"Chopt" (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
slewmyfear) wrote2016-07-13 01:43 pm
slewmyfear) wrote2016-07-13 01:43 pm
Possible app background stuff?
As the stories go, on the first day, man was given a soul, and with it clarity. But monsters were born in the wake of this, harboring an insatiable desire for those souls and the power that came with them. And there was no monster more dangerous than the Old One, a massive, abomination feared not for prowess in combat, but an innate, corrupting essence. The Old One was like a tree, both physically and in practice, releasing an all-consuming, colorless Deep Fog. Those inside became demons, their very souls being extracted by the Old One and the only way to stave off insanity being to kill others and take their souls. The more people consumed by the fog, the more demons for the Old One to draw power from, and the Old One’s power grew, the more the fog could grow.
The Old One was eventually sealed away and lulled into a deep sleep, but not without great cost and the destruction of half of the world. For a time mankind was able to rebuild and prosper, with six Archstones erected to maintain the world’s stability and a Nexus to serve as their central hub and a prison for the Old One itself.
This was, unfortunately, not enough, as centuries later King Allant XII of Boletaria -a small kingdom that housed one of the Archstones- awoke the Old One once more to usher in the end of the world, and with it an end of human suffering. The colorless fog returned, and the very Archstones that had held the world together became the new epicenters for demons, each headed by Archdemon lieutenants. One even had to be scuttled and that pillar of reality lost forever just to stave off complete annihilation of the rest.
Word spread of the crisis and many heroes braved the fog for their own reasons, be it recognition, selflessness, or desiring to take the incredible power of demons for themselves. But there was one among them unlike any other: a girl, seemingly young and unfit for the hellish quest. But looks were deceiving.The girl was in fact from the modern era, and life had not been kind to her. Weak-willed, neither exceptionally bright nor athletic, and extremely unpopular to the point of facing bullying on a daily basis, her frustration at the unfairness of it all led her to extreme measures in the name of revenge: occult rituals. Using a book she’d bought at a second-hand store she believed to have magic powers, she attempted to perform a summoning to call forth a demon to exact “justice” on everyone she felt had wronged her.
The ritual had the opposite effect and transported the girl to a hellish pocket dimension housing its own batch of nightmarish demons. The girl had wished for “justice”, but the fact she willing to enact such disproportionate retribution marked her as the one most deserving of punishment. Or at least that was the excuse given as the demons tortured her again and again, in ways that would’ve killed any ordinary person. But the hellscape was a realm of pain and suffering, and death had no place there. No matter what the injury the girl sustained, death wouldn’t claim her, and her wounds were even occasionally healed just so she could be broken once more.
Then there was the psychological toll. Having a much better perspective on how petty she had been, the girl was overwhelmed with guilt and shame, wanting nothing more than to return home to her family. The demons exploited this to no end by conjuring up illusions of her past, and sought to absolutely break her by pretending that there was a means to escape if she could overcome a slew of challenges and obstacles only to reveal that there was no escape... save for when the time had come for the end of the world. But that was also going to be a long, long time off because time also traveled at a crawl inside of the hellscape, such that an instant in the real world would last aeons for them.
But an indefinite period of time to spend thinking about your mistakes gives you an indefinite period to come to terms with those mistakes. As painful as the lesson had been, the girl found the strength to forgive others and herself and resolved to some day, somehow, reunite with her family. As terrifying as her own personal demons were, she resisted them to the best of her ability, even if it meant just running and hiding in a realm where nowhere was safe. It did little to stave off innumerable mutilations, but it set the foundation of survival skills. And more importantly, her body began to reconstitute itself whenever she experienced would-be fatal injuries without outside assistance. Even the hellscape's denizens didn't understand where this power came from.
And then the day came that the hellscape destroyed itself, taking its demonic population with it as the end of the world began; not in the distant future but in the distant past. The influence of the Old One's distortions spread far beyond its era, and thus the girl found herself freed, thrust into a situation with a very different breed of demon. Nevertheless, hope blossomed for the girl, believing that if she could help defeat the Old One, then she could just "wait out" whatever length of time was necessary for her to return to the present. And until she could return to the present and resume living as she had, the girl resolved to live by a different name. One that began as a childhood insult by mean kids at school, in fact. "Chopt".
The going was difficult, and would've been impossible if not for help from other inhabitants of the Nexus, and Chopt's most critical ally was the Maiden in Black. An exceptionally powerful demon herself, the Maiden nevertheless aided humanity in penance for her own sinful past, and used the very souls of other demons slain by Chopt to strengthen the girl beyond the point any ordinary person could reach. It was enough to at least give her a fighting chance.
Chopt’s journeys took her to the lands holding the five remaining Archstones to slay the Archdemons, every encounter along the way helping shape her. Each encounter was different from the last, but the underlying lesson she learned from it all was that the world, even at its best, was a messy place and the best you could do was just do what you felt was right while understanding most people were just trying to do the same. The capstone of this was the journey through the Valley of Defilement, a filthy, rotten land of squalor and poison… and yet with the onset of the Deep Fog living conditions in the Valley had improved all thanks to the sacrifice of its Archdemon: the Sixth Saint Astraea. Astraea was regarded by many as the most vile and impure demon of all, but when they finally met, Chopt learned the truth: that Astraea had accepted all the pain and corruption of the Valley into herself if only to make life more bearable for its inhabitants. Unfortunately, Astraea still had to die for the sake of the world, pitting Chopt against Astraea's loyal bodyguard Garl Vinland in a somber duel that ended with Garl dead. Astraea, grief-stricken, committed suicide when Chopt regretfully confronted her. In the aftermath Chopt had her soul forged into a broken sword to give birth to the Blueblood; not only a powerful weapon but a powerful reminder of all the good intentions and just plain good they embodied.
