Prologue

In the beginning, there was order.

The Erdtree stood tall, its golden boughs spreading across the heavens, its light casting a divine glow upon the Lands Between. Beneath its branches, the gods walked among mortals, and the will of the Greater Will was law.

At the heart of it all sat Queen Marika the Eternal, a goddess chosen to bear the Elden Ring, the embodiment of order itself. Through her, the Golden Order flourished, an age of harmony secured by her blessed children, the Demigods, each ruling over their domain with divine authority.

And yet, in the shadow of gold, cracks had begun to form.

The First Sin: The Night of Black Knives

It began with a single betrayal, a whisper of treachery carried on the wind.

On the Night of Black Knives, a band of assassins, guided by an unseen hand, struck down Godwyn the Golden, Marika's firstborn son. He did not fall in battle nor by the hands of an equal, but was slain in his sleep, his soul utterly destroyed. For the first time, a Demigod had died—a true death.

Marika, overcome with grief, shattered the Elden Ring.

In her divine fury, she reached into the heart of order itself and broke it apart, fracturing the very laws that bound existence together. The runes of the Elden Ring fell to the earth, and in the wake of their fall, chaos consumed the world.

The Shattering had begun.

The War of the Demigods

The Demigods, Marika's own children, saw the broken fragments of the Elden Ring and fought to claim them. What had once been a family of divine rulers turned into a battlefield of greed, ambition, and madness.

• General Radahn, the mightiest of them all, sought to control the very stars and halt their movement in the heavens.

• Malenia, the Blade of Miquella, fought him in an endless war, wielding the Scarlet Rot that even she could not control.

• Rykard, Lord of Blasphemy, abandoned the Golden Order entirely, feeding himself to the great serpent and becoming something monstrous.

• Morgott, the last true heir of Leyndell, held to the traditions of the Erdtree but was cursed by his own accursed blood.

• Mohg, the Lord of Blood, sought a darker power, a god unborn, hidden within his cocoon of scarlet.

• Ranni the Witch, unseen and patient, rejected her own flesh and sought a different fate than the others.

The war raged across the Lands Between, but there was no true victor.

The Demigods, though mighty, were all cursed by their own desires. Their ambitions left the world broken, its once-glorious lands reduced to ruins, its people abandoned.

And the Erdtree, once the source of all grace, sealed itself away, its light dimming, its blessings withdrawn.

The Call of the Tarnished

In the absence of order, the Greater Will turned to those it had once forsaken.

Long ago, there had been warriors, exiles, and champions who had lost their grace, their golden light stripped from them. The Tarnished. Cast from the Lands Between, they were fated to wander the lands beyond the fog, forgotten and abandoned.

But now, as the world crumbled, the Greater Will called them back.

The Tarnished, long thought to be lost, rose once more.

A whisper carried across the ruins of the world:

"Rise now, ye Tarnished. Ye dead who yet live. The call of long-lost grace speaks to us all."

And so they returned, guided by the faint flicker of grace, drawn toward the Erdtree.

Some sought power. Others sought revenge.

And among them was a single warrior from the Land of Reeds—a man who had once been a samurai, a swordsman without a master. A man who had lost not only his home, but also his voice.

He did not return for ambition or greed, nor to claim the Elden Ring as his own.

His was a journey of survival, of purpose, of a fate unknown.

And so his story began.

The Age of Fracture Approaches

The Lands Between now lies open, a kingdom of ruin where only the strong endure.

The Throne of the Elden Lord stands empty.

And soon, one among the Tarnished will claim it.