The Tarnished remained totally silent throughout Malenia's recount. When she finished, the only thing which told her that he was still there was the feeling of his gaze boring into her. He spoke not a word, moved not a muscle. Dead silent—not even his breathing could reach her ears. The only sounds were the leaves falling from the Haligtree's withered shell, the crashing of the ocean against the pillars of Elphael, and the subtle shake of Malenia's own respiration.

She squeezed the long since emptied cup of tea so tight that her scarred, rotted fingers hurt. Her head tilted out over the horizon. She didn't dare glance so much as sidelong at the Tarnished.

From an outsider's view, the two looked to be statues, an imposing knight resolutely watching the one-armed Valkyrie who sat gazing out over the sea, as if waiting for a ship to appear on the skyline. Neither moved an inch for many long moments, which only served to make Malenia's stomach turn over more and more while a whirlwind of emotions and memories tore through her mind.

Then, the winds were walled by the sound of the Tarnished's voice.

"Would you like some more tea?" he asked.

Malenia's gaze slowly shifted down to the empty mug in her hand. She licked her dry, seafoam-tinged lips.

"… Yes," she murmured. "My thanks."

The Tarnished stood up with a great clanking of plates and rattling of chains. Steel joints clicked as he delicately approached her, prompting her to offer him her cup without looking up. He took it and retreated to the cellar behind them; there was the sound of a pouring spout, and then he returned, bowl in hand. Malenia took it and sipped it with the same gingerness she had relinquished it while the Tarnished sat back down.

"So it was in Ranni's name that you laid siege to Redmane Castle," the Tarnished said. His tone sounded as if he was still analyzing what she had just told him. She gave the barest of nods in response while the Tarnished drank from his own container.

"What happened amidst you two following the war?"

"Nothing," Malenia replied with a growl in her throat. "Absolutely nothing. Not a word from Ranni, not a single summon, not one lone emissary, in the centuries since. She abandoned Elphael to rot."

"For how long did you slumber?" the Tarnished asked. The question brought a grimace to Malenia's face.

"I… am unsure," she answered after a pause. "Years? Decades?… Centuries? Time grew blurry as I held my vigil."

She shook her head. "I dreamt for so long," she breathed. "Longer, still, than I lay awake, rotted hand resting upon the bows of his throne…"

She stopped, then straightened, tilting her head to face the Tarnished. "Why?" she demanded.

"How could Ranni have reached a woman dormant?"

Malenia's upper lip twitched upwards, showing her teeth.

"I am not Elphael's sole ambassador," she said, tersely. "Miquella and I govern not alone. She could have sent for my royal guard, or—"

"If your royal guard were the same body that decreed the hostility of the soldiers I faced, I doubt my queen could have bent their ear."

The Tarnished would've had no way to see Malenia roll her eyes. "With all due respect," she retorted, "the disparity that separates you, a Tarnished, from the one who called herself my sister and ally is vast. You two would not have been regaled with nearly the same welcome."

"My case is that Elphael is intensely isolated. Such is your brother's design. When the slumber of Lord and General alike leaves the kingdom in disarray, how can Ranni breach the fog of war?"

Malenia did not reply. There was a shuffling of armor as the Tarnished leaned forwards. "It is a daunting task, to slay a god," he went on. "Do you think that Ranni could simply spare the hand to reach the Haligtree amidst the hell of the Shattering—amidst everything?"

"Tell me, then," Malenia snapped with a suddenness that made the Tarnished shift away. "What of that woman captivates you so? I shared with you my story, now you share yours."

Silence. Silence save for the sounds of Elphael enwreathing them, stifling Malenia as the air between her and the Tarnished crackled hotly.

Then, he issued a low "hmph" and leaned back. He was yet silent for several beats before giving his measured response.

"I spent uncountably many days bereft of certainty or belief in anything resembling resolution," he began. "I had given up long, long ago before I met her."

Malenia narrowed her eyes.

"You talk as if wretchedly aged," she observed. "What sort of life did you lead among the Tarnished of the Badlands?"

