The Painted World was burning, but Sister Friede did not know why.

When ashes are two, a flame alighteth.

Had she not warned away every ash which entered this world? Had not the weak found their place among the gentle rot? Had not the brave fallen into despair as her corvian knights slaughtered them like pigs? Had she not personally seen to the demise of every cinder who risked sparking Flame anew?

Why, then, did the Fire roil in its vessel? Father Ariandel, ever faithful, bled himself dry trying to staunch the embers. This time, they had become a fierce Flame, fiercer than even in her nightmares. The old burn tingled with pain all along the right side of her face. Even the Flame of the outside world had not been this strong since ages past. How could the bestowed Flame of the Painted World grow so large from mere ash, unfit even to be kindling?

Something hollow resounded as it struck the first step leading beneath the altar, to the secret chamber where she and Ariandel had hidden the Flame's vessel. Whatever fool slave of the gods may have survived the perils of the cold Painted World, she would break them and use their own blood to quash what they had created.

One clacking step, then slowly another and another. The sounds came in threes, as if the intruder limped and walked with a cane. Strangely enough, an elderly man with the snow-white skin and hair of the old gods descended to the frosted cobblestone.

"Friede," Ariandel wheezed.

His hand shook as he tried to raise his flail, studded with black iron barbs in the shape of crows' talons. The old giant's life had nearly bled dry.

"Friede, my flail. I can't quite…"

"Hush, good Father," she said softly, looking out from the deep folds of her wimple. "It is only a relic of a time long gone. I shall soon bury it with the rest."

She turned away from the Flame and straightened her posture. There was a majesty to her stance not normally associated with the repressed clergy. In her hand hung a long scythe, the blade made all the sharper for the damp carelessness of its storage, which had frozen dew to a razor across its edge. Her feet were bare on the frosted stones, but the chill meant little to long-cold ash.

"Elfriede, dear girl," the stranger called, "I have come to offer redemption."

In a flash, the nun had crossed the room. Her scythe ought have cleft through the old man's neck. He was not dressed for combat – no armor, nor the elaborate robes of a magician. He wore an aged and yellowed tunic beneath a heavy black toga, and he leaned on an old cane of lacquered bone – certainly no sorcerer's rod. Yet the old man's head remained firmly attached.

"I cannot truthfully say that I empathize," the man continued as if nothing had happened. "I do not feel these things in the same way, you see. It is simply a matter of biology – or lack thereof. Yet if I may be so bold, I believe that I do understand your grief."

Friede whipped her scythe back and hurled the old man to the stone. His bum left leg crumpled easily, but the distant, sad look in his eyes didn't change.

"You were fooled by the old serpent himself, more ancient and cunning than all but the birds. Yet he need not try hard. You bore witness to the excesses and obsessions of Fire firsthand. That is the legacy of our failure. For that, I am sorry."

Friede took a step sideways, arcing her scythe overhead as she moved. The blade tore through the man's middle like a war-pick, but there was no effect. It passed through the cloth without tearing. Even lunar illusions could be struck, and her blade had certainly pierced the man's garment. Why was the stranger unharmed?

"You were prepared, in every sense of the word, to usurp the Throne of the world and take the Fire itself. You failed. Even here, as you wait in fearful silence amongst rot and suffering, you are not hollow. There was never enough Dark in your heart. You are too full of life and light… just like her."

For a moment, Friede's lip twinged. Just a bit longer, and a snarl would have formed. Yet before it could be noticed, she forced it beneath a mask of icy indifference.

"What do you know, slave of the Lord's legacy? Do you intend to drag me back to Lothric? Already, you burn this world like you do the one outside, time and again."

"You are mistaken, my child. I am not here about the Fire's linking or about old Gwyn. I am here for you and for this world of rot you hold dear. Your command of the cold far exceeds that of an unkindled or even a student of the Painted World's magic. You have taken the cold for your own because it is dear to you. You wish to simply freeze everything.

No more pain. No more hard work for nothing. Everything just stops… while the cold slowly rots the body. The opposite, precisely, of your ancestor's bountiful healing."

"You know nothing, Champion of the old gods."

Friede turned her scythe about and hooked it beneath the man's chin. The powerful body of a swordswoman was concealed beneath her billowing robes. She tore upward, ripping the man's head off, but there was no blood. The head seemed to hang in the air for a moment as the deception broke, and the man's skin and hair vanished.

"No, my dear," the skull said. "When it comes to rot and cold, I know truly everything."

A hollow rattling like a roaring river echoed from the chamber above. A tide of worn, decrepit bones flooded the room. The light streaming from the high windows was snuffed out altogether, driving the hall into pitch blackness. The bones fell upon each other and oozed viscous shadow.

As the old man's severed head tumbled through the air, a bony hand whose fingers were lesser men's arms caught it. The fleshless skull was set atop a shambling mound of countless corpses bound in the white-limned Dark of humanity.

