Chapter no.171 Dark Souls
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Chapter 171 The Story of Havel The Rock
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In the beginning, there were no gods to forge his path. No flame to spark his existence.
Only his will.
Havel had no Lord Soul, nor did he hear the call of the First Flame. He was not shaped by divine hands, nor cradled by any prophecy. What he had was strength, and a will as unyielding as stone. A heart that beat with the certainty of rock meeting the waves. He did not remember where he was born. What he remembered was pain. The unrelenting grind of muscle, sweat, and stone. The brutal, unforgiving lessons taught by his own fists.
When the war came, when the dragons descended from the skies, Havel was no mere knight. He was not bound by titles or decrees. He was his hammer. His rock. He stood with Gwyn, not as one of the Four Knights, but as a force of nature. One that no sword or miracle could defeat. While others fought with lightning, with fire, with miracles, Havel fought with his fists. The dragons he faced were as nothing compared to the stones he crushed beneath his feet in training. Their scales cracked beneath his might like brittle stone.
But then came the Dragon Monarch. A beast as old as time, whose very body trembled the fabric of reality. It was a thing of ancient power, a creature born before the flame.
Their battle shook the heavens. The earth trembled beneath his feet. But Havel did not falter. He stood strong. And when the Dragon Monarch fell, he did not celebrate. He did not cheer. He approached its massive, lifeless form and laid his hand upon its jaw.
One tooth in particular called to him. A challenge from the ancient beast that had once soared across the skies.
And so, Havel took it.
With sheer force, he tore the fang from the dragon's skull. The weight of it was unimaginable. Only Havel had the strength to wield it. Only he could bear its burden. From that moment, Havel was no longer the warrior who fought with steel. He fought with the Tooth. He discarded his blessed weapon, the one the gods had gifted him. It had served its purpose. It was not the gods who made him strong. It was the earth. It was the pain.
It was the strength that was his alone.
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As the years wore on and the dragons faded, Havel's purpose did not.
He became a leader. A figure. His followers came not for titles, not for banners or gold, but for the gravity of his presence. He became a monolith in the fog. A foundation. They came to him to break, to rebuild, to endure. But peace, as it always does, came with its own demons.
The war had ended. The dragons were gone. The world was still. Too still.
The gods had scattered their roles. Gwyn had built a new world, one made of light, but Havel felt the weight of that light and the hollowness that lay beneath it.
What was the world without war? What was he without the fight?
And then, a new presence arrived in the divine court. Seath. The Pale Dragon.
Havel had always distrusted Seath. A betrayer of his own kind. A creature who had sought power through deception and manipulation. He had joined the gods in exchange for his knowledge, but that knowledge had been twisted into treachery.
Seath now walked among them. He was given rank. Power.
To Havel, this was heresy.
The serpent's hide was white, masquerading as purity. And now, he slithered through the halls of the divine court, whispering his magic, corrupting those with soft hearts, leading them astray.
Havel had never trusted magic.
In truth, he loathed it. It was not simply foreign. It was foul. An insult to everything he believed in. Magic was a liar's tool. It offered shortcuts to those too weak to suffer, and nurtured minds too clever to be honest.
And so, Havel watched, in his silence suspicion sharpened like a whetstone drawn against iron. Each year, the pale dragon's name grew heavier in the mouths of men. They whispered of courtship with Gwyn's daughter beneath stained-glass suns. Of wisdom deeper than the Abyss. Of secrets traded for favor.
Havel gave no voice to these rumors. But deep in the locked vault of his soul, a pressure began to build. He could not strike Seath. Not yet. But he could prepare.
So for the first time in his life, Havel turned his will toward something not forged in earth or muscle, but in defiance. He did not study. He endured. And from that endurance, he created a miracle.
Magic Barrier.
When that was not enough, he carved a stronger truth into the world.
Great Magic Barrier.
His followers became stone-clad sentinels against the unseen. He taught them lesser barriers, gifts of will for those without his strength.
Still, Havel did not hate Seath. Not yet.
Hatred is not a spark. It is a crack in stone. It grows slowly, silently, until the break cannot be undone.
Havel simply refused to speak the dragon's name. When their paths crossed in the marbled halls of Anor Londo, he looked away. And in the sanctuary of his mind, he built a shrine of vigilance.
He began to feel the change then.
The sun, once golden and proud, dimmed like an ember caught in the wind. The gods began to vanish. First a few, then many. Their thrones grew cold. Their halls, hollow. But Havel remained.
He had not pledged himself to grandeur or spectacle. His loyalty lay clear. As long as Gwyn stood, so too would he.
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Far beneath the marble-sunned thrones of Anor Londo, the demons of Izalith stirred.
They were not dragons, yet ruin coiled within them all the same.
