The sun sets, today, for the final time.
A brilliant splendor over the Earth, its last rays descend on the wracked realms as they are swallowed in dark.
The Gods have gone, long ago, to flee this eternal curse.
Abandoned by our lords and our saviors, stranded in lands of roaming Undead and charred knights, we cry out for a hero that we will have received myriad times before.
Our hero who gave himself the Abyss.
Our hero who swathed himself in shadow to grant the illusion that they had not left us behind.
Our hero who burned himself alive, to rekindle a wilting fire.
We call out to the saints and sinners of this world, who stand idly ready for their next journey; ready to find themselves in a pickle, ready to fend off the dark, ready to put an end to all of those dirty, rotten clerics.
We call out to dragons and drakes high in the sky, who give us hope as much as they give us fire.
To rotting men who wield broken swords and torches, who swarm us in hordes and trap us in corners.
To reanimated bones, big and small, who stack on each other, who practice their gymnastics, who crawl like dogs and strike us with fear.
We call out to memory, for no matter the harm it does, it is always with us.
We, who are told to fear the dark, who embrace it. We, who in the face of all lost hope, find the will to persevere.
No matter how many beasts gather round the great pyres, no matter what higher beings loom in the cosmic sky, we find ourselves here, again.
We chase that feeling we can never feel again. We chase the terror, the anger, the frustration, the sorrow. We chase those fleeting moments as we overcome our challenges, time and time again, until no longer are they difficult.
For brothers in need to find, we drop our signs, white beacons that offer hope at the end of a long, dark tunnel.
No matter what, we will always be there.
For our heroes who battled us merely to keep their servants from enduring the same fate they had for centuries.
For our heroes who pranced in cages and struck us down with one mighty attack, laughing and braying and swearing they would never remember it when they woke.
For the unnamed and unappreciated who assist us even when cleft from other worlds, the mindless and the thoughtless we ring our bells to see.
Our heroes, the bare men with enormous clubs who practice backflips all the way.
Our heroes, the stone men called monsters that flinch from nary a single blow.
On broken legs, we stand to face it all again.
It is over.
But it can never end.
In our worlds of four, our capsules of time, our troves of memory and our homes of trauma, nothing is left but they, we look back with fondness, and thank them for showing the way.
For even as the final sun sets over Lothric, over Drangleic, over Lordran, over Yharnam, in the dark, we feel at home.
In our cold, gentle world we have bred for ourselves, we relish the sunlight while it lasts, and in the distance, we watch.
For our heroes who teach us to wield the strongest weapons before the first of enemies.
For our heroes who teach us how to bend reality and escape the confines of the normal world.
For our heroes who praise that setting sun, teach us to cooperate, and stand beside us all the way, even when hope is shattered.
On broken legs, we climb to our knees as a new sun rises in the distance.
We know we will find our heroes there.