"I am Gravelord Nito, First of the Dead. A pleasure to formally make your acquaintance, my dear Elfriede."

It was a skeleton of a Great Man, Royalty, which rose more than twice the nun's height. It wore the bones of lesser Men like armor and the Dark souls of the dead like a cloak. Its voice emitted from no throat of mere flesh – it was a deep, heady darkness composed of every culture which had gone extinct.

"I understand your former order has its roots in the Fenito who adapted my teachings. I regret they were so easily perverted by the Darkstalker. My works were meant to provide succor to the Dead in the quiet Dark, away from Gwyn's Light. They were to be a respite from the burning ambition of the living. The Darkstalker made it yet another path to Want."

The abomination's neck was ringed with the skulls of Men like a monk's rosary. Its right hand grew into an unwieldy razor made of spines and ribs.

"Come to me, my wayward child. Abandon this hollow, rotting corpse and know rest. Your birthright does not matter. All are equal in death and sleep."

The Great Dead One spread his arms wide, and the chapel died. The wooden screens signifying the Sable Church; the oil paintings depicting her sisters; the serpent-headed lights which represented her former master – all crumbled to dust. Friede looked back. Fortunately, Father Ariandel was still unharmed. The Painting could be restored.

Friede vanished into the darkness and tensed to cut through layer upon layer of bone. The skeletons screamed. Before Friede could strike, ribs burst through the floor, glowing red like coals of a dying fire. One drove through her chest. She tore herself free and stumbled away, but the eyeless skulls just followed her.

"Please, if you must fight, do so with your own strength. Have respect for those whose images you have syncretized."

The monster let its hideous blade go limp.

"No, forgive me, that is but a platitude. I am not so ethical. Rather, have pity on an old, lonely man. Do not make me fight you while you pose as my adorable bride."

Friede attempted another charge, flashing like a thunderbolt, but the layers of bones were simply too many to cleave.

"Do you not see, my child? You hated that, being identified with her. Her identity subsuming your own. Having no worth but to be a substitute! And then living only as a vessel to thicken spoilt blood!

The Flame scarred more than your face! Your heart was burnt by it. You sought to become your own person, but you knew not what to do. So you merely tried to live up to the perfect image expected of you, of the eldest sister. You became a mere image of yourself, and when that image ultimately proved hollow, it destroyed your confidence that you could ever be an individual.

Now you wallow here, pretending to a half-dozen other failed vessels for the Flame. Show me not another Vestal Maiden. Who are you, Elfriede?"

The nun lunged into the air where the burning swords couldn't reach her. She twisted, trying to attack the central skull with pure torque, but the main spine was petrified and would not be cut so easily. The monster's left hand glowed with Flame and reached for her. Friede kicked off a ribcage and hurtled back, but she immediately whipped back. The Great Dead One hadn't been trying to catch her.

Friede let go of her scythe before the abomination could swing its blade-arm. Yet it didn't intend to do so. She realized letting go of her weapon was a mistake.

"A scythe is said to represent a long-lost home. Where is your home, I wonder? Hm? Is a scythe not also the symbol of a bountiful harvest? Even here, you remain in her shadow, watching over a silly bowl as if the presence or absence of Flame means everything. Live life such that you do not regret death."

The steel and wood died of the scythe. Rust and dust drifted to the floor like snow. A single human skeleton broke away from the Great Dead One and hurried to present Friede with something. Her muscles tensed, and the callouses on her hands tingled. A pair of swords just like the ancient blades she had abandoned, newly forged and resting in polished scabbards of black ashwood.

"Who are you, Elfriede? Are you the Mother of the Forlorn, the Scholar's muse? Are you the goddess of fertility and bounty? Are you the leader of the Sable Church's mentors?"

Friede's hands quivered. For the first time, it felt as if the cold would overwhelm her. Not the cold of the Painted World. A cold, icy, and yet burning, hatred.

"So the Great Dead One knows all and would preach of the cold, dead truth?"

The nun took the paired blades in hand. She set the two scabbards in her belt, hanging on opposite sides.

"Men are never truly free. Master Kaathe gave us the least of all freedoms, to choose the shape of our shackles. Would we be bound by the glories of the past or the vision of a desolate future? We chose despair over illusion."

Humanity began to seep from the nun's eyes like tears.

"Our misery is eternal, and so we will never die. I fled from that. I abandoned my sisters to that fate. Yet I did not die as ordained. I choose neither misery nor death! As long as Ariandel lives, the Painting is eternal!"

The Flame in Ariandel's bowl writhed with her outcry.

"Friede!" the father cried mournfully.

"Hush, good father. It will be over soon."