Born not of flesh but of chaos, they slithered through magma like demons from hell. Their forms were grotesque parodies of creation. And in their rising, the Age of Fire trembled.
Havel watched their coming with the same grim frown that once faced the dragons of old. But something in the world had shifted. The balance had begun to crack.
It was humanity. Once a flickering thing, now a fuel. A resource. A burden.
Where once it had been a gift, now it festered. Lords twisted it for power. Demons drank from it like wells run dry. Havel felt it that something deeply wrong, more vile than sorcery, more grotesque than Seath's pale treachery.
He could not name it but it clawed at the edges of his soul.
Still, he endured.
Whether he marched into the war against the demons, crushing chaos beneath the Tooth once more. Or remained cloistered within the sanctified corridors of faith, history would not say.
But Havel endured. That much was certain for a thousand years.
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The Bishop remained.
A relic of granite faith in a world growing quiet.
The war drums silenced. Faith became routine. And in the dark catacombs of his heart, a thought stirred: Is this what I fought for? Why can't I die in battle?
Then she came.
Her name never passed his lips. It was too sacred for stone, too soft for war, too bright for gods. A daughter of the Church, radiant as moonlight on still water. And in her presence, something within Havel shuddered awake. Something tender. Something perilous.
She did not fear him.
Where others saw a monster, she saw the man buried beneath the rock. She knelt beside him in prayer, unflinching. She spoke to him not as Bishop, not as Knight, but as soul to soul.
And Havel, the Rock, fell.
Their love bloomed in stolen glances, in prayers whispered side by side beneath hollow statues. Touchless. Wordless. Bound in silence. The world could not know. A Bishop could not love a sister of the cloth. So their romance became a hidden sanctuary, carved between duty and devotion.
In time, he gave her a gift. A ring, plain and unadorned, carved by his own calloused hands. The White Seance Ring, he named it.
She wore it always as proof of what they were to each other.
And then, as all saints must, she left. A pilgrimage. Far from Anor Londo's reach. Their parting was silent, sealed with ancient vows and a kiss never given voice. Her absence hollowed him. But he remained.
Until tragedy came.
High atop the mountain, where crystal stained the sunlight with eerie hues, he waited.
Seath.
That blind archivist. That pallid traitor. That serpent cloaked in robes of false wisdom. With each passing year, his mind had twisted deeper into disease. His curiosity, once scholarly, had grown grotesque. The whispers began, but were never questioned. Not from disbelief. But from fear.
Seath had turned his gaze toward women. Not with lust, but with vivisection.
His research now demanded not corpses, but living subjects. Yet his madness demanded more than life. It demanded purity. A fear of contamination. Of bloodlines. Of the unpredictable spark of creation itself. He required certainty.
And so the Channelers were sent.
Those insect-eyed surgeons of soul and flesh. Their orders: bring only the untouched. The unmarried. The devout daughters of the Church.
But the woman Seath took was not empty. She carried a child inside her.
Havel's child.
She wore no crown, bore no title, and yet she was his. In that quiet, sanctified way stone remembers the chisel. Their bond had no audience, no vows under flame or altar, but it was real. Absolute. And secret. So secret that even the gods were blind to it. It was that very that sacred invisibility, that made her perfect prey.
When she failed to appear at their next meeting, Havel did not worry. Not at first.
A pilgrimage delayed, perhaps. Some duty of the cloth. A summons by her superiors. The world of faith moved slowly, and he, of all beings, understood patience. But days passed. Then weeks. Then came the rumors.
A disappearanceof the daughter of the congregation. And when they spoke her name, the sound cracked something deep within Havel. His body remained still, but his soul thundered like tectonic stone grinding beneath the earth.
Others whispered she had fled. That she had broken her vows. That she had found a lover in some distant province. That she had forsaken her faith for the warmth of sin. But she had already chosen her sin. And it was Havel.
She would never have run. Not from him. Not when their love had bloomed within the Church's own walls. She was faithful. Not just to the gods, but to him.
No.
She had not fled. She had been taken. And he knew the name of the one who had taken her.
Seath.
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Whether she screamed or prayed, he would never know.
Whether she still clutched the ring he carved by his own hand, he could only imagine. But he knew her thoughts. He knew the one question that would circle her mind in the dark, beneath the gleaming ceilings and the insect-limbed surgeons who waited with blades: Where is he? Why has he not come?
Whether she Hollowed or chose death to avoid it, Havel would never know. But as he stood before the altar of the Way of White.
He felt nothing.
Once, he bowed here. Worn the robes. Spoken the doctrine. Bled for its ideals. Centuries of devotion poured into a golden chalice, only to discover it was hollow, cracked, and... dry.
That's when she came.
Velka, goddess of sin and consequence. And in her arms was a child.
His child.