With the Archdemons slain, it all came to a head when Chopt and the Maiden in Black confronted the now-misshapen King Allant and the Old One underneath the Nexus. Allant was killed with anticlimactic ease and finally deprived of its “roots”, the Old One was finally lulled back to sleep by the Maiden in Black. The day was saved, and Chopt resolved to remain in the Nexus and wait patiently for the modern age to begin and her life to return to normal.
Unfortunately, their efforts weren’t enough. Even with the Old One once more lulled back to sleep, the loss of an Archstone still doomed the world. Reality gradually unraveled, destroying the Nexus and trapping Chopt in the rubble with only her immortality keeping her alive. And so fog covered the world, bringing with it an uneventful nothingness. Humanity was deprived of their souls, turning into mindless pygmies. There was no genuine life or death or meaningfulness of any kind, simply a bland existence for an indeterminate amount of time until it just… changed.
The Old One was eventually sealed away and lulled into a deep sleep, but not without great cost and the destruction of half of the world. For a time mankind was able to rebuild and prosper, with six Archstones erected to maintain the world’s stability and a Nexus to serve as their central hub and a prison for the Old One itself.
This was, unfortunately, not enough, as centuries later King Allant XII of Boletaria -a small kingdom that housed one of the Archstones- awoke the Old One once more to usher in the end of the world, and with it an end of human suffering. The colorless fog returned, and the very Archstones that had held the world together became the new epicenters for demons, each headed by Archdemon lieutenants. One even had to be scuttled and that pillar of reality lost forever just to stave off complete annihilation of the rest.
Word spread of the crisis and many heroes braved the fog for their own reasons, be it recognition, selflessness, or desiring to take the incredible power of demons for themselves. But there was one among them unlike any other: a girl, seemingly young and unfit for the hellish quest. But looks were deceiving.The girl was in fact from the modern era, and life had not been kind to her. Weak-willed, neither exceptionally bright nor athletic, and extremely unpopular to the point of facing bullying on a daily basis, her frustration at the unfairness of it all led her to extreme measures in the name of revenge: occult rituals. Using a book she’d bought at a second-hand store she believed to have magic powers, she attempted to perform a summoning to call forth a demon to exact “justice” on everyone she felt had wronged her.
The ritual had the opposite effect and transported the girl to a hellish pocket dimension housing its own batch of nightmarish demons. The girl had wished for “justice”, but the fact she willing to enact such disproportionate retribution marked her as the one most deserving of punishment. Or at least that was the excuse given as the demons tortured her again and again, in ways that would’ve killed any ordinary person. But the hellscape was a realm of pain and suffering, and death had no place there. No matter what the injury the girl sustained, death wouldn’t claim her, and her wounds were even occasionally healed just so she could be broken once more.
Then there was the psychological toll. Having a much better perspective on how petty she had been, the girl was overwhelmed with guilt and shame, wanting nothing more than to return home to her family. The demons exploited this to no end by conjuring up illusions of her past, and sought to absolutely break her by pretending that there was a means to escape if she could overcome a slew of challenges and obstacles only to reveal that there was no escape... save for when the time had come for the end of the world. But that was also going to be a long, long time off because time also traveled at a crawl inside of the hellscape, such that an instant in the real world would last aeons for them.
But an indefinite period of time to spend thinking about your mistakes gives you an indefinite period to come to terms with those mistakes. As painful as the lesson had been, the girl found the strength to forgive others and herself and resolved to some day, somehow, reunite with her family. As terrifying as her own personal demons were, she resisted them to the best of her ability, even if it meant just running and hiding in a realm where nowhere was safe. It did little to stave off innumerable mutilations, but it set the foundation of survival skills. And more importantly, her body began to reconstitute itself whenever she experienced would-be fatal injuries without outside assistance. Even the hellscape's denizens didn't understand where this power came from.
And then the day came that the hellscape destroyed itself, taking its demonic population with it as the end of the world began; not in the distant future but in the distant past. The influence of the Old One's distortions spread far beyond its era, and thus the girl found herself freed, thrust into a situation with a very different breed of demon. Nevertheless, hope blossomed for the girl, believing that if she could help defeat the Old One, then she could just "wait out" whatever length of time was necessary for her to return to the present. And until she could return to the present and resume living as she had, the girl resolved to live by a different name. One that began as a childhood insult by mean kids at school, in fact. "Chopt".
The going was difficult, and would've been impossible if not for help from other inhabitants of the Nexus, and Chopt's most critical ally was the Maiden in Black. An exceptionally powerful demon herself, the Maiden nevertheless aided humanity in penance for her own sinful past, and used the very souls of other demons slain by Chopt to strengthen the girl beyond the point any ordinary person could reach. It was enough to at least give her a fighting chance.
