Golden light spilled like oil across the silent marble floors of Leyndell’s innermost sanctum. The divine chambers were hushed—a suffocating stillness held even the flame of torches captive, flickering but soundless. Pillars of white stone tablets bore gold inlay that pulsed faintly with sacred laws, the living runes of a world forged in divinity. And there, slouched atop a divan that seemed incapable to bring any real comfort, sat the Eternal.

Queen Marika—she who bore the Elden Ring in her very flesh—towered, even seated. Draped in black silk so thin it clung like mourning itself, her form shimmered with divine aura. Gold encircled her like a parasite: at her throat, her ankles, her very toes. Her eyes, luminous and unblinking, cast cruel light upon all who dared meet them. And at her belly, the golden sigil pulsed—the brand of the Greater Will.

She looked dead and terribly alive at the same time.

Godwyn, my golden boy. Someone stuck a dagger to my heart and I was incapable of seeing it coming. Now, your body poisons the Erdtree. That is the only though that forms on her mind, and it echoes on a sea of dark static. Outside her room, a crowd of priests and scribes stand in vigil, expecting great declarations and orders.

But one dares to open the room, uninvited. Marika looks at the visitor, or perhaps through him.