generally curt and sharp with you, never afraid to be forthright with his opinions, though you can surmise that that is merely his general disposition to everyone he meets. And yet, even he has a measure of kindness to him, through the gratitude he expresses when you offer him scrolls, pleased by your commitment to the promise you made him.
Though impatient and stone faced, just like Cornyx you can tell Orbeck enjoys carrying out lessons for you, revelling in the opportunity to exchange and impart knowledge upon a willing subject such as yourself.
There are many of them now, always open to soothe your ache for simple and friendly conversation. Those like Blacksmith Andre and his earnest support and metal handiwork, and even the Shrine Handmaiden is pleasant, even if she’s somewhat off putting more often than not.
They are just some of many who call Firelink home, and though some like Eygon may call them doddering old folk or futile wastes of space, they are each a stone in the foundation of your heart, keeping it from collapsing under the pressure of your dismal duty.
In a remarkable turn, there are even people beyond the walls of Firelink who offer a similar, if not more intimate companionship— fellow Unkindled, striking down their own paths towards the Lords of Cinder.
It is they who understand the obscene weight of your purpose the most, for they share it with you to the letter, and for that reason, you feel a closeness to them you wish you could nurture more. But unlike your friends in Firelink, they are never stationary, and happening upon them on your individual journeys is a rare thing indeed.
And because it is so rare, it is the moments where you find them that you must cherish. Your fellow Unkindled are like beacons of light among the dark of your perilous journey, and you clamber to them like a moth whenever the chance arises.
Siegward of Catarina is one of the most notable of the Unkindled Ash you’ve met— a warrior like yourself who possesses a vim and vigor that you cannot hope to match, despite you probably being younger than him. He has been Undead for far longer than you have, having only been awoken somewhat recently, and while you have so quickly slipped into a vague form of despair, Siegward remains incredibly optimistic, joyful even, confidently dedicated and bound to his duty. You admire his assuredness in his duty as much as you envy it.
His kind, larger than life personality and presence soothes your weary heart, you partake in his homemade Estus brews with him whenever the chance arrives, always delighted at the prospect to drink something that doesn’t turn to ash against your burnt out taste buds, especially when in company as wonderful as Siegward’s.
Anri of Astora and Horace the Hushed are a peculiar pair, but not in any negative connotations, not at all.
Like Siegward, they are dedicated to their duty, only you get an inkling through their dispositions that they are more interested in claiming Aldrich, Saint of the Deep’s cinders than any of the other Lords.
There is a history there, you can tell, but you know not to pry into things that you are not welcome to, no matter how friendly you may have been with them.
Regardless of that, the two of them are both confident and stalwart, and always eager to lend a hand to you should you need it, just as you would to them. Though Horace does not speak, Anri translates enough of their conjoined camaraderie for the both of them.
Anri once told you that travelling together with Horace made the path of the Lord Seeker less onerous, and you wish you could’ve been that fortunate to.
Perhaps if you weren’t alone, the burden of this loathsome quest full of death and misery may not have been so heavy.
But you cannot linger on thoughts of that, lest you grow to resent Anri for having what you do not. It is not their fault for finding joy in something so dour when you cannot, it is yours for perhaps not trying hard enough.
The nature of your journey is grim and miserable, but it is the small fragments of companionship you nurture that lessen the stabbing pain of your purpose, and your directionless Undead existence.
You treasure each connection you’ve painstakingly cultivated, each one more unique and special then the last.
But there is one other connection that stands out to you in a different, particular way, one that perhaps holds more significance to you and your purpose than any of the others.
Each and every time you return to the shrine, the Fire Keeper is there waiting. And every time, she smiles at you, constant and without fail.
She greets you the same way every time; welcoming you ‘home’. At first, the idea of Firelink Shrine being your ‘home’ felt a foreign concept to ponder, so far divorced from how you initially felt about the place that the idea of treating it as such your skin crawl.
But soon enough you made an uneasy peace with it, as the details of whatever distant place had been your home prior to your death and subsequent resurrection was lost along with all of your memories anyway— in fact, the closest thing you may have had to a home now was your stone casket down the hill at the bottom of the shrine.
And besides, filling the place with numerous friends certainly helped to increase your fondness for the place— it could be a home, so long as it remained a place of refuge and comfort for those who may have needed it.