Havel did not move. Could not speak. He stared, and for a moment, stone remembered what it meant to tremble.
Velka's eyes held neither pity nor warmth. "The mother I couldst not save," spake she, soft as wind through withered leaves, "yet that which I might, I did preserve."
Havel reached out and held the child. His hands, made for war, cradled something so fragile it should have broken him.
"Justice abideth still," Velka whispered, "yet it must be hewn, not found. Thou hast seen what the gods have become. What they suffer, and what they shield. I am the Keeper of Sin, Havel. And mine hand hath need of a sword. Strong, unyielding, and just. To mete out the doom the heavens dare not speak."
He looked at Velka. Then to the child. Then to the burning, broken sky above. And he agreed.
Thus began the Great Plot Against the Gods.
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In the Undead Burg, in the hollow beneath the world where humanity clung like moss to damp stone, where no gods deigned to look. And in that place of shadows, Havel found others. At first, only a few. Then more.
Warriors. Heretics. Knights. Broken saints.
A fireless mosaic of souls who had, like him, seen the truth behind the veil.
They met in silence and spoke in whispers, as though the stones might betray them. The candles they burned cast their faces into flickering masks.
Among them was Arstor, Earl of Carim, who had traded humanity for hunger. A vampire. His methods were cruel. Even Havel did not speak of them. But his knowledge was undeniable. He had made gods bleed before. He knew how to make them bleed again.
Others were familiar. Old comrades.
There was the Lady of Catarina, who swore an oath to keep their counsel even from her oafish husband, whose sword arm was stronger than his mind. And Domhnall, the odd little man obsessed with relics and masks. His tongue wagged too freely, and Havel mistrusted him. But his knowledge was vast. He knew of paths beneath the world.
This, in time, would prove a grave mistake. For greed is a lever the gods have long known how to pull.
Still, the plan took shape.
They understood the root of divine power was not fire, but structure.
A covenant of Lords.
Each with a shard of flame. Each with a role in the grand lie. And so they set their sights on one of the oldest: Nito, Lord of Death.
His power was needed. To end the reign of the gods not temporarily, but eternally.
They trained in secret.
Beneath bark and rot. Far from the surface where fire still lied to the masses. In the Great Hollow, where roots the size of cathedrals coiled in the black soil, where the air stank of age and breath and stillness.
And there, Havel remembered himself.
His armor still held. His Dragon Tooth, torn from the skull of a monarch, had not dulled. It had waited. And in its weight, he found truth.
The dragons had once been the enemy.
Monsters, the gods had said. But now, Havel saw the lie.
The dragons did not scheme. They did not beg. They did not burn. They endured.
Where the gods brought disparity, the dragons were still. Where the gods demanded sacrifice, the dragons asked nothing. They were not virtuous. But they were honest.
The gods had made light, then cast shadows. Made joy, then birthed envy. Made flame, then demanded mortals burn for it.
There was no honor in this.
So they traveled deeper. Past roots and silence. Through sand and fog. Until at last they came upon it. A glade of crystalline waters of Ash Lake. And there they beheld it. An Ancient Dragon.
Havel stood in awe.
For all the fury he once held, for all the blood he had spilled in those early wars, he could not deny it. His legend had been carved from the bones of what he was told to destroy.
His Dragon Tooth. His armor of stone. His very strength. All gifts ripped from the corpses of the old world.
What began as grudging respect became something deeper. And in the ashen stillness of Ash Lake, where time itself fell quiet, Havel found others who felt the same pull.
The Path of the Dragon, they called it. Not a covenant of conquest, but of return. They were not zealots. They did not hunger for power. They offered scales not for dominance, but for release.
To shed the skin of disparity.
To abandon the cycle.
Not to live forever, but to escape the madness the gods called order. It was not pride that moved them. It was clarity. They did not seek revenge for themselves alone, but mercy for all who lived beneath the failing sun.
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When the hour neared, Havel stashed his treasures deep within Anor Londo. He could not be seen in the Rebellion, not yet. If the plan failed and Havel lived, he might pass unnoticed among the remnants of the capital. And so he left his occult club, hidden within a mimic's gullet, waiting for one desperate enough to open death's mouth.
Then he vanished into Ash Lake.
They gathered in silence, he and his rebels. They climbed the Hollow Arch Tree like ants up the spine of a forgotten god. Stone clanked with every step, echoing into the yawning abyss. Havel's belt clinked with purging stones, each one a memory of the blasphemies they had witnessed, the sins they could not unsee.
One among them was missing. Domhnall. The merchant. The magpie. Gone, and not missed.
Now was the time for battle, not silver.
As they neared the top, something was wrong. The cave to Nito's domain loomed ahead, but it was too quiet. The torches flickered with unnatural stillness. The air was thick. And below... an echo, maybe. Or perhaps the sound of someone following. Havel could not be sure. But in that instant, his old instincts screamed.
