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Blaidd was created with a light inside of him. He was created with a purpose. As far as he could remember, he existed to fulfill one sole objective: to protect the Greater Will as Ranni’s shadow.
At the beginning of everything, it all seemed impeccable. She was fond of him and, for a short while, content with her own purpose. The distinction was too subtle and natural for him to realize, but gradually, his loyalties shifted to lay within her gracious soul, one he never assumed would diverge from the path laid out for her by the Greater Will. For a time, it seemed as long as he could remain by her side, the Erdtree’s golden light would fulfill him, and he could live a calm, prosperous life with the woman he loved unconditionally.
His light, however, was fragmented long ago. The dual purposes for his existence that had become so strongly intertwined were ripped apart at the seams; he was forced to make a choice he never should have been able to make for himself, and in the end, he sacrificed the loyalty to the Golden Order that was imbued innately in his existence. He and Ranni both defied their fates that day. She became the thief of death, the slayer of gold, and he fought fiercely for her even as she killed the empyrean flesh binding her to the order he was sworn to defend with his life.
He had never regretted his decision. He should have—his creators dictated that he should have, that he should have slain Ranni as soon as she committed herself to such a terrible fate, and that his soul should now carry a burden of indescribable gravity because he did not—but he never did. His life was cold; the black flame he once carried had turned to frost, and the light that once lit his world was reduced to a dark glow from only the moon and stars. But it never mattered to him. Ranni was the only light he truly needed; he loved her more than he loved the world, and if the proliferation of death, in all its awesome terror, was the cost of loving her, it was one he was willing to pay.
For the long while that they lived in hiding, things, once again, returned to a kind of normalcy for him. The Elden Ring was shattered and Ranni’s siblings fought mercilessly for control of the broken world, and all the while, the two of them were hidden comfortably away. The fray was beautiful. The Two Fingers, still from the collapse of the order they commanded, relented their grasp on Ranni, and, it seemed, on him.
If he were able to alter the fabric of time and create a world reflective of what he truly, deeply desired, he would have stretched those stagnant days to span all of eternity. Even if they would spend the rest of their lives devising a plan to destroy an age that would persist indefinitely in a state of suspended chaos, and even if the wait would be agonizing, and the impossibly distant future a sweet, dark, tantalizing nectar they could never taste, at least he would be with her. It was a strange part of himself that desired such a world—not the part loyal to the Golden Order, certainly, but not the part loyal to the Age of Stars, either. It was simply the part of him that loved her, he suspected; perhaps that was the part of him that existed in defiance to everything he was created for.
The Call of Grace that beckoned the Tarnished back to the Lands Between ended that wonderful fantasy, and for a brief while, the overwhelming relief of finally getting to execute Ranni’s plan consumed him. The moment he had spent the past century preparing for was at last upon him, and the thrill of stepping out from the shadows to bring about the Age of Stars coursed through his blood like a drug, propelling him unwaveringly towards an end in which he had no place.
The Tarnished who would become Ranni’s consort appeared to them quickly enough. Ranni chose her herself, and she proved herself worthy of everything they had imagined: she was General Radahn’s killer, the Champion of the Festival; she had traversed one eternal city to retrieve the knife Ranni would use to sever her tie to the Two Fingers once and for all, and last he saw her, she had followed their Lady loyally into another. He suspected she had, by this point, even killed assassins of his own kind. Blaidd was fond of her, and ungrudgingly fought alongside her until she surpassed him.
It was she who stood at Ranni’s side now. It was how things were meant to be in the end. Though he wished for their nameless age to last forever, the Call of Grace had rekindled traces of the broken light inside of him. The Two Fingers returned to life, and with them returned the memory of what he was created for.
He had done everything he could. He had done everything Ranni wanted. When she brought about the new order—even with a Tarnished consort at her side, and no trace of the loyal shadow eternally fettered to the fate she abandoned—she would remember him. In the name of the stars, in the name of Marika, in the name of heresy and mutiny and death, in the name of all that was important to him, he hoped she would remember him.
She was gone now. Assassins had come for her—who were they? Blaidd didn’t know. They were all dead now.
If it were he who had died, would she mourn?
Something deep inside of him twitched and writhed, and he stared at her looming, empty rise. The world was so cold now. Where was his light?
Where was she?
She couldn’t leave behind a world as bleak and empty as this one. What would remain if she were gone? What value was there in a world with no gold?
She’s a threat. She’s a threat to the Greater Will.
His heart twisted and bled, ripping itself in half and spilling his sanity into his chest cavity.
She needs to die, for the sake of protecting everything—
He braced himself against a jagged, freezing stone half-swallowed by the black dirt beneath his feet.
What had he become?
He loved her.
He was a part of her very being.
He could never betray her—
Someone was there. Someone was in her rise. Another assassin?
His blood burned, and his muscles were wound so tight they could be ripped into shreds. The moment he caught sight of them, the moment the wretched, foul enemy who would dare threaten the world Ranni had spent the past hundred years designing, who would dare threaten her—
His sword came raining down. He cleaved through their flesh, and for a moment, clarity flashed before his eyes.
The Tarnished was unharmed. His blade had fallen from his hand, and it was his own flesh that had been carved by the shining edge of a familiar weapon—Ranni’s, the dark sword she would offer to her consort. Blood poured down the side of the blade, and he stumbled backwards, his mind throbbing with an agonizing kind of burn as the pieces fell into place.
She had killed her Two Fingers. She was free. The Age of the Stars was imminently upon them.
They really had done it. She had destroyed her connection to the Greater Will, and the essence of him that he was never truly able to shed would die with it.
The pain from the wound was unbearable. Blood poured out from the destroyed chambers of his heart, and with it, everything he lived for. Ranni was really, truly gone—or maybe she was simply everything now. This was far more devastating than the day he watched her kill her precious body. Everything had aligned just as she hoped it would, but nothing remained: she was wholly through with the era of her life that included him, and soon enough, she would only exist through the distant, infinite watch of the Dark Moon, far beyond the reach of any of the scourges of this world whom he only lived to protect her from.
She was gone. She was God. He was her dying shadow—a shadow who could only exist when she stood before the corrupted light she despised.
He thought he could see the stars gazing down from above the top of the rise. The galaxy was set in motion. The moon was dark in its corner of the sky. The universe was endless and sublime and horrifying, and soon he would be gone from it.
It was no surprise. A being created to bask in golden light would inevitably wither in an endless night, no matter how vast and beautiful the cosmos appeared above. It seemed old Iji was right in the end. Blaidd’s love would never be enough to free him from the blighted roots that bound him to the Greater Will.
Flecks of death floated around in his vision, but before it was fully consumed, he thought he caught a glimpse of her gazing down from some corner of his mind. Her expression was calm, but her eyes glowed with satisfied bliss more passionate than any he had seen in her during the golden days when his life knew no conflict, or the stagnant years where they could do nothing but wait eagerly for their peace to turn to chaos.
Perhaps it was worth it all in the end.
Blaidd closed his eyes and let the frigid barbs of unforgiving death dig into his flesh. He had served his purpose, after all. He had defied his destiny, and he was complacent—nay, directly involved—in the destruction of the once-perfect world he was sworn to protect, but his love got him here in the end. Those blissful eyes were meant for him.
And even as the pain devastated his mind and body, and as he faded away as a shadow on a plane of endless darkness, he regretted nothing.