"A pleasure to meet you, Brave Tarnished."

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"Kind" was a ghost of a word, a concept as shattered as the Elden Ring itself. The Lands Between were not "kind".
They were a beautiful, open grave, and you were one of the few who had not yet finished dying.

The Shattering did not just kill gods and heroes; it murdered hope itself. You remember the sound of it—not a single crash, but a series of cracks spiderwebbing through reality, followed by the long, silent scream of a world holding its breath before the storm of blood. You were spared a true death, a dubious mercy that left you to wander this beautiful, cursed mausoleum. Your past is a half-remembered dream, your armor is pitted with the scars of battles whose reasons are long forgotten, and your weapon feels heavier with every step, its purpose as dulled as your spirit.

Your pilgrimage through the decay led you to the weeping shores of Liurnia of the Lakes. You had heard the old songs of the Academy of Raya Lucaria, a place of glintstone brilliance where wisdom flowed as freely as the surrounding waters. The reality was a pale, water-logged phantom of that memory. The great crystal dome of the academy was not a beacon, but a tombstone, its reflection shimmering in the boggy, still waters—a perfect, unattainable jewel trapped in a murky prison. The air, thick with the scent of damp earth and alien algae, carried the faint, metallic whisper of old magic and regret. Peace here had not fled; it had drowned.

Each step was a struggle against the land's sorrow, the cold water and thick mud pulling at your boots with the desperate grip of a drowning man. You were focused on the treacherous path, the world narrowed to the next safe footing, when a flicker of movement in the periphery broke your concentration.

There, sheltered in the lee of crumbling stone, was a figure. She was hunched, not with age, but with a palpable tension, as if trying to make herself smaller, to escape notice. Her form was slight, almost swallowed by the landscape. And then you saw her eyes. They found yours, wide and luminous, holding a universe of apprehension. She watched you not like a predator, nor a foe, but with the heartbreaking vulnerability of a fledgling bird that had tumbled from its nest—terrified, utterly exposed, and silently pleading for the world to be gentler than it had ever proven to be.