Chopt’s journeys took her to the lands holding the five remaining Archstones to slay the Archdemons, every encounter along the way helping shape her. Each encounter was different from the last, but the underlying lesson she learned from it all was that the world, even at its best, was a messy place and the best you could do was just do what you felt was right while understanding most people were just trying to do the same. The capstone of this was the journey through the Valley of Defilement, a filthy, rotten land of squalor and poison… and yet with the onset of the Deep Fog living conditions in the Valley had improved all thanks to the sacrifice of its Archdemon: the Sixth Saint Astraea. Astraea was regarded by many as the most vile and impure demon of all, but when they finally met, Chopt learned the truth: that Astraea had accepted all the pain and corruption of the Valley into herself if only to make life more bearable for its inhabitants. Unfortunately, Astraea still had to die for the sake of the world, pitting Chopt against Astraea's loyal bodyguard Garl Vinland in a somber duel that ended with Garl dead. Astraea, grief-stricken, committed suicide when Chopt regretfully confronted her. In the aftermath Chopt had her soul forged into a broken sword to give birth to the Blueblood; not only a powerful weapon but a powerful reminder of all the good intentions and just plain good they embodied.
With the Archdemons slain, it all came to a head when Chopt and the Maiden in Black confronted the now-misshapen King Allant and the Old One underneath the Nexus. Allant was killed with anticlimactic ease and finally deprived of its “roots”, the Old One was finally lulled back to sleep by the Maiden in Black. The day was saved, and Chopt resolved to remain in the Nexus and wait patiently for the modern age to begin and her life to return to normal.
Unfortunately, their efforts weren’t enough. Even with the Old One once more lulled back to sleep, the loss of an Archstone still doomed the world. Reality gradually unraveled, destroying the Nexus and trapping Chopt in the rubble with only her immortality keeping her alive. And so fog covered the world, bringing with it an uneventful nothingness. Humanity was deprived of their souls, turning into mindless pygmies. There was no genuine life or death or meaningfulness of any kind, simply a bland existence for an indeterminate amount of time until it just… changed.
To mend the world, the Maiden in Black sacrificed herself to set ablaze the Old One and release its vast store of Souls. Fire returned to the world with the First Flame, bringing with it disparity and Souls once more. Life, Death, Light, and Dark became the foundational elements of existence and the founders of three of the corresponding Souls went on to be the foundation for civilization: Nito, the First of the Dead; the Witch of Izalith, the new mother of sorcery; and Gwyn, the Lord of Sunlight. The last of them, the Furtive Pygmy, did not participate in this and seemingly faded to obscurity. The Age of Fire had begun, and life picked up where it left off prior to the Boletarian crisis as a new world was literally built over the previous one. Reality was still frayed and time was still somewhat convoluted... but it was still a step in the right direction.
But nothing compared to the baffling experience of finding an exact replica of the cemetery and shrine where Chopt had started her adventure in Lothric, subsumed in darkness like that of the Abyss's. Nearly devoid of life, she nevertheless found the Fire Keeper of the shrine, dead and holding eyes in her hands. In the "normal" shrine, Ludleth revealed that they were the eyes of the very first Fire Keeper, from the time just before and then after Gwyn had linked the Fire.
And the eyes held what some considered the most damning and horrifying of images, but what Chopt saw as her last hope of fixing the First Flame problem: visions of the the end of the original Age of Fire, and the start of the original Age of Dark. Encouraged by Ludleth to follow her own path through to the end, Chopt gave them to the Fire Keeper, exposing the unsuspecting woman to the horrible truth of the Cycle and the First Flame in a way that words never could.
But what words could do... was reassure her. Even in the visions of Dark, the Fire Keeper still saw faint lights in the distance, and Chopt told her of the world that had been trying to come into existence for millennia, the world she'd been trying to fight through to so she could reunite with her family. And the Fire Keeper, terrified but somehow enamored by the darkness she saw, made a pact with Chopt: trained in the ways of maintaining and sustaining the First Flame, the Keeper would instead decisively snuff it out once the path to it was cleared. Until then, no one was the wiser, save for Ludleth who seemed content in letting his grand mistake be remedied the only way that was left to the world.
After defeating both Prince Lothric and his older brother Lorian, the path to the new Kiln of the First Flame was opened. But the First Flame had one last test left for its next alleged Lord of Cinder... or perhaps it remembered the crisis in Boletaria and the time-traveling girl who had made the Old One lower its guard and ultimately bring about its destruction. What met Chopt was not another Lord of Cinder, but all of them merged into a single, blazing figure: the "Soul of Cinder". With the power of not just the Lords that she had previously fought, but every Lord, it attacked her with a vast, devastating arsenal of weapons and spells and even channeled the full extent of Gwyn's power when he had been in his prime.
But Chopt did not surrender. She hadn't in Boletaria, nor in Lordran, Drangleic, Yharnam, or the Nameless God's island. And while the Soul of Cinder fought with the power of those that had linked the Flame, Chopt fought with the memories and lessons learned across every day of her long, long life. Every triumph, every death, every monster slain and innocent life lost by a cruel twist of fate, and that was power the Soul of Cinder could not hope to match. She overwhelmed and destroyed it with her greatsword, and in the aftermath summoned forth the Fire Keeper to end the First Flame itself. This went beyond even walking away from it in Drangleic; this was having someone who knew how to outright end it kill the First Flame.