Ambush.
He gave the command. Stone voice rising like a boulder split by thunder.
Charge.
The air split with screams. Arrows rained from the darkness. Anor Londo's silver knights, hidden in shadow, blessed by coward gods. Their arrows were like slivers of light, impossible to see until they struck. But the rebels held. Their armor cracked, but did not break. They pushed forward, into blood and flame.
Steel met steel in Nito's grim threshold. The rebels fought with the desperation of those who had nothing left to lose. Havel was out front, his blows cratering helms, his fists like hammers of judgment. But they were too few.
Nito's domain had not been unguarded.
They fell back.
Down the Arch Tree again, step by step, blood painting bark. They lured the gods' forces into the narrow passage where blades could do more than numbers. But from below, another sound rose.
The laughter of Seath's minions. The traitor's army climbed from the depths, eyes gleaming like gemstones carved in lunacy.
Domhnall. Of course.
Greed is disparity, and Seath knew exactly how to buy a man's greed.
Havel's heart turned to lead.
They were surrounded.
Two fronts. One exit.
They died as warriors do, clawing through gods and traitors alike. The Arch Tree trembled. Dragon fire roared inside. The old wrath of nature made manifest. The tree cracked.
And then it split.
The world heaved. Nito's domain broke apart.
Light... true light, for the first time in an age, poured into the realm of the dead as the earth collapsed. A yawning void, swallowing tree and warrior alike. Those still within the falling trunk were cast into the sea, their bodies shattered upon the roots of the world.
The Rebellion was over.
A few escaped. Ghosts in the deep. Others vanished forever. The beach below swallowed their screams. The Hollow Tree took the rest.
And Havel?
Havel himself came at last to face Seath.
And in that moment, when stone met crystal, when ancient wrath crashed against ancient treachery. Havel learned a truth so abhorrent that even the bedrock of his will cracked.
Seath had gained the dragons' immortality and invulnerability.
And Havel, old as mountains. Righteous as fury carved into flesh. Struck with the force of centuries. His blows shattered kingdoms. Crumpled mountains. Sent echoes ringing through crystal like the last tolling of a cathedral bell.
But Seath did not fall. He could not fall. He was beyond death.
And in the end, Havel did.
He was not slain. No blade pierced him. No spell dissolved him. No. Something far worse happened.
Seath spared him.
Why, Havel did not know.
Was it humiliation? Domination? A scholar's perverse fascination with the anatomy of will? Or perhaps, in his loathsome brilliance, Seath believed true suffering was not death, but life. Endless, unrelenting life.
What Seath sought from Havel was not vengeance, but secrets.
He tore into Havel's soul. Sorceries that unraveled the threads of sanity and licked at the wounds of memory. He dug and dug. Deeper and deeper. Seeking something not in flesh, but in truth.
Was he looking for the girl?
Havel could never be sure. Only that the thought clawed at him in the dark. That Seath had learned of the child. Of that final, hidden gift left by the woman whose name Havel would not speak. And now wished to test his theories on her lineage.
But Havel never broke.
Through torture unmeasured by time, in madness painted with silence, he never gave her name. Never uttered her face into Seath's mad laboratory of lies.
What kind of father would he be, if he let that monster find her?
He endured, because stone endures.
But in time, even stone can fracture. And so it happened. A breaking not of body, but of mind.
The torment carved holes into his sanity.
Havel became something almost Hollow. Not the shambling, mindless undead. But a living echo caught in a cage of thought. He would drift. Lose himself. Rage without aim. Fall silent for years. Then awaken in agony.
And it was in this shattered state that he was betrayed again.
This time by a so-called ally.
Domhnall saw what Havel had become and decided the world would be safer if the Stone was sealed away.
So he locked him in the tower.
He did not chain Havel. He did not need to. He conditioned him. With magic. With repetition. He bound Havel's will like thread around bone.
Havel would not strike the walls. Would not question the bars. Would not even speak. He simply remained. Staring at stone, as if trying to remember how to be it. And so the years passed. Uncounted. Unmarked. While the gods above continued to lie, and the fire continued to fade.
Havel sat slumped like rubble in a forgotten cage. His soul fraying like parchment.
It is a cruel thing to be made prisoner of your own mind.
And then, one day, he heard a voice. "I freed you, you bastard… and this is how you repay me?"
The words pierced the fog of his fractured mind like a spear. They did not make sense... not at first. They rang hollow, like an echo called down a well that had long since gone dry.
Was someone speaking to him? Or was it another ghost of madness? Havel strained, pushing his broken consciousness toward the light. He did not wish to harm one who had helped him. Not again. Not after all that had been lost.
And as his mind clawed upward from the pit of silence, clarity returned.