But that was neither here nor there. What mattered was that no matter the circumstances, no matter the time, the Fire Keeper is there by the bonfire, waiting for you.
She never sees you as you enter, blind as she is, but you know it does not matter, because you have gathered enough by now to know that she can feel the flame of your soul as you draw near, and to her, that sense must be far more potent than sight or hearing.
She is not like the others in the way that you can simply converse with her about everything and nothing. You have tried, but she offers little response that does not deviate from your duty, from her duty. You are one of her many wards, there to siphon you power through the sovereignless souls you collect on your travels. She tends to the Fire, and she tends to you. Nothing more, nothing less.
You get the impression that the Fire Keeper’s strange avoidance of interpersonal connection is not due to naïveté or the like— it is more like she treats you like a coworker more than anything else, but even thinking that feels too insensitive to her however she must feel.
It’s strange, she’s strange, but not in a way that’s at all her fault, you realise.
To her, you have a purpose to uphold, and it is her purpose to make sure it comes to fruition. It is like she was crafted entirely for her duty to Unkindled like you and to the Fire, as though she materialised full formed into existence at the Fire’s side, expectant and patient and assiduous, with nothing more to her life beyond her given purpose.
It is a horrifyingly familiar thought.
The Fire Keeper does not speak of anything that extends past her purpose, because it is likely that she has nothing of that ilk to even speak of to begin with.
She exists within that shrine to carry out what is expected of her, to fit the mould ordained for her since the moment it was decided for her.
You realise, with no small measure of pallid despair, that she is just like you in that way.
Once you recognised this, it quickly occurred to you that you were not the only one who harboured similar misgivings on the Fire Keeper’s dilemma.
You have witnessed Ludleth of Courland watching her sometimes, from far atop his smouldering throne. There is pity in his small, withered face as he observes her, the same way someone may watch a sickly animal whose suffering can only be eased by the mercy of death.
He too knows something, about her and her purpose, but it is not something he has chosen to enlighten you about yet.
A part of you doesn’t want to know what he knows, in some sheepish attempt to preserve the Fire Keeper’s dignity and nurture the hope and possibility of her telling you herself. But another tells you that learning what you can from Ludleth is prudent, as she never will tell you, because she does not know what that knowledge entails herself.
It is a scary thing to consider, that the Fire Keeper’s life may be overshadowed by something so grim that she isn’t even aware of. At least that’s what you glean from the commiseration of Ludleth’s disposition— whatever it is he knows about her, it doesn’t strike you as anything good.
But it is all just theory and assumptions with no clearly given answers, so one day you decide to ask her about it; about the nature of purpose and duty and how it extends to you both specifically, although not with the amount of abject misery that often accompanies the thought, and with significantly more tact.
You parse it to her casually as you sit next to the bonfire one evening, playing up an air of nonchalance that belies your true feelings.
The Fire Keeper stands across from you, slightly at your back, not willing to join you on the ground, but comfortable enough standing. Her pale, flame-scarred hands are folded neatly atop her stomach as always, perfect and poised. She is as unruffled and pristine as an ash curdled tree sitting amongst a shriveled garden, persisting and staunch despite the nature of the sullied soil it takes root within.
You both sit in companionable silence for some time before you muster the courage you need to break it with your question. It’s funny in a way— lunging head first into combat against the most abominable monsters hardly phases you by now, but attempting to open up about your feelings to even the smallest extent is suddenly proving to be the hardest challenge you’ve face on your journey to date.
You swallow thickly once, and then twice, feeling the dust of ash against the roof of your mouth that never seems to go away.
“Has an Unkindled…ever refuted their duty?” You say, quiet and low, reflecting your hesitance.
Firelink Shrine is not a loud place, with its cavernous walls and peaceful, dusty air, but even in the recurrent, conspicuous hush of the shrine, with how dimly you spoke its a wonder if she even heard you at all. You barely heard yourself speak, the thin crackling of the bonfire at your feet feeling unspeakably loud in your ears.
But she hears you all the same, tilting her head down towards you curiously. Her expression doesn’t change, but you get a feeling from it that feels very much like you just told a joke that she doesn’t understand. Your heart drops an inch at the sight of it.
“I cannot say that I understand thine meaning, Ashen One.” She replies steadily, her tone genuinely perplexed in a way that confirms that she has never once been asked this question.
You dither gormlessly for a beat, dumbly mouthing words that refuse to come to you.