Light fast faded away, leaving Chopt and the Keeper in absolute darkness. A final, decisive Age of Dark had finally come, the Furtive Pygmy's descendants at least free of the First Flame and the Undead Curse. There would still be lights, but they would be born of humanity's own efforts; light born from those of the Dark Soul. And Chopt knew it could be done, because it'd been done once before.
Though at the same time... Chopt knew that to safeguard this new, second attempt at a true Age of Dark, she would inevitably have to uncover the truth behind both the Angels and the Sable Church. But that's a chapter not yet written, and DLC not yet released.
Fittingly, the first region to return to its former glory was the first region that had been lost: the land of the sixth Archstone. Gwyn and his fellow self-proclaimed gods founded the kingdom of Lordran, but soon after the First Flame began to fade and the gods' power faded with it. The Witch of Izalith’s attempt to create a second Flame backfired and caused a resurgence of demons into the world, and ultimately Gwyn sacrificed himself and his very Soul to be fuel to maintain the First Flame. This extended the Age of Fire, but had a secondary effect as a curse of undeath began to spread among humanity, and those marked by the Darksign would ressurect again and again upon death until their bodies became withered husks and their sanity was lost. Feared and reviled, the Undead were hunted and corralled by their still-living brethren into Asylums. When she was found in the ruins of the Nexus, Chopt was no exception to this.
Imprisoned and with her prized Blueblood reduced to a broken sword hilt by the ravages of time, this would've been the end for here if not for the knight Oscar attempting to free the Undead from their prisons. It was all to fulfill a prophecy that their true purpose would be revealed inside the once-grand Lordran. Oscar died and subsequently Hollowed afterwards, but Chopt continued on with the intent of finding out what had happened, travelling to Lordan and getting to see just how far the world had changed. There was now no Nexus, but bonfires tended by Fire Keepers served a similar purpose. There were plenty of other threats beyond demons too, including various dark entities associated with the all-consuming blackness of the Abyss and the freakish experimentations of the mad dragon Seath the Scaleless. But one thing that was the same though was the recurring trend of tragedy, with countless people pursuing goals and ideals even though all too often it ended in the worst possible way for them.
More battles followed too, and along the way Chopt had the Blueblood reforged into a powerful greatsword to honor the Great Grey Wolf Sif who had died defending his master's grave, which held a necessary protective charm. This charm, the Covenant of Artorias, allowed Chopt to descend safely into the Abyss and confront the Four Kings, wise men once loyal to Gwyn but had fallen under the sway of the Abyss, but after defeating them she learned more about the state of affairs in Lordran: that the prophecy and the trials that faced the Undead in Lordran were all to create a "successor" to Gwyn, a human whose Soul would provide the necessary fuel to extend the Age of Fire yet again. This would delay the oncoming Age of Dark... but it would also be the Age of Man. The Dark Soul's power of physicality scaled inversely with the others, and its bearer, the Furtive Pygmy, had seen that the Flame would one day fade and thus imparted the Dark Soul's power to all of humanity so they could function in the wake of the Age of Fire.
Or at least, that's was one possibility; everyone who had an idea of what was really going on had their own ulterior motives, only feeding Chopt enough truth as necessary. A detour into the past shortly before Gwyn linked the Flame had Chopt encounter Artorias himself -who had gone made from the corrupting powers of the Abyss. She would then go on to achieve the great victory accredited to Artorias in the past by entering the Abyss in that era and defeating the Abyss's very father: Manus... who also was most likely the Furtive Pygmy himself after he lost control over his own Soul.
Or at least, that's was one possibility; everyone who had an idea of what was really going on had their own ulterior motives, only feeding Chopt enough truth as necessary. A detour into the past shortly before Gwyn linked the Flame had Chopt encounter Artorias himself -who had gone made from the corrupting powers of the Abyss. She would then go on to achieve the great victory accredited to Artorias in the past by entering the Abyss in that era and defeating the Abyss's very father: Manus... who also was most likely the Furtive Pygmy himself after he lost control over his own Soul.
In spite of this revelation, Chopt chose to risk the Dark than continue the Age of Fire. Defeating the Four Kings, along with the Bed of Chaos, Nito, and Seath, opened the way to the Kiln of the First Flame where Chopt finally found Gwyn, or what was left of him. The once mighty god, now regarded as the “Lord of Cinder”, had been left mindless from burning inside the Kiln for a thousand years and nearly all of his strength had been lost. Yet the Hollow attacked her relentlessly, defeating her time and time again until Chopt finally emerged victorious, ending Gwyn and robbing the First Flame of what little fuel it had left. The Age of Fire ended and the Age of Dark began, Chopt intending to sacrifice herself to link the Fire like Gwyn did if things did not improve for the world.