He was not in the tower.
He was outside.
The wind brushed against his body. The ground beneath him was damp with moss and time. And before him stood a strange figure, a crystal lizard, armored and strapped with some curious contraption.
Havel barely had time to wonder when her voice coiled inside his skull.
Velka.
She spoke of a boy. No, a knight. The one who had freed him. The one Havel had cast forward, toward a path few return from.
The path of dragons.
And Havel remembered.
He remembered the war and the demons of Izalith. How the innocents were broken and their bodies reshaped by the Chaos Flame into monstrous forms.
Twisted parodies of their former selves.
Corruption disguised as power.
And now… this boy, this knight who had opened Havel's cage, was becoming one of them.
Not demon.
Dragon.
Or something that sought to be.
A cruel mockery of the ancient truth.
Havel nearly laughed, but not with mirth.
With scorn. "To ascend unto dragonhood by way of corruption," he muttered, "is folly writ large."
For he saw it now, clear as the mountain skies he once called home. This form, this shifting, burning shape, was no metamorphosis.
It was a distortion.
A perversion of nature and soul.
The Chaos Flame had not uplifted the boy.
It had devoured him.
And beside the half-born dragon, the crystal lizard keened; a high, mournful sound, sharp as sorrow itself. A cry not of hope, but of despair.
A cry for a partner already lost.
Havel's voice rumbled, low and heavy. "He is too far gone. Chaos hath laid its claim upon his soul. His mind is but ash and smoke. His body... naught but an amalgam of despair and fire. It were better he be felled than left to suffer such a cursed existence."
The lizard hissed, its armor clinking as it reared up, bristling with fury. Its chirps rang sharp, accusatory.
Havel did not flinch but nodded once, gravely. "Aye… I am to blame."
If his mind had held fast, if he had kept his grip on sanity, perhaps he could have thanked the boy. Spoken to him. Warned him. But instead, he had pushed the lad into a terrible future.
"And so, a knight must do what he must and bear the weight of his own sin."
He turned and cast his gaze upon Oscar. "Go. Hide thyself within yonder tower. The young knight took this burden to protect thee. So honor him. Do not let his actions be in vain."
Oscar gave a weak chirp.
"Worry not. I shall help him. I will see to it that he ascends properly."
With that said, Havel reached for the Drake Sword Naruto had dropped.
As his gauntlet closed around the hilt, a jolt surged through him. The raw, chaotic, draconic energy thrashed beneath the surface like a caged beast, crying for freedom. The drake sword was reacting to the everlasting dragon transformation.
"Thou didst labour long to forge this," Havel murmured, voice tinged with reverence. "Thy strength is here. And now, it must serve its final purpose."
Before him writhed the boy—if boy he could still be called. His form split and reshaped, flesh flowering into scales only to rupture again, as if rejecting the permanence it craved. A half-born godlet, shrieking within a womb of flame and stone, clawing at the boundary between man and myth.
Havel strode forward, jaw clenched. And then, with a cry, he drove the sword into Naruto's chest.
The blade did not shatter. Nor did it strike through.
It sank.
Not as steel through flesh, but as glass melting into a crucible.
The stone softened as it touched the flame. The hilt quivered in Havel's hand, pulsing like a heartbeat, before the entire sword melted inward, folding into Naruto's sternum.
Sinew and soul pulled the weapon deeper, dragging it down into the furnace at Naruto's core.
"That is it, lad," Havel said, voice low. "Take it in. The dragon's heart. Feed thy flame upon the bones of that which endureth. Let it burn through thee."
Then, slowly, Havel stepped back.
One by one, he unlaced the armor from his limbs, casting it down into the moss-laced dirt.
Havel neither wore his old dragon scale armor nor wielded his mighty dragon tooth. What he wore was something new, fashioned from the shed scales of the Everlasting Dragon of Ash Lake. His weapon was an imitation of the dragon tooth, forged from the horn of the Wyrm of Ash Lake.
And now he offered them up.
The half-dragon seized the offering, and as he touched it, the chaos flared, no longer content to burn. It devoured.
Flame erupted, not outward, but inward, curling in upon itself. The air buckled.
The ground beneath them cracked as if reality itself rejected what was happening.
A cocoon formed.
First, flame. Then flesh. Then something in-between.
Havel did not move as the two were engulfed by a chaos-born womb.
The cocoon pulsed like a living organ. Its surface bubbled with half-formed limbs, folding in and out of existence. Eyes opened across its length—human, draconic, and something else entirely before splitting with wet tearing sounds. Fingers reached out, melted, reformed into claws, then talons, then nothing at all.
Havel said nothing. He could feel the edges of his mind slipping, the pull of hollowing returning, fraying his sense of self like parchment in flame. Before his thoughts could scatter, he hurled the cocoon into the lake, the final act of a knight who knew what had to be done.