"None at all. I am… un-kin to other Tarnished," he said, gingerly. "It was never my identity, merely the moniker I was inexplicably given."

If there was anything Malenia had been expecting him to say, it most certainly wasn't that. Her face tightened a bit and she tilted her head.

"You are… not Tarnished?" she echoed. "Who are you, then?"

Another, even longer silence than before. This one was broken by a long, low sigh that tapered off with a slight tremble.

"It is… a story and a half," the so-called Tarnished said. "All the time in the world could not grant me the furlough to tell it all. What you should know is I hail from inconceivably far away. My homeland is so distant, so beyond the purview of the Golden Order or any of these Outer Gods that all memory of it has dried up by the time it would reach your ears. No one knows of what I speak when I share my story. Even familiar faces from all the way home tell me that I imagined the times we shared. That I imagined all of it!"

The knight's voice rose with that last sentence. Malenia heard his armor clink as his shoulders sagged. He took another deep breath and held it before continuing.

"I was branded a Tarnished by every last soul I encountered. Friend and foe alike. I grew so weary of the insistence that my home and the life I lived were all a dream, and before long I surrendered my pride and accepted this new moniker. If only to escape the scrutiny."

He chuckled. "They and I are not so different, the Tarnished true," he reflected. "Rejected by our people, branded as failures until we were desperately ordained saviors… long after anyone could be saved."

Malenia didn't realize that she had leaned just a bit closer when she asked, "What do you mean?"

Another bout of silence that was stiffly broken by a long, shivering breath. When the knight spoke again, his voice was low and grave.

"I… was summoned as a final bid to save the world from destruction," he eventually said. "A world that flickered only dimly. Horror lurked evermore around every bend. All hope was gone, supplanted with despair where there was no malice and malice where there was no despair. I answered the call to hold back the apocalypse, but it had begun long ago."

Yet another long break. The knight's voice came back, subdued into a near-murmur—but underneath that quiet, Malenia could hear a screeching whirlwind.

"I toiled through all of it. Everything that could have been hurled at me was hurled with impunity. I brandished my blade to face countless warriors. Monsters. Demons. Armies. I was brought to my knees time and time again, but onward I pressed, until I prevailed. I endured the horror and I endured the tragedy in the hope of becoming the remedy. I struck down lords, and beasts, and kings—all manner of champion stood in my way and I rose above every last one. I rose above it all, until I came face-to-face with God himself… He, too, was struck down. And in the wake of my ultimate victory, I had a choice to make. I could let things go back to the way they were and return the world to the start of an endless cycle—a cycle of decay without rebirth—or I could put an end to what was never meant to be."

Malenia said nothing. She felt a sense of unease as the knight trailed off. To her, the right path seemed obvious. Break the cycle. End the suffering. Save the whole of the world from the looming end. But she was not so foolish. She knew things were never, ever so simple. And just listening to him talk—hearing the worsening tremor of his voice and the burgeoning swell in his chest that tightened his throat—she already knew that he had made the wrong choice.

"I-I…" the knight started back up, but his words caught in his lungs. He gave pause before continuing. "I thought I had won. I'd come so far. I slew God himself! Surely after stumbling so blindly down this awful road, after everything, there was something waiting for me! I had been called to save the world!…"

He trailed off. His voice fell with him. "But no," he murmured, dark and bitter as brandy. "I was a fool. I had always been a fool. I fought so fiercely to break the cycle, but in the end, I had only fed it. All my efforts, all the blood I had shed, would quench the flame of misery for but a heartbeat… It was only as everything faded that I was struck with this knowledge. And in those final moments of realization, I flew into a fit. I-I… damn it… I murdered her. My only companion, who had stayed unfalteringly by my side until the very end. I slew her like a man possessed, and on my knees in a pool of her blood, I screamed. I screamed and screamed until my throat tore wide open and what little strength I yet afforded left me. I collapsed into that pool and fell into a fitful slumber."

"And when you awoke?" Malenia breathed.

"I found myself somewhere else. A steeple. A lonely thing, far from the mainland and gazing longingly upon the imposing flank of a great castle."

