They wake to a furred snout nudging their cheek.

They raise a hand, rest it against a warm and heavy shape above them, and open their eyes – their eye. They can't feel the left one.

They can't feel much of anything. Calm veils them like a burial shroud. One's heart resides in the body, not the soul, and they don't have the luxury anymore.

"Torrent." Their mother's steed, as familiar as to them after all these years as their mother herself. They find a horn and pull themselves one-handed to a sitting position. He bears the treatment without complaint, dark eyes fixed on them with an intensity unlike him. "You're worried. For me?"

He snorts softly.

"Don't be," they murmur. They? No. She. For now, at least. "Should I take a name?"

A new one, she means, because she has one already. Although, like the rest of what once belonged to her, it fits oddly, a set of armor meant for a different person.

But shedding the name so quickly seems a waste. The rest she can let go of, but Godwyn the Golden was more than the sounds that comprised it. She can hold onto it for longer. She's the daughter of Marika and Godfrey, friend to Fortissax, sister to Miquella and Malenia and Radahn and Rykard and... Ranni.

In her right hand she holds the knife that killed her. On her left gleams the ring that houses Torrent's ashes.

In the darkness beneath Leyndell, nestled between the Erdtree's black and poisoned roots, a flame of waning grace flickers. Her own hollow sockets peer down at her from above it, and she meets that shadowed gaze and feels nothing at all. There must be a purpose for why she yet lives, with her eye cut by her uncle's black flame and her body left to fester undying.

There's no need to ask how she survives, only why. The how is obvious. No person but one could have passed Torrent on to her, and, besides, she has a memory that belongs to her and her alone, not to her other self. Marika, impaled but shining still, brushing her hair aside to press a kiss to her brow.

She lets out a long breath. "Shall we go?"

Torrent lowers his head and disperses. She reaches for the site of grace, for the presence of the Erdtree it links to, for the city that rests in its light. Home, and perhaps an answer –

NO.

– she recoils. Gold bleeds across her palm from a hundred pinprick wounds, as if she tried to grab a fistful of thorns.

Someone has sealed Leyndell. She caught a signature – Morgott the Grace-Given – but the name rings unfamiliar. Her father is exiled, her mother imprisoned, her stepfather... well. And the title of Grace-Given does not belong to a demigod, nor even to any of their aliases. A powerful usurper reigns in the capital.

She purses her lips. In this state, she cannot face them to reach the Erdtree and her mother inside of it.

She needs an ally. Better yet, a friend. Someone who might face an army for her, and she for them. Someone who has, as well, their own reasons for seeking the Erdtree, and who she can aid to accomplish that goal. Someone who can survive insurmountable hardships and rise again and again in the face of failure.

How convenient. She turns her fingers over, letting Torrent's ring catch the grace's light. She already has someone who fits those conditions close at hand: her mother's loyal steed. "Shall we go on a journey, Torrent?"


*dons tinfoil hat* look, Melina is blond, Godwyn is blond, Godwyn's title is Golden and Melina's name means honey (which comes from bees, which have four wings, and you know what else has four wings? that's right, Fortissax), Melina has the same marking as Ranni who also died to to the Rune of Death, both of their moms are at the Erdtree, maybe Godwyn takes more strongly after Marika than Godfrey in certain aspects, it all makes sense okay