He watched the birth of a dragon.
Steam rose in vast walls, climbing the air.
The mist thickened, swallowing tree, sky, and even memory, until the world itself seemed to vanish. Havel, for a moment, felt as though he had stepped backward into the Age of Ancients.
And within that shrouded grey, he saw it. A shadow, rising.
It grew. Towering. Crawling upward from the lake's still heart, as though the waters themselves had surrendered, parting to make way for what was to come.
Then came the eye.
A crimson brand, pulsing like a wound in the fog.
Then came the wings.
Vast, arched high into the sky, their tips scorched black like parchment at the edge of a fire. They unfurled with dreadful majesty, casting the mist aside in a violent sweep that echoed like mountains breaking apart. And from within the dispersing veil, it emerged.
A dragon, but unlike anything Havel had ever seen.
Its body was long and serpentine. Cloaked in molten crimson, its form shimmered like obsidian glass veined with magma, as though it had not been born, but cast from the molten core of the world itself.
Its scales were jagged, uneven... not yet true.
They were not the perfect, eternal plates of the Everlasting Dragons, but rough imitations, fragments of volcanic rock hastily assembled by the Chaos Flame.
Havel saw it immediately: the creature was unfinished.
Too young. Too wild. Too raw. But still... enough.
In time, it would earn its true scales.
But for now, these would suffice.
It bore four wings. Two vast and fully formed, two smaller and half-curled.
The mark of a true dragon.
Its head was a crown of nightmare: twin jaws packed with cruel, inward-curving fangs; a mane of living flame, twisting in the windless air as though it breathed on its own; and three horns, jagged and cruel, made not of bone but of soul crystal.
From its face, three eyes stared.
Two wide and glowing white.
And one... central, red, and ever-open.
Its whiskers were real—long, sinuous strands of scaled cartilage, jointed like serpents, moving with deliberate grace.
This was something new.
Something that had never existed before and might never again.
But just before the void took him, Havel saw the creature's eyes.
And what he saw shook even the stone-hearted knight.
Not madness. Not cruelty. But confusion.
Terror.
A mind trying and failing to comprehend itself.
For to be a being that predated life, that existed outside time, was not a gift.
It was a curse.
And Havel knew: the dragon's mind could not hold.
It is no longer man. It is no longer beast. It is instinct, wrapped in the memory of a boy.
Then the beast turned.
"I do repent what hath brought us to this grim hour. My mind shall wane, and instincts shall steer me henceforth. As thou shalt likewise do. Instinct 'gainst instinct. How lamentable. I wonder what visage thou bearest, what manner of knight thou art."
And then the last light in Havel's mind was extinguished.
He fell into trance.
Naruto's third eye glowed, and without so much as a twitch of claw or wing, Havel was lifted. Not by touch. Not by wind. But by something far worse.
Calamity Magic.
Havel roared, stone cracking beneath his feet as he fought the pull of Naruto's telekinesis. And then, with all the weight of centuries, with the fury of mountains, he threw a punch.
They were not warriors now. Not men.
Not even beasts.
They were echoes. Remnants. The last roar of a forgotten age.
One forged in stone and faith. The other born of chaos and calamity. And between them, no words remained—only the storm.
So let the annals remember this not as battle, but as mourning.
The requiem of dragons.
The dirge of knights.
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Author's Note
Wow, this chapter was definitely a challenge to write. I'm not usually a high fantasy prose kind of writer, so stepping into this style meant multiple rewrites just to get the tone right. Honestly, I'm still not sure if I nailed it.
Did it feel like fantasy to you? Let me know... I'd love to hear your thoughts. That said, I'm proud of how it turned out, and I hope it gave Havel the weight and presence he deserves.
You might've noticed this chapter was shorter than usual—around 5.6k words instead of my typical 10k+. That was intentional. I wanted to tell Havel's story in a way that honored his legacy without overwhelming the pacing of the main plot. Combining both parts into a single chapter would've made the structure feel bloated and uneven, especially mixing the high fantasy prose of Havel's chapter with my regular style, so I chose to break it here.
Don't worry—the next chapter is the big one.
Before we dive into it, I wanted to include a quick Q&A because… well, there's a lot to unpack, especially around Havel, Naruto, and the deeper lore woven through this chapter.
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Q: Was there a plot against the gods in the lore of Dark Souls?
A: This is probably the biggest takeaway from this chapter. And the answer is yes.
According to the Effigy Shield's item description:
"In an ill-fated plot to destroy the very gods, the followers of the occult once attempted to steal the power of Gravelord Nito, the first of the dead."
If you explore Nito's domain in-game, you'll notice it's guarded by Silver Knights directly sent by Anor Londo. That means someone, or some group, was attempting to steal Nito's power, and the gods retaliated.