"The Chapel of Anticipation."

"Is that its name?"

"Indeed it is."

"Hmph. Apt title. I ventured forth, until I came to a cliffside. Without warning, the ground collapsed underneath my feet. The moment I hit the water, I fell unconscious yet again, and awoke in a graveyard buried beneath the earth. I stumbled my way out and staggered to the surface, where I was faced with the brightest sunlight I had ever laid eyes upon—and the sky hung overcast!"

For the first time in his tale, the faintest trace of mirth lifted the knight's voice. "As it were, the light came not from the sun, but from a single golden tree that towered high above all else. The very tree, I would come to learn, that had summoned me here. That had instigated my second awakening… brought me to my second world to save."

With a sigh, the knight drew his tale to a close. Malenia leaned back, pulling herself away from the sound of his voice and lifting her head. Her jaw hung halfway open for all the time she stared at him before slowly turning to face out over the sea; it continued to hang as the sounds of Elphael washed back over her. Her lips only sealed after she paused to wet them.

Neither of them said anything for a silence that felt like hours. Malenia tried to will her jaw into working, but once she closed her mouth, it remained still as a rock. Her blind gaze drooped down to her feet, legs crossed over one another as she sat.

"Malenia?" the knight's questioning summon had her jerking her head back up to face him. "Have you nothing to say?"

For a moment longer, she did not. She took a sip of the dregs of her tea, which she had drained over the course of his tale. Her gaze fell back away from him and returned to her feet.

"… When you first encroached upon my vigil, I warned you that I had never known defeat," she said. Her words crawled out of her mouth in a slow, ginger fashion. "You proved me wrong. When you beckoned me to leave my post under the notion that my brother had been absconded from the Haligtree, I believed you a liar and a madman. You proved me wrong. When I first awoke from my slumber brought on by the war I waged and discovered Finlay's liquefied corpse, I lamented that I would never be able to thank the heroine who bore me on her back across all the Lands Between. You proved me wrong."

She shifted where she sat, straightening. "And when you revealed to me that you were wed to my half-sister Ranni, I felt it the most preposterous thing I had ever heard in all my life."

She turned to face him. "And once again, you have proven me wrong."

A single mirthless chuckle came from him.

"I feared that you'd not believe me," he remarked dryly.

"But I do," she declared. That left him quiet. She set her cup down and rested her hand on her golden leg.

"I have known you—truly known you, as a friend rather than an adversary—for two mere days, and in those two days you have become the first opponent in my thousands of years of life to well and truly best me in battle, granted me one of Miquella's sacred needles, rescued him from Mohg's clutches, saved the Haligtree, and brought Finlay back to us."

She waved her hand in a grandiose arc. "These all entail not the usurpation of the Elden Throne, or the felling of Radahn, or"—she couldn't help but let a humorous scoff as she added—"the wooing of my ever-reclusive half-sister. Your tale paints you as a warrior of utmost myth. And in the two sunrises we have shared, you have more than lived up to such bombastic grandeur."

She let her hand come to rest on her leg again. "And so I believe your story. I believe in the existence of your homeland, and the death of its god by your hand."

She pointed to herself and couldn't stop a wry smirk upturning the corners of her lips as she remarked, "You already felled one rot goddess. What more is another?"

The knight was still quiet, but he was certainly not silent, nor was he still. Malenia could hear how labored his breathing had become; his voice shook so much that she knew that he, too, was trembling. She could even hear the softest little scrapes and shifts as he shuddered from inside his thorny armor.

"I-I-I—" he stuttered. His voice quivered like a leaf in the wind. A tremulous breath interrupted him as he attempted to steady himself. His lips clicked as he worked his jaw into shaky words.

"N-No one has ever placed their confidence in even the most meagre lyric of my story," he declared. "Heavens, I… to sh-share it with someone else and have them earnestly believe me, I…"

He paused to collect himself. "Thank you, Malenia," he murmured. "Truly, thank you."

She nodded. "A small favor in return for your deeds," she replied. A frown etched itself into her countenance.