When you are able to find a voice for them, somewhat warily, you say; “Well— I’d imagine not…not everyone wants to do this, you know?”
You look away from her for a moment, gaze drifting to the bonfire ahead of you. The glare of it should hurt your eyes, but it does not. Fire is a part of you now; embers shift and burn hot through your bones, a blessing of strength as much as it is a curse.
“The Fire needs to be linked, I get that, but…don’t you think maybe not all Unkindled are cut out for this? What happens if one of them just…wants to go away?”
Your chest twists as you talk, your burden cumbersome like lead at the back of your pointless esophagus, choking you even with your Undead body’s absence of breath.
You are speaking broadly, but you know deep in your heart that it is based entirely in your own feelings. Though you yourself do not harbour any intention to refute your duty, as much as you may detest it, for without it you are nothing but wayward ash with no place to rest.
Your voice disappears into the high, shadowed ceiling of Firelink, the building’s ever present silence quick to swallow it up, and douse you in the musty weight of ill-at-ease quietude once more.
For the Fire Keeper has no quick reply for your query either, it seems. There is contemplative silence at your back for a long time, and you are apprehensive to turn around and look at her, for fear of what you may witness upon her face.
Sadness? Disappointment maybe? Anger? Any one of those is enough to make you shiver. Anything other than placid and gentle kindness on the Fire Keeper’s face is something you can’t even begin to fathom.
Eventually, you hear her inhale discreetly through her nose, breaking the Shrine’s cloud of fiery silence once again.
“I do not understand why one would want to abandon thine duty to the Fire.” She murmurs with an unbelievable measure of certainty, as though there truly is no other alternative in her mind.
And it is the sheer certainty of her tone that shocks you, nearly knocking the pointless wind from your pointless chest in your immediate surprise. It prompts you to look back at her finally, all fear of facing her billowing away in the cold wake of your alarm.
The Fire Keeper faces ahead, heedlessly unconcerned by the way you now gawk at her, her head angled towards the bonfire in front of you.
She remains that way for a moment longer, facing towards the fire as though she can see it as clearly as you can, and not as the abstract light in her personal darkness that she oft describes it as.
But then she turns, regarding you again, and her face is kind and pitying. Your stomach churns at the sight of it.
And she says; “‘Tis an honour, to be chosen a Lord Seeker. A chance again at life, repurposed into a vessel for the greater good. Ashen One, wouldst thou ever think to yearn for more?”
You watch her, silent and still, your shock gone as quickly as steam from a half-smithed sword, with an ambivalent, careworn despair quickly taking its place.
And when you are unable to find that initial reaction you’d wanted from her, the understanding you wished she’d shown to your plight, you look away, numb, back towards the bonfire.
It crackles and hisses, spluttering ash against your feet. Frivolous, worthless ash, unfit to contribute to the smouldering flame.
You do not reply, and the Fire Keeper doesn’t seem to mind.
The returning silence lays thick upon your shoulders, and you unconsciously hunch them, feeling suddenly small.
You now wish she had replied with disappointment or anger, either of those reactions would’ve been leagues better than the innocent indifference in which she regards you with now.
You can't say you blame her for her unintended insensitivity, for you know it does not derive from a place of any sort of malice. In fact, the Fire Keeper and malice were two concepts so thoroughly divorced from each other in your mind, which was an incredible feat indeed, when it felt like the entire world was fueled by the whims of the latter.
You can assume all you like, waxing poetic in your mind about what her own relationship with her purpose may be like, but in truth you do not know the true nature of her upbringing (nor do you know more than a handful of things about her to begin with), and thus you cannot find it within yourself to fault her for not recognising what you truly meant by your solemn words. And besides, what you truly meant is nothing short of an abstract thing already, one that you can hardly grasp yourself.
You can’t act like you know what she's been through to believe the things she does, you can’t act like you know what shaped her into the woman who stands before you, with unseeing eyes and burnt hands.
But even still, it pains you. It pains you that she cannot see the true reaches of your turmoil, even with how similar you both are.
The other Unkindled you have met would understand, you think, but none of them are as present as her. You pass by other Undead on the same quest as yourself time and time again; you all toil through this journey in grim solitude, only now and again offering clemency and kindness to whichever compatriots happen to stumble across your converging paths.
They are there and then they are gone. Their company, however brief, is something you profoundly cherish, yet never persists long enough for you to scratch at the finer topics of your shared burden. You never know how to bring it up, and something tells you that they don’t either.