Faster than the eye could track, Friede's arms crossed. A black luster streaked through the air. The Great Dead One's cloak of humanity was burned away by black flames. Fume-blackened steel carved through ancient bone. The Great Dead One's bladed arm collapsed to the floor.

There was a moment of silence. Several bony arms peeled away from the main amalgamation. They clapped.

"Splendid! Quite impressive! To choose is itself the right of a True Monarch. Your tomb will be my finest work yet!"

The Great Dead One raised its remaining arm and revealed the depth of a Great One's power. The walls and ceiling crumbled away to reveal that the rest of the Painted World was already dead and cold ash.

The cold, burning mass in Friede's heart roiled with the sensation of utter loss. Her faithful knights were dead. Selfless Vilheim was dead. The gentle rot was dead. The forsaken residents of the Painted World were dead.

Father Ariandel was only the Painting's restorer. He could not create a world from blood and souls. He lacked the creative spark. Her creative spark.

Friede gave a single warbling cry of grief and exploded into black flames.

"Friede?" Ariandel called in shock. "Friede, the Painting… Our home…"

The father barked like a furious crow and strained at his bindings. In a furious fit, he tore the bolts from the stone. Still strapped to his wooden throne, he rose and took up the censer full of Flame before him.

The seemingly endless pile of bones constructed a new arm for the Great Dead One. The tremendous corvian father and titan of bone charged at one another like glaciers. The Great One caught the bowl, and the giants sloshed the Flame between them as each tried to outmatch the other in raw strength alone.

Blackflame flickered from the shadows and struck at the Great One from behind. There was a flash of silence instead of noise, and the blacksteel was turned aside.

The main skull had turned back to face Friede now that she had reappeared. A single human-sized skeleton was beginning to pull itself free from the amalgamation. Unlike the swordbearer, this one was shrouded in humanity. Like the Great One, it had a bum leg and rested on a cane made from a giant's femur. Yet it stood with an air of dignity. In its hand was a black hilt wrapped with a torn, black cloth.

"It is my turn to be cruel," the skeleton said, clattering its teeth with the voice of the Great Dead One itself. "You know my old sword, do you not?"

Friede responded with a crossing slash that would have been impossible to parry with a single weapon, least of all with a blade that didn't exist. Yet the Dead One deflected one with the absent blade and the other with its cane. The master swordswoman curved the momentum of her deflected strikes to a synchronized and delayed pair of slashes into the creature's guard.

Yet the Great Dead One did not possess that masterwork blade for its artistry. It deflected both strikes with the same downward shift back into a neutral guard. Even as the Old Lord stood back-to-back with itself, it held off both the Father and Sister without giving ground.

As Friede retreated to plan her next move, she realized the monster's true objective as her foot nearly slipped off a newly-created ledge – she was running out of time. The Flame was still spreading through the last remnants of the Painting, and the Miasma of Death spread from it as heavy smoke. If she didn't slay the monster swiftly, there would not even be room to continue fighting.

Yet she knew the weakness of that relic blade, which her sister Yuria had inherited. As it did not perfectly exist in the world of the living, its phantom blade could be banished. Quickly, faster, faster, ever-faster, she attacked. Her swordsmanship ranged from elaborate to brutal as she tried to keep the Great One on its guard. With each strike the invisible blade deflected, the sturdy ancient blackiron hammered its connection to the Painting.

With one final, tremendous stroke of blackflame, the Dead One's blade shattered like a dream. Before the monster could respond, Friede thrust both blades forward. They ran between its ribs, pinning it to the bad leg of the main body. With a roar, she poured out all her roiling emotions as blackflame, immolating most of the bone goliath. Ariandel matched her fury and crushed the bones into a pile even as the flames of humanity scorched his inhuman hands.

It gave up a rush of souls, but above all else, a fragment of Flame. The Death Soul. The sister stared in disbelief. Certainly, this had been the Great Dead One. Yet the Great Ones were long gone, and the Great Souls had degraded to paltry, unrecognizable things.

The Painted World was still decaying around them. There was no time to consider another way. Friede reached toward it gingerly, still somewhat afraid after her last experience with the First Flame. Yet as the Dead One had said, Death was gentle and equanimous.

Already, she had spent all of her emotions in the final attack. In the afterglow, she felt something resembling peace at last; not merely the storm she had forced to freeze before. The quietness of Death called to her. It was a gentle strength, perhaps the one she had always wanted.

She breathed in Death.

With a wave of her hand, the Lord of Grave Ash froze the destruction of the Painted World. Then, with a downstroke, she destroyed it at once. Abruptly, the few survivors were ejected into the real world, in an elaborate drawing room. Snow glimmered in the moonlight before kissing the windows.

"Friede!" Ariandel cried.

"Peace, good father, it was already lost to us. Yet in its death, we have gained a new home. The lands of the Dead are given us."

A wicked scythe of bones assembled in her hands.

"Let us return this gift to the old gods."