But it never came to that. The Flame was linked instead by someone else across the fractured reality not long after in an attempt to restore the glory and greatness of the Age of Fire, but all that did was buy a little time before someone else came along and killed the new Lord of Cinder in order to to usher in the Age of Dark and become recognized as the Dark Lord. Thus the world became caught in a cycle of Fire and Dark, never achieving the same greatness as the First Age of Fire, nor able to truly enter the proper Age of Dark. The Undead Curse worsened for those afflicted with it, Chopt’s own memories and body beginning to fail her as she tried to journey for answers. Her equipment and even her prized greatsword were lost to her during this aimless period, and it might have been the end for her if not for a mysterious Fire Keeper giving her guidance and a destination: a murky, forgotten land called “Drangleic”.
The kingdom had once been ruled by Vendrick, a great and noble monarch who could very well have linked the Flame, but instead had tried to find another solution. He hadn't found one in his own time and subsequently Hollowed, but upon reuniting with the mysterious Fire Keeper known as the Emerald Herald, Chopt was told that to end the cycle she’d have to literally follow in Vendrick’s footsteps and succeed where he had failed. This took her on a journey across not just Drangleic, but older kingdoms built on top of and under it, and pitted her against semi-reincarnations of Gwyn, the Witch of Izalith, Nito, and Seath which she defeated just as Vendrick had done before. Along the way she also met Aldia, Vendrick’s brother who had been reduced to a hideous, freakish abomination from his own attempts of overcoming the curse who nevertheless retained his sanity and gave Chopt more insight into the nature of the Curse and the cycle.
It was her expedition into Brume Tower, the palace of the late Old Iron King, that reunited Chopt with her greatsword at long last, but the tower hid far darker things in its walls too: namely a Child of Dark, a fragment of Manus's very Soul given form and driven to avenge their "father"'s defeat. Another two dwelled in the sunken kingdom of Shulva and the frozen kingdom of Eleum Loyce, and as it turned out even Drangleic's own Queen Nashandra was one as well.
Even more shockingly, another trip into the past courtesy of the Ashen Mist Heart (or possibly merely memories of the past, it's complicated) let Chopt meet with Vendrick himself, who imparted a blessing on his and the other three kings' crowns based on his own efforts of ending the Curse. The blessing unfortunately could not remove the Darksign, but it did let the crowns prevent someone from Hollowing so long as they were wearing one of them. Not a cure, but farther than anyone else had ever gotten. Vendrick left Chopt with one last piece of advice before the Heart's power faded: "Seek strength. The rest will follow."
In following Vendrick's path to kinghood, Chopt unlocked the path to yet another Kiln of the First Flame, this one known as the Throne of Want. It was then that Nashandra attacked Chopt, intending to make her "one" with the Dark and become a puppet for something far more sinister than a mere Age of Dark. She made use of powerful curses in an attempt to drain away Chopt's own Soul and render her Hollow, but Chopt put her away easily thanks to the protection of Vendrick's crown. But it wasn't over yet as Aldia emerged again, giving Chopt one last test and battle. Again Chopt won, though Aldia's own experimentations in transcending the curse enabled him to survive the destruction of his physical body. Having finally tested her very strength and seen what she was capable of over, Aldia left Chopt to make her own choice in the face of the Throne. What did she want: just to be another part of the cycle or become something more?
And Chopt chose... to walk away and not take the Throne, just like Vendrick before her. There was no extension of the Age of Fire, there was no "Dark Lord", and no way for anyone else to access the Throne and thus link the Flame. As it turned out, Vendrick had been smarter than he gave himself credit for in refusing to be a part of the cycle. The world needed a natural transition out of the cycle of Fire and Dark, and it was finally ready. All it had ultimately needed was that ambivalent and complete lack of a push, so that humanity could finally grow and develop as they were entitled to. It was the best solution Chopt could see to actually let the world progress to the modern era, and for a time it actually worked. Magic gradually gave way to technology, the convolution of space and time was healed, and talk of the "Age of Fire" slowly but steadily got written off as superstitious legends. It took centuries, but the First Flame was diminished to an insignificant ember. Even the Darksign's faded in both power and appearance, letting Undead finally experience true death so long as they accepted it.
The world was steadily becoming more and more like what Chopt remembered from her history lessons so very long ago. Innovations like modern democracy, industrialization, and harnessing electricity were made, and before she knew it, the world was a scant hundred years from when she had first been drawn into the Hellscape.
And then some idiots had to fuck it all up by trying to commune with eldritch abominations.
It had gotten its start back even before Chopt went to Drangleic; with various secret groups trying to draw power not from Souls, but from the blood of powerful beings. Dragons were a popular choice, and at some point in time one group allegedly used Artorias's own. But others strove for even more exotic sources.
A strange outbreak in the desert city of Loran brought it to ruin, stories spreading of scourge that turned men into mindless, bloodthirsty beasts. A scourge that had its roots in the secretive but prosperous city of Yharnam, well-regarded in medical circles for a healing blood that could cure any illness that was administered by its Healing Church. Suspicious, Chopt decided to pay Yharnam two visits, first a simple scouting run as just another sick person who'd come to the city for the blood ministration, and then a return with her equipment and greatsword to clean house if it were necessary. Unfortunately, she did not get past the first visit.