You also can’t say that you understand the specificities of the Fire Keeper’s own duty, but you know enough about it to feel justified in your surprise; has she really never considered that one might want to divest of their duty to the Fire? Especially when it is one given without choice or wanting?
She called it an honour; a gift one could say— but is something really a gift when it is given by force?
Even the Lords of Cinder you now hunt sought to escape their predestined purposes, and their choices to do so in turn prompted the necessity of the journey that you wish to escape. It is a vicious cycle that represses all and favours no one.
But is that not always how this world has operated? The Fire fades, the Age of Fire threatening to collapse, until someone is thrust into its hungering maw, linking it to become a martyr, an echo of Gwyn, thus revitalising that esteemed golden age through the cinders of their own body and soul. The Age of Fire continues on, until the Fire inevitably begins to wane yet again, starting the cycle anew.
Is it not reasonable to long for an escape from it all? Is it really so wrong for you to feel the way you do? When all that has come of this never-ending cycle has been naught but suffering and collapse?
Sometimes you wonder what would happen if you just…didn’t. What would happen if you didn’t retrieve the Lords of Cinder and return them to their thrones, what would happen if you allowed the Fire to simply fade for good, and condemn the world to be plunged into darkness, like everyone seems to fear.
Would it be as bad as they say? Or in darkness would the world finally heal? Reshape itself within the shadows, and form something new from the ashes the coruscating flame left it in?
It is not your place to know that, though you suspect there are some out there who wholeheartedly believe in that future, and you can’t help but wonder if it truly is the better outcome.
But alas, it matters very little. Even if you were to give up your quest, to try and find a new meaning for yourself when there is none to find, someone else will just fetch the Lords of Cinder in your stead, and the Fire will be linked just as always, renewing the cycle.
Even if you did want to disrupt that cycle, there is no guarantee that it wouldn’t immediately be for naught. You are but one of many specks of dust cajoled into this game; what could you possibly hope to make different?
But it is a topic for another day. What matters in that moment, is that you have been sitting in silence for far too long, so caught up that contrite, dust soaked quiet and the dull flickering of the bonfire that for a moment, you almost forgot where you even were, and that the Fire Keeper still remained behind you, idle and unmoving.
Slowly, with what feels like a thousand years worth of abject weariness constricting your bones, you turn away from the glowing bed of the bonfire.
This time, you look at her when you finally speak again, dead in the face even though she cannot reciprocate, as you wrangle all of your fluctuating, wayward emotions into a delineated, almost toneless question.
“Do you ever yearn for more?”
The effect your question has on her is instant, yet discreet, like the subtle flickering of a candle.
Your words give her pause, her expression flattening into something near unreadable beneath her mask. For the first time maybe ever, her stance stiffens, her usually relaxed shoulders tightening just a fraction.
Perhaps you should have paid more heed to this change, however subtle. Perhaps you should’ve logged it as a potential warning against pressing the way you were, and yet you foolishly ignored it, too immediately fixated on another detail of her sudden shift in disposition.
Despite the abrupt aloofness of her character, you sense a trace of hesitation, illustrated through the slight parting of her pale lips, an attribute that may have gone unnoticed to those less inclined to the details of things as you are.
“Mine purpose is sound and true.” She says delicately after a moment, voice slow and confident. “I tend to the flame, and I tend to thee. As long as there is Unkindled Ash such as thyself, I will remain here by the flame, to ease the burden of thine journey.”
There is again conviction beneath the usual softness of her voice, astute and honest, and you believe her— she means what she says, just as she did before.
But this time, you feel the smallest, most inscrutable speck of uncertainty, as fleeting and infinitesimal as the embers sputtering from the bonfire in front of you, but no less real.
You straighten minutely upon identifying it, the warmth of a tiny sense victory coming alight within your chest. You’ve gotten through to her. Slightly. Tentatively. It feels not unlike reaching your hand out to a wolf and trusting that its first inclination won’t be to bite you.
You understand in that moment that yes, unlike you, the Fire Keeper believes in her purpose wholesale, but there is the barest, smallest room for doubt, somewhere deep within her heart.
Maybe secretly, in some distant compartment hidden in the back of her mind, she does believe that there is something better out there for her than just the purpose she was moulded to fit, just as you do yourself.