"Tarni—" she began, but gave pause. In spite of his state, the knight issued a slight snicker.

"I accepted my new identity early into my journey across this new land," he assured her, warmly. "If you find it more in clover to regard me as a Tarnished, I would not begrudge you. I have long since forgotten my true name, anyhow."

"Very well. Tarnished, the tragic fate that befell you long ago—was it that which drew you to Ranni?"

"I toiled through the early legs of my second journey woeful in my conviction of my inevitable failure. It would take a fool not to see that this so-called Golden Order runs leagues deeper with tarnish than outcasts like myself. But how could I supplant its millenia-long reign? How could I break the cycle, when I had so catastrophically fallen short back home?... When I met Ranni, everything changed."

The Tarnished's voice dropped to a rumble that Malenia could only describe as heartfelt.

"It was she who could break the cycle, and I who would be her mere instrument. If I could do right by Ranni, then I could do right by the whole of this broken world. It will be through her righteous mutiny that I will finally put a stop to this endless loop of undeath and ruin. It will be by her grace that I shall save the world. That was her gift to me. She… She blessed me with something I had lost long, long ago."

"What would that be?"

"Hope." The word left his lips as a raspy whisper. He shook himself out.

"I found it impossible not to fall for her," he declared summarily. "She is the only, the only reasonthat my endeavors will end in anything more than utter failure. That I will be anything more than an utter failure."

Malenia was subdued by his closing remarks. Hearing them, her mind filled up with images of Miquella and the things he said to her as they sat in their little flowerbed, holding her hands as if he were still but a child. How complete he made her feel, how whole, how… unbroken. Could the so-called Tarnished really look at Ranni the same way she looked at her dear brother?

She could not see it herself. But she understood that pain, all too well. It was with sincerity that she echoed these thoughts to him.

"I cannot forgive Ranni for leaving us to rot," she declared. "But I would be heartless and witless to begrudge you your love for her. You are a good man, Tarnished, and if Ranni can bring you peace, then I will not deny you that."

"Thank you, Malenia."

"Thank you, fair Tarnished."

"... More tea?"

"No thank you. I would not be so overindulgent. You are more than free to take your fill, however."

"Perhaps when reserves are less scarce," the Tarnished remarked in a mixture of mirth and hope. Malenia nodded.

"Perhaps," she agreed half-mindedly. Her lips thinned into a grim line.

"... Tarnished?" she piped up after a brief silence.

"Mm?"

"There is something else," she said slowly. "If not in the name of your queen consort, then why would you aid Elphael as staunchly as you have?"

He did not reply right away. He shifted where he sat. He set his cup down. Then:

"... There was a young girl," he began. His voice had dropped to the same somber tone it held when he had recounted his past. "Her name was Millicent."

Malenia blinked behind her mask. He had uttered that name once before, when he'd knelt over her dying form with her brother's needle in hand. Who was Millicent? Why did she feel as if she knew that name?

"I found her huddled against the wall of an old church in central Caelid," the Tarnished went on. "Every pore in her body was ravaged by rot. The whole of her right arm had been eaten away, and just gazing upon her it was clear that the rest of her was soon to follow. With the help of a glass-eyed sage, I scoured the remains of your war with Radahn for a needle of gold that, when buried in her flesh, would quell the rot that desecrated her body."

"Miquella's needle," Malenia observed under her breath.

"I administered this miracle cure, and with but a brief rest, she sprung up with a renewed joy for life—and an onset of foggy memories. Together, we went on a journey to discover her lost past… I stayed with her every step of the way. I was the teacher who helped her grow from a frail young woman into a graceful swordstress. She dragged me by the hand all the way from the heart of Caelid to the peaks of the great northern mountains, in the hope of unravelling the mystery of her past—a past she owes to you."

Malenia tilted her head. "What? How?"

"From the onset of her quest, she could recall, but dimly, your name. When that needle first pierced her flesh, she felt you beckoning her. But it was not until we at last breached Elphael that she knew why: She was of your blood."

That made Malenia bolt upright. She shook her head fervidly at the Tarnished.