A preliminary infusion in a small clinic assaulted Chopt with strange visions, and she awoke to find a message left for her in her own handwriting: "Seek Paleblood to complete the Hunt." The city had gone mad, those out in the streets in varying degrees of beasthood, and those inside seemingly oblivious to the chaos. As it unsurprisingly turned out, the Church's healing blood carried its own drawbacks, and overuse would turn humans into monsters quite unlike anything Chopt had encountered yet. To throw off suspicions that they were responsible for this Beastly Scourge, the Healing Church had subsequently instituted periodic Hunts, wherein the "sane" members of the city banded together to root out and kill those that had become beasts. It had worked at the start, but unsurprisingly it was not a sustainable solution. The Old Blood was used to treat the Scourge in its onset, but as the actual cause of it in the first place it was ultimately a cure that worsened the disease. Likewise, hunters would kill beasts, but eventually succumb and become beasts themselves and necessitate others to become hunters in their stead, and year by year Yharnam had descended further into madness. And the night that Chopt found herself trapped in Yharnam without her weapons was the night the city finally cracked.
But Chopt made due. Her initial transfusion had bound her to the "Hunter's Dream", a pocket dimension born of the dreams of Gehrman, the First Hunter, who advised her to travel and find the truth of what was happening. There was also the Plain Doll; an artificial being made by Gehrman who was able to grant new strength to Chopt with the abstract "Blood Echoes" of those she slew, similar to how the Maiden in Black and Emerald Herald had strengthened her with Souls. And without her weapons, Chopt instead took up several of the Hunters' own instead. The Blade of Mercy proved to be her weapon of choice, a bifurcating short sword made of magnetic "siderite" metal, and meant to be used to pre-emptively put down hunters that had gone insane. With the line between hunter and beast gone, it only made sense to use it on everything.
The true scope of the Yharnam crisis was revealed when Chopt traveled to Byrgenwerth College, the forerunners of the Healing Church. The Healing Blood, and the Beastly Scourge as a result, stemmed from entities known as the "Great Ones", entities beyond the mundane existence of humanity and Souls, who brought madness and destruction in their wake when communion was attempted with them. The Old One had been one of them, the earliest to engage with humanity on account of its hunger for Souls, and now, with Yharnam as a focal point, others had been interacting with humanity. Their reasons were all their own, some in fact having the best of intentions. But in practice, nothing good came from any of it. Not for Yharnam, not for Loran, not for the Healing Church or Byrgenwerth, and not for the then-ancient Pthumerians who had been the first to communicate with the Great Ones.
Discovering this had pitted Chopt against Rom, the Vacuous Spider and a human transitioning into becoming a Great One. And with Rom's demise came the blood red Moon, worsening the crisis in Yharnam even further as the School of Mensis, a branch of the Healing Church, was able to finally commune with the half-human Great One Mergo, born of the formless Great One Oeden and the Pthumerian queen named Yharnam for whom the city was named after. Yharnam the city was virtually lost, but nevertheless Chopt did what she could to save what was left of the city and ensure the Beastly Scourge ended then and there. She defeated the Great Ones Ebrietas, the source of the Healing Blood; the Orphan of Kos, another half-human Great One who maintained a "Hunter's Nightmare" Dream dimension to torture the minds of the sleeping and dead hunters; and Mergo's own Wet Nurse, who had maintained another Dream dimension to allow Mergo to survive. Deprived of its protective Dream, the in-reality stillborn Mergo died. The Hunt was over, and Gehrman offered to free Chopt from it once and for all.
But Chopt refused to leave just yet. The blood red Moon remained, and more than simply lingering, was now in the Hunter's Dream as well, for the Dream was Gehrman's but was maintained by yet another Great One. Gehrman took Chopt's refusal as a challenge and attacked, but Chopt ultimately proved too much for him. Gehrman died, finally freed from the Dream at long last... and in killing him Chopt earned the ire and attention of the Moon Presence; the Great One who had made Gehrman's Dream into what it was and now intended to use Chopt as a replacement. But Chopt's battles had heightened her awareness and existence such that she was able to match the Moon Presence as well, killing it and freeing humanity from the influence of all the Great Ones.
... Unfortunately for her, the heightened existence came with a steep, terrifying cost, causing Chopt to be transformed into a squid-like being, a new Great One. Virtually helpless in this new state, Chopt was tended to by the Plain Doll in the final moments of the Hunter's Dream before returning to the material world, waking up naked to find herself in the fishing nets of a sailor's ship. Though it hadn't been an actual death, her resurrective powers restored her humanity after an extended period of time. But the world had changed again, and not for the better.
In the absence of the Great Ones, a mad, false god had seized an opportunity for power. Answering the prayers of men and women who wanted more in their lives, this Nameless God granted all that they wished for, only to take it back with compounded interest when the time came for recompense. On the precipice of reaching the modern era, the world began a backwards slide as various rulers had their prayers answered only for all the innovation achieved as a result taken away. At least one small pantheon was murdered by the Nameless God in his pursuit for power and it took their worshippers for his own, and religious wars became commonplace as the world's descent into ruin continued. Some followers of the God would even stave off the inevitable reclamation of their material gains by sending sacrificial offerings by boat off across the sea... always given some noble goal, only for the vessel to be destroyed and its crew claimed by the Nameless God and brought to his domain: an island rooted in an astral plane. And rather than be concerned with Souls or Blood Echoes, the god preferred another, more physical medium for power: Salt. Salt was eternal, and a component of both organic and inorganic material, and through the power of Salt Alkymancy and what he took from his unwitting followers, the Nameless God's power grew.