“And you’re really okay with that? With living like this?” You say without thinking, spurred on by the stirring warmth that is quickly capsizing towards desperation; an aching to be understood.
And it is in that moment that you finally see the warning signs you so ignorantly missed a moment ago. It is expressed through the Fire Keeper backing away from you, recoiling, as though you’d suddenly transformed into some gruesome monster that only she knew was there.
It was only a single step away, small and dainty, and yet you abruptly feel the profound distance now yawning between the two of you as starkly and violently as being stabbed through the chest.
She faces you, her expression a writhing mass of emotion that she seems unable to wrangle into one conceivable feeling.
She grips the fabric of her dress with what you are sure is mild distress. You hastily begin pushing yourself to your feet.
“I-I’’m sorry,” You splutter, abhorred with yourself. “I didn’t mean to p—“
“It is fine, Ashen One.” She cuts you off, voice sharp in a way you’ve never heard it before. You go completely still at the sound of it, the conciliatory hand you were reaching towards her jarring to chastened halt, leaving it hanging thoughtlessly in the air.
Turning away from you, you hear the Fire Keeper take a long, thin breath. After a moment of this, her hunched shoulders relax a little, and her tight hold on her dress slackens. She doesn’t turn back to you.
“Forgive me, Ashen One,” She murmurs, voice slightly thick. “But I…am not fit to answer thine questions on this particular matter. I am sorry that I cannot be of more use to thee.”
Straightening, you withdraw your hanging arm back to your side with the grace of rusted machinery, and shake your head. “N-No— No, it’s fine. I asked you something you don’t want to answer, and that’s fine. I’m sorry if I offended you in some way.”
And you are sorry. You are wretchedly, disgustingly sorry.
You were so caught up in your own pathetic misery that you failed to grasp the breadth of her own feelings. You wanted so badly for her to understand you and the comfort that it would subsequently bring you, that you ignored the clear discomfort she was exhibiting. It was selfish and cruel, and you feel your regret choke in your throat.
The Fire Keeper keeps her face angled away from you, staring sightlessly towards the middle distance between the smouldering thrones circling the room. When she speaks again, she doesn’t acknowledge your apology, and instead skirts towards something totally unexpected, that’d you’d given up entirely on hearing after the events of the past ten seconds. “Dost thou yearn for more?”
You stall instantly, staring at her, stricken, like she and her entire surroundings had suddenly warped into some kind of unreal dream.
When you’d first presented this topic to her, you’d decidedly left yourself out of the question, opting to speak broadly. Though anyone with a brain could’ve seen that what you’d spoken of stemmed from your own feelings, hearing her so candidly single you out was more alarming than you would’ve liked to admit.
You open your mouth to reply, an unending slew of words pressing at your windpipe, begging to be released and heard.
Yes, I do yearn for more. I don’t want this duty, I never wanted it. This isn’t living. I want a better reason for living, a better reason to have been pulled from my quiet, peaceful death. I want to remember my life before all of this. I want to remember what fresh air feels like. I want to remember what food tastes like. I want to remember what the sky used to look like. I want to remember where I came from.
I want to go home. I want to be free.
“Yes.” Is all you say.
You should say more, release everything that has built to an agonising culmination in your chest and free yourself from the deep shackles it has placed upon your very soul.
But you cannot give yourself that desperate clemency, you know you cannot get it from the Fire Keeper, lest you prod more at the clear open wound in her chest that she seems adamant to ignore (you do not blame her for that— you sympathise with that notion wholesale).
You cannot get your desired benediction from her. You cannot get it from anyone.
And then she finally turns towards you again, that mild and unreadable look once again taking root on her face.
“I see.” She says, and she sounds sad.
Silence returns, less companionable than before— it feels sort of like two strangers sitting together at the same penitent funeral.
And when the nausea that was steadily building in your throat throughout that whole encounter grows too much for you to stomach, you say goodbye, and leave the Shrine.
And so you do as you were meant to; you continue your reluctant quest, mindlessly dulled to your surroundings. You are numb and empty, like a phantom skirting the deep shadows of this ruined, miserable world.
The encounter left you with an implacable agony, that writhes together with every other facet of pain and sadness that already inhabits every layer of your being, brewing it all up into a hideous boiling pot of indescribable sorrow.