"Impossible! I have no offspring!" she declared. Her incredulous voice rang dimly off the towering spires above. "You have made many an outlandish claim in the time I've known you, Tarnished, and all of them have been true. But I know my lovers, of which there are none. How can Millicent possibly be my daughter?"

"… 'Daughter' is not the right word," the Tarnished replied. His voice had not exactly been the most chipper before, but Malenia felt a twinge of unease as his narration took on a new note—a deeply sour note, an ill disharmony of anger and horror.

It gave gravel to his words as he continued. "Millicent was not birthed, but made. Borne of a twisted rite of rot. Gestated on an altar rather than in a mother's womb. By that same wicked sage who repaired her needle! He created her, so that—"

He stopped to swallow a lump that was tightening his throat. When he spoke again, Malenia could feel the revulsion in his words creeping up from the depths of her own gut.

"So that she may bloom as you did."

Malenia's gasp almost drowned out the Tarnished's growl. The revelation struck her with such force that she found herself jerking backwards where she sat, as if she had been shoved. The feeling of sickness that had built up in her stomach sprang up into her chest and clogged her windpipe.

There were few things in this world that brought Malenia feelings of genuine terror. In the past few days, she had come face-to-face with many of them: Wandering through the mire of decay that had consumed Caelid, forced to bear witness to what she had wrought. Falling to her knees before a broken Elphael, her own men ravaged by the rot that had broken free from the prison that was her body. And most of all, failing in her sworn duty to protect her precious brother… and discovering the horrifying fate that had befallen him.

She had confronted many of the most dreadful things her mind could have possibly conjured in such a short span. Not once, however, had she imagined that someone on this earth would be sufficiently powerful—and insane—to… to recreate what festered inside her. To give new rise to the disaster she and Miquella had worked so hard to avoid.

The mere notion was horrifying. But to have it be reality…

"A-And did she?" Malenia rasped, unable to keep the fear out of her voice. "Did she bloom?"

"No," the Tarnished declared. From the wobble in that word, Malenia would have almost believed he did not see that as a good thing. "Wh-When she found out what festered inside her, she was repulsed beyond measure. She… decided that she would rather be consumed by the demon implanted in her soul rather than let it consume anything else."

When the Tarnished had shared with Malenia the story of his origins, bitter despair rang through his words truer than the grandest of bells, laced with lattices of dry, shimmering regret. The sting of old wounds. Such was the mood of this new tale, but as the Tarnished neared the end, Malenia could pick up an all-new affection that thickened his voice: The tight, blubbery, painful sound of still-fresh grief.

"Wh-When I found her, she… she had already taken the needle out," the Tarnished revealed. Hearing that, Malenia felt two conflicting emotions at once: On one hand, she felt her stomach begin to untwist as she came to know that this new vessel of rot had withered away. On the other, the blistering hurt in her ally's voice as he relived what was clearly an agonizing memory was so fierce that it made her wince.

"I begged her to reconsider. I pleaded with her t-to hold on just a little longer until we could find a—a permanent cure."

The Tarnished sniffed.

"She would have none of it," he choked out. A stertorous gasp entered his lungs. "Sh-She would not so much as let me stay by her side while she faded away. She feared what the… what the rot within her would do to me. I-I…"

He did not finish his remark. His voice broke off into another sharp, pained gasp. In the quiet ocean air, the shuddering of his armor as he convulsed nearly masked the sound of a strained sob leaving his lips.

Malenia released a breath she hadn't realized she was holding and leaned back as the Tarnished's words sank in. She dimly recalled what the Tarnished had first said to her when Miquella's needle entered her flesh: "The girl for which I intended this is no longer." She had known well in advance that this story was to end in tragedy, but even so, to see this wizened, god-slaying, near-indomitable warrior break so pitifully as he recited this sorrowful tale… it was harrowing.

And it made her all the guiltier for the sense of relief she felt knowing that Millicent was no longer around to infect the world.

"I'm sorry." was all she could think to say to the Tarnished. He stifled his worsening sobs and shifted.