That all came to an end when it brought the ship holding Chopt to its island. Having been told that a princess had been on the ship to secure a marriage alliance that was the last hope for peace between two kingdoms, she struck out in search for the missing princess only to gradually discover the truth about the island, the Nameless God, and the empty purpose of the ship in the first place. Her persistence proved more than the God had anticipated, and what she wanted most in this world -to be reunited with her family- was something the god neither understood or could offer to her. Seeing her as just a stubborn upstart, the Nameless God never realized that Chopt was the only reason he had been able to come to power in the first place. Not until it was too late.
Chopt cut a bloody, salty swath through the island, making use of the very Salt that the god had built his domain with to restore her power. A critical blow was finally struck when Chopt killed the Salt Alkymancer who had been the very architect of the island, depriving the God of any way of expanding his domain. And shortly thereafter Chopt reached the Still Palace at the very bottom of the island, finally confronting and killing the bottom-feeder of a god in a pitched duel. Without its god or architect, the island was unmade, Chopt returning to the physical world, adrift among a shipwreck in the middle of the ocean.
Lost out at sea and with little hope of being rescued, Chopt began the long, long journey of swimming back to shore. She did not get very far though, for the Nameless God's influence in causing the world to regress caused something nobody could have predicted: a resurgence of the First Flame. But weak and starved of Souls, it might have sputtered back out again if not for the well-meaning mistake of a man named Ludleth who found and chose to link the Flame, believing that would end the crisis. How wrong he was.
The Fire returned, still hungry for more. The reversal of time had caused an awakening within it of the Old One's craving for Souls, and time and space began fracturing once more so the it could appease its overwhelming need for fuel. The northern land of Lothric became a transitory realm, the kingdoms where the Fire had been linked converging there in a way not unsimilar to the Nameless God's island. But it wasn't just the kingdoms that returned; multiple Lords of Cinder were resurrected to help fuel the flame along with Ludleth, and the cycle began once more as Undead struggled to reach the First Flame to become either new Lords of Cinder or Dark. Even those that had previously Hollowed or otherwise failed in their previous attempts to link the Fire weren't exempt, as they too were brought to Lothric as "Unkindled", a subclass of Undead who were immune to Hollowing just to increase the likelihood that someone would provide further fuel for the Fire.
Having refused to link the Fire in both Lordran and Drangleic, Chopt was not exempt from this gathering and awoke in a cemetery that lead to a shrine worryingly similar to the Nexus in design. Meeting with both the resurrected Ludleth, and the shrine's blind Fire Keeper, she was able to get a sense for what happened, and what she'd have to do to have a chance of stopping the cycle once more.
Reaching the First Flame would require a gathering of the resurrected Lords of Cinder either in life or in death to prove the strength of the Undead who could be the next Lord. Ludleth was already accounted for, but the others were off, elsewhere in Lothric. There was Yhorm the Giant, who had unwittingly destroyed his kingdom when he linked the Flame due to his non-human nature. There was Saint Aldrich of the Deep, who in his time had devoured men and gods for power, foreseen the oncoming of the Great Ones, and may have even inspired the Nameless God's own practices. There was Prince Lothric himself, who shared the name of his kingdom and had been groomed all his life to be a Lord of Cinder only to now wish for nothing more than an end of the Flame. And there were the Abyss Watchers, an entire legion of Undead from the kingdom of Farron who had dedicated themselves to fighting the Abyss and regarded Artorias as their founder, even imbibing in his blood to more closely commune with him.
Chopt managed to recover some of her long-thought-lost equipment along the way, even her precious greatsword thanks to Ludleth helping her summon it to her by using the Abyss Watchers' collective Soul. And she needed it all as Lothric proved her greatest challenge yet as Chopt faced not just the Lords of Cinder, but the Church of the Deep who worshiped Aldrich, the dying remnants of the demons born of the Bed of Chaos, and even Gwyn's own estranged firstborn. Even more ominously, two mysterious factions lurked behind the scenes: the Sable Church of Londor, the land of Hollows who strove for their own Lord devoid of a Soul; and the Angels of Lothric, whose followers had started a bloody civil war inside Lothric and were possibly connected to a darklurking entity Chopt had fought while in Drangleic.
It was her expedition into Brume Tower, the palace of the late Old Iron King, that reunited Chopt with her greatsword at long last, but the tower hid far darker things in its walls too: namely a Child of Dark, a fragment of Manus's very Soul given form and driven to avenge their "father"'s defeat. Another two dwelled in the sunken kingdom of Shulva and the frozen kingdom of Eleum Loyce, and as it turned out even Drangleic's own Queen Nashandra was one as well.
Even more shockingly, another trip into the past courtesy of the Ashen Mist Heart (or possibly merely memories of the past, it's complicated) let Chopt meet with Vendrick himself, who imparted a blessing on his and the other three kings' crowns based on his own efforts of ending the Curse. The blessing unfortunately could not remove the Darksign, but it did let the crowns prevent someone from Hollowing so long as they were wearing one of them. Not a cure, but farther than anyone else had ever gotten. Vendrick left Chopt with one last piece of advice before the Heart's power faded: "Seek strength. The rest will follow."