Perhaps you are simply doomed to suffer your doubts in solitude, you think. It’s only reasonable, isn’t it? You were brought here for the sole purpose of retrieving the Lords of Cinder after all— why would you ever need to consider anything more?
In the fading of the Fire, purpose is created, and placed upon even the most unwilling of creatures. The Age of Fire must be preserved, and those who believe in it care little about what they must do in order to achieve that end.
Maybe the Fire Keeper was right— Isn’t that all that should matter?
But no matter how you wish you could just believe that, and just push all your frivolous emotions to the side and strip yourself of all individuality so that you could simply carry out your ordained duty in blissful, mindless obedience, the world is not so kind as to allow that merciful ignorance.
But then again, when was this world ever kind to those who inhabited it?
And thus, when faced with such a slew of insurmountable pain and dismay, you promptly remedy that unspeakable anguish the only way you know how; by not thinking about it.
Perhaps ignoring the crux of your issues more often than not is maybe not the healthiest of things, but what single part of you could even be considered healthy anyway?
Your entire existence is based on the sifting of ash, it is a profane affront against what it means to live as a functioning and fully realised human being.
So all you can do is live, talk to the people who offer you at least some joy, fight your way through a dying world, heading towards a goal that will not reward you with anything valuable, nothing except the assuredness that this accursed world will continue to persist.
Maybe that should’ve been enough for you, to know that despite it all your actions may preserve what little good and light still exist, and in part it is, and yet you feel a pit in your stomach at the thought of reaching the end of your duty, specifically in regards to what will become of you following its completion.
The uncertainty of it is daunting— a part of you believes that you will simply return to your casket, finding it as cold and hard as it was when you’d left it. But even in its grim nature, it is somewhat of a comforting thought.
If the world was truly not wholly callous, when all was said and done, and the cinders of the returned Lords had linked the Fire and the Unkindled had thusly exhausted their purpose, you hope that you will return to your casket, and find it just as cold as it was when you’d left it.
It will be familiar, and in a world so unfamiliar and wicked, the relief you take in knowing that is palpable.
It will be cold as you lay again within it, once you are stripped of your title and discarded, and you will rest, ill contented and forsaken by everything, but free.
The idea of it had been so repellent to you before, but suddenly, it’s not as daunting as you’d initially thought.
You pick your way through the neglected, converging lands of Lothric, insensate, clinging to what little good there is to be found in your dull, torturous existence.
You think of the joy on your friend’s faces when you bring them new scrolls or trinkets from your journey. You think of the moments of companionship you will continue to share and nurture with them, and you hold tight to it. They are your anchor, and will continue to be so, even in the face of your eternally intimidating hardship and inevitable dismissal.
You think of the Fire Keeper, her kindness and unwavering heart, and the dark, inscrutable omen that hangs above her like a blade. And you hope that even as the Fire is linked and the Unkindled are discarded, she will at least find something beyond her own heavy duty, and thrive in a way that you can only dream, unbounded and free.
You can only hope. You can only live, if your existence can even be called living at all.
The Fire fades— the Age of Fire is threatened. The Lords of Cinder will converge, whether willing or not, to give themselves away to the Flame in order to preserve a lightless, barren world that has already crumbled into nothing.
Perhaps it would be better if the Fire was finally snuffed out for good, ushering in a new and strange age of darkness. Perhaps it would be better, or perhaps it would be worse, who was to say. It wasn't for you to know or decide.
It may play out in however way, but you know it will always be geared towards the preservation of the Fire, as is warranted by those who govern this wasteland you all subsist in together.
If the Fire stays the course, what is assured without doubt is that the cycle will always persist. It may be carried out in different ways maybe, but it will eternally derive from the same core causes.
It will continue always, until there are no more Lords of Cinder to be found or resurrected. Even when you are naught but unsalvageable dust, the cycle will continue. Even when you are long gone, finally ensconced in a blissful, permanent death, the Fire will always fade, and once again the duty of Lord Seeker will be handed out to unwilling Undead just like you, and everyone else who came before you.
An eternal cycle, an eternal curse. But at least, for all of your dedication to companionship, you can take a small, selfish solace in knowing that in time, you won’t be around anymore to see it.
Your casket was cold and bitter when you woke, and you suspect that it will be just as cold, if not more so, when you inevitably return to it.
Its chill will embrace you with the gentleness of an old friend, and you will crawl eagerly into its conciliatory hold, with nothing but relief in your ashen heart.