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Q: Was Havel involved in the plot against the gods?
A: Yes... almost certainly.
In Dark Souls, Havel's full armor set and the Dragon Tooth are discovered in a hidden chamber in Anor Londo, alongside an Occult Club, a weapon explicitly designed to harm the divine. That placement isn't accidental. It suggests Havel wasn't just a bishop or a warrior of faith. He was part of something deeper: a rebellion against the gods he once served.
In the game's lore, Havel is imprisoned, locked away in a watchtower. But why would such a powerful, respected figure be treated like a traitor? The most compelling explanation is that he plotted against the gods, perhaps even attempted to strike them down. His hatred for Seath, his disillusionment with Gwyn, and the presence of an Occult weapon near his belongings all support this theory.
There's also a likely connection to Velka, the goddess of sin and retribution. Her weapon, Velka's Rapier, is also an Occult weapon. Given her thematic role in punishing the sins of the gods and Havel's implied rebellion, it's not a stretch to imagine that Velka recruited Havel as part of her hidden war against divine hypocrisy.
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Q: Did you make up the story of Havel's love life?
A: Not entirely. It's a lore-based theory, supported by in-game clues and expanded for narrative depth in this story.
Let's get into it.
In the Duke's Archives, where Seath performs his human experiments, you can find a corpse holding the White Seance Ring. Its description reads:
"A divine ring entrusted to the head bishop of the Way of White and apostle to Allfather Lloyd, uncle to Lord Gwyn... The head bishop of the Way of White is the guardian of law and caste, and one of the great royals of Thorolund."
That's a clear connection to Havel, who, according to the Great Magic Barrier miracle description, was a bishop and Gwyn's old battlefield comrade:
"Miracle of Bishop Havel the Rock. Cover body in powerful defensive magic coating. Havel the Rock, an old battlefield compatriot of Lord Gwyn, was the sworn enemy of Seath the Scaleless. He despised magic, and made certain to devise means of counteraction."
Now combine that with the Robe of the Channelers item description:
"Robe of the Channelers, sorcerers that serve Seath the Scaleless... Even after the onset of Seath's madness, the 'snatchers' as they were often called, ventured to far lands to find suitable human specimens."
So here's my theory:
Seath, in his obsession with pure specimens for his experiments, kidnapped a devout woman—one who had secretly shared a bond with Havel. She was taken to the Archives, and the ring was left behind on her body, implying her fate. Whether she died by Seath's hand or took her own life to avoid experimentation is unknown. What is known is that Seath committed horrors in that place.
This event, tragic and deeply personal, may have been the breaking point for Havel. The moment when loyalty turned to wrath, and faith turned to rebellion. From that point on, his hatred for Seath was no longer just ideological, it was personal.
So no, I didn't invent the relationship from nothing. It's an extrapolation, a narrative interpretation built from game lore, item placement, and thematic cohesion. Just one theory among many, but one I find both compelling and consistent with the world Dark Souls invites us to explore.
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Q: How do we know that Havel traveled to Ash Lake and met the Everlasting Dragon?
A: Simple. His miracle is there.
In-game, you can find Great Magic Barrier located in Ash Lake. That miracle isn't just thematically Havel, it's canonically tied to him.
Item description:
"Miracle of Bishop Havel the Rock. Cover body in powerful defensive magic coating..."
Now here's where it gets interesting: if you go to Ash Lake, you'll see a broken tree. That tree is part of the Great Hollow, and if you follow that path in-game, it leads directly to Nito's domain.
That's why I wrote it this way: Havel goes to Ash Lake, meets the Everlasting Dragon, joins the Path of the Dragon, and from there uses the tree system to descend into Nito's territory. This ties directly into the Effigy Shield and the Plot Against the Gods.
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Q: Did Seath discover the plot? Was Havel betrayed by Domhnall?
A: Yes. And there are clues everywhere.
Let's start with the Watchtower Basement Key:
"Key to the basement of the watchtower in the Undead Burg... There are rumors of a hero turned Hollow who was locked away by a dear friend. For his own good, of course."
Take a look at that wording. A hero. Locked away by a dear friend.
This points directly at Havel, and suggests he was betrayed by someone he trusted during the failed rebellion.
Now how do we know that friend was Domhnall of Zena?
Domhnall sells Crystal Weapons, which are created by Seath and his blacksmith. He appears after key events and seems to move opportunistically. When you attack him, one of his quotes is:
"By the Lords… why… my precious collection..."
Domhnall is obsessed with rare artifacts. So, consider the situation: he sees Havel and his allies, rebels planning to steal nito's power , hiding powerful relics, training in ancient places... and Domhnall, tempted by greed, betrays them to Seath. In return? Access to Seath's knowledge—and treasures beyond imagining.