"Th-Thank you," he stammered tearily. Then, "It w… It was her who brought me here. It was in her name that I chose to remain… I-It does bring me some slight respite, I confess. Sitting here with you now, knowing that this broken home is at last on the mend. It was what she would have desired."

Malenia nodded solemnly. "Millicent's fate was a cruel and bitter one," she remarked. "But I am ever grateful that your journey together brought you to us."

"One of the last things she ever said to me was, 'There is something I must return to Malenia. The dignity, the sense of self, that allowed her to resist the call of the scarlet rot. The pride she abandoned, to meet Radahn's measure.' I… remain unsure of exactly what she meant. Perhaps a piece of you was interred within her. But if nothing else, that needle bears her legacy now. It was only right to fulfill her wish in some way."

Malenia glanced down towards her chest and grazed the device with her fingers.

"It is but a temporary relief from the rot that roils through my veins," she said. "For as long as it persists, however, I will wear it with honor."

Both of them fell silent after that. Malenia's blind gaze drifted back out over the sea, and she was certain the Tarnished had done the same. What a tale, she thought. To think that just a few days ago she had thought this man just another humdrum, if persistent, warrior. Now she knew the truth: She supped in the company of a true champion. A champion who, out of all the despair that wracked the Lands Between, had picked out Elphael and deemed it worth saving—so much so that he would rise to meet Malenia in battle to simply bend her ear. He came as if sent from some divine realm to pull her home back from the brink of extinction. To reunite her with her dear brother. To save their little world.

Given what he had just told her, she supposed he owed it to Millicent… and to himself.

She lost track of time sitting there. It could have been minutes or hours later when her reflection was interrupted by a loud clanking and shuddering of armor. With a hefty grunt, the Tarnished stood up.

"I am afraid I must be on my way," he informed her, still struggling to compose himself. "Thank you for the tea and… the conversation."

Malenia was surprised by the announcement at first, but remembered it was only by her intervention that he had not left ages ago. She nodded at him and stood up.

"I shall not forget all you have done for us, brave Tarnished," she declared. Reaching out, she gently but firmly clasped his spauldered shoulder. "And I shall not forget your tale… nor Millicent's."

"A greater gift than you know," he murmured, before pulling away. "My journey to place my Queen atop the throne will soon draw to a close… May it bring Elphael the peace that was promised."

"The peace began with you." was Malenia's sole response.

"Farewell, Malenia."

"Farewell, champion… but, before you depart."

The Tarnished was silent. Malenia took that as an invitation to continue.

"Brave knight, in honor of your memory… Elphael shall not know you as another common Tarnished. If there is any name, any at all, that you may bear, tell me, so that I may know the man who saved our Haligtree."

He pondered for a long, long moment. A low hum of thought rumbled his chest.

"As I told you, I forgot my true name long ago. But, if a name you want… call me Ash."

Malenia nodded. A small smile came to her lips.

"A fitting title," she observed. "Very well. Goodbye, Ash, and godspeed."

"Goodbye, Malenia. May the Dark Moon shine ever gently upon you."

Malenia waited until Ash's footsteps had faded into nothing before she bent down to pick up her helm and place it back upon her head. Retrieving the cups the two of them had left, she brought them to the stores and placed them in a dark, cold, dry corner before making her descent back to the roots of the Haligtree. Finlay was waiting for her, watching vigilantly over Miquella.

"How did ye fare, Milady?" Finlay asked, then elaborated with a coy lilt, "Was the Tarnished good company?"

Malenia placed a heavy hand upon her aged seat and slumped into it before answering.

"There was… much more to Ash than met the eye," she said. "His tale was unlike any I've come to know. It was grim, sordid, and bleak… but it has yet to end that way."

"Huh," Finlay pondered. "What did he tell y…"

Her voice suddenly and unexpectedly faded away. Grabbing the bell that rested on the arm of her chair, Malenia rang it three times.

"Thank you, Milady. Now, what exactly did he say of himself?"

Malenia chuckled a tad.

"Even the taste he offered me was quite the fable," she quipped. "I doubt you would believe it."