So yes... Domhnall may have been the Judas of the Plot Against the Gods.
In-game, the result of this betrayal is everywhere. Ash Lake is littered with corpses. The rebellion failed. The Great Hollow was shattered. Havel was captured.
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Q: How can Havel be alive and wielding his armor and weapon if they're found in Anor Londo in the game?
A: Ah, yes, the classic Dark Souls mystery.
Many lore enthusiasts believe that the Havel you fight in-game is not the real Havel, but a stand-in possibly an Undead imitator or Hollowed remnant. Why? Because his full armor set and Dragon Tooth are found in Anor Londo, far from the watchtower where you encounter him.
In my fanfic, however, Havel is the real one. So how do I reconcile this?
Simple: contingency.
In my version of events, Havel kept his original armor and Dragon Tooth hidden in Anor Londo as a fail-safe in case the rebellion collapsed. If the plot failed, he could retreat into his public identity as Gwyn's loyal bishop. The armor and weapon would remain untouched, plausible deniability.
Instead, Havel crafted a new set of armor from the scales of the Everlasting Dragon in Ash Lake, and forged a weapon from one of its horns specifically, the right horn, which is visibly missing on the Ash Lake dragon in-game. That small visual detail is a subtle nod, a piece of "evidence" supporting this interpretation.
So, when Havel gives Naruto his armor and weapon during the dragon transformation, he's not handing over the originals you loot in the game. He's passing on the secret, Ash Lake-forged set—the one built not for glory, but for legacy.
This preserves both the integrity of the game's lore and the emotional weight of Havel's arc.
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Naruto's Role in All This
Now shifting to our dragonborn protagonist...
Why did I make the Drake Sword Naruto's magic heart?
The Drake Sword is a weapon that quickly becomes obsolete in the game... a notorious newbie trap. So I decided to do something poetic with it.
In this fic, it was originally Oscar's broken Astora Straight Sword, reforged through Hellkite's tail. Making that same blade into Naruto's second dragon heart felt like the perfect symbolic evolution... Oscar's legacy giving rise to something eternal.
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Q: Can you explain the thought process behind Naruto's dragon form design?
A: Absolutely. The design wasn't just about aesthetics... it was about lore, symbolism, and continuity.
At first, I considered a Western-style dragon, your classic fire-breathing behemoth but that felt too predictable and didn't fit Naruto's roots. Instead, I leaned into something that reflected both his Eastern origin and the Dark Souls mythology of the Everlasting Dragons.
➤ Four Wings, Two Jaws, Four Legs:
This is essential. In Dark Souls lore, true Everlasting Dragons always possess these traits. Deviations mean they aren't "true" dragons. So Naruto's form adheres to this structure, grounding him as a legitimate Everlasting Dragon, not just a chaotic mutation.
➤ Three Eyes:
Inspired by the Calamity Dragon Kalameet and his mark of calamity attack. Its third eye grants Calamity Magic, the Dark Souls version of telekinesis.
➤ Blue Horns:
These aren't natural. They're a side effect of Naruto's soul magic, which fuses chakra with the metaphysical essence of Lordran. The blue color visually signals his connection to sorcery and soul-based transformation.
➤ Fire Mane and Lava-like Lines:
The Pyromancy Flame embedded in Naruto's chest is not just a power source—it's the catalyst that allowed his transformation. His body appears stone-like, with magma veins pulsing through it, because he wasn't born into this form. He was forged into it.
➤ Whiskers:
This is the most poetic part. Eastern dragons often have flowing whiskers, and Naruto, long before this, had his iconic fox-like whisker marks. Now, in his final form, they return as sinuous tendrils. A haunting callback to the boy he once was.
In short, Naruto's dragon form is a fusion of mythologies: the structure of the Everlasting Dragons, the symbolism of Eastern tradition, and the chaos of pyromancy and soul sorcery. Every detail means something. Every feature echoes his journey.
This chapter may be one of the most lore-heavy, complex entries in the story so far, but I hope it earned your attention. I wanted to take a background character like Havel the Rock and give him tragedy, purpose, betrayal, and a worthy end.
Thank you for reading. Let me know what you guys think (and what you thought of the artist's work on Naruto's Everlasting Dragon form).
I'll see you next chapter.
—Adam
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[ Personal Note: First off, thanks a ton to all of you for sticking with this story. Seriously, you guys are awesome. Now, if you're interested in supporting me on P@treon, let me just say that over there, I post these massive 5k-word chapters. But heads up, if you're jumping to P@treon, you'll need to start from Chapter 82, since that's where this chapter lines up with the content there.
To everyone here just reading along, please don't forget to leave a comment! Honestly, your comments make my day, and they let me know you're as invested in this story as I am. So yeah, thanks again, and I hope you have an amazing rest of your day!