In following Vendrick's path to kinghood, Chopt unlocked the path to yet another Kiln of the First Flame, this one known as the Throne of Want. It was then that Nashandra attacked Chopt, intending to make her "one" with the Dark and become a puppet for something far more sinister than a mere Age of Dark. She made use of powerful curses in an attempt to drain away Chopt's own Soul and render her Hollow, but Chopt put her away easily thanks to the protection of Vendrick's crown. But it wasn't over yet as Aldia emerged again, giving Chopt one last test and battle. Again Chopt won, though Aldia's own experimentations in transcending the curse enabled him to survive the destruction of his physical body. Having finally tested her very strength and seen what she was capable of over, Aldia left Chopt to make her own choice in the face of the Throne. What did she want: just to be another part of the cycle or become something more?
And Chopt chose... to walk away and not take the Throne, just like Vendrick before her. There was no extension of the Age of Fire, there was no "Dark Lord", and no way for anyone else to access the Throne and thus link the Flame. As it turned out, Vendrick had been smarter than he gave himself credit for in refusing to be a part of the cycle. The world needed a natural transition out of the cycle of Fire and Dark, and it was finally ready. All it had ultimately needed was that ambivalent and complete lack of a push, so that humanity could finally grow and develop as they were entitled to. It was the best solution Chopt could see to actually let the world progress to the modern era, and for a time it actually worked. Magic gradually gave way to technology, the convolution of space and time was healed, and talk of the "Age of Fire" slowly but steadily got written off as superstitious legends. It took centuries, but the First Flame was diminished to an insignificant ember. Even the Darksign's faded in both power and appearance, letting Undead finally experience true death so long as they accepted it.
The world was steadily becoming more and more like what Chopt remembered from her history lessons so very long ago. Innovations like modern democracy, industrialization, and harnessing electricity were made, and before she knew it, the world was a scant hundred years from when she had first been drawn into the Hellscape.
And then some idiots had to fuck it all up by trying to commune with eldritch abominations.
It had gotten its start back even before Chopt went to Drangleic; with various secret groups trying to draw power not from Souls, but from the blood of powerful beings. Dragons were a popular choice, and at some point in time one group allegedly used Artorias's own. But others strove for even more exotic sources.
A strange outbreak in the desert city of Loran brought it to ruin, stories spreading of scourge that turned men into mindless, bloodthirsty beasts. A scourge that had its roots in the secretive but prosperous city of Yharnam, well-regarded in medical circles for a healing blood that could cure any illness that was administered by its Healing Church. Suspicious, Chopt decided to pay Yharnam two visits, first a simple scouting run as just another sick person who'd come to the city for the blood ministration, and then a return with her equipment and greatsword to clean house if it were necessary. Unfortunately, she did not get past the first visit.
A preliminary infusion in a small clinic assaulted Chopt with strange visions, and she awoke to find a message left for her in her own handwriting: "Seek Paleblood to complete the Hunt." The city had gone mad, those out in the streets in varying degrees of beasthood, and those inside seemingly oblivious to the chaos. As it unsurprisingly turned out, the Church's healing blood carried its own drawbacks, and overuse would turn humans into monsters quite unlike anything Chopt had encountered yet. To throw off suspicions that they were responsible for this Beastly Scourge, the Healing Church had subsequently instituted periodic Hunts, wherein the "sane" members of the city banded together to root out and kill those that had become beasts. It had worked at the start, but unsurprisingly it was not a sustainable solution. The Old Blood was used to treat the Scourge in its onset, but as the actual cause of it in the first place it was ultimately a cure that worsened the disease. Likewise, hunters would kill beasts, but eventually succumb and become beasts themselves and necessitate others to become hunters in their stead, and year by year Yharnam had descended further into madness. And the night that Chopt found herself trapped in Yharnam without her weapons was the night the city finally cracked.
But Chopt made due. Her initial transfusion had bound her to the "Hunter's Dream", a pocket dimension born of the dreams of Gehrman, the First Hunter, who advised her to travel and find the truth of what was happening. There was also the Plain Doll; an artificial being made by Gehrman who was able to grant new strength to Chopt with the abstract "Blood Echoes" of those she slew, similar to how the Maiden in Black and Emerald Herald had strengthened her with Souls. And without her weapons, Chopt instead took up several of the Hunters' own instead. The Blade of Mercy proved to be her weapon of choice, a bifurcating short sword made of magnetic "siderite" metal, and meant to be used to pre-emptively put down hunters that had gone insane. With the line between hunter and beast gone, it only made sense to use it on everything.
The true scope of the Yharnam crisis was revealed when Chopt traveled to Byrgenwerth College, the forerunners of the Healing Church. The Healing Blood, and the Beastly Scourge as a result, stemmed from entities known as the "Great Ones", entities beyond the mundane existence of humanity and Souls, who brought madness and destruction in their wake when communion was attempted with them. The Old One had been one of them, the earliest to engage with humanity on account of its hunger for Souls, and now, with Yharnam as a focal point, others had been interacting with humanity. Their reasons were all their own, some in fact having the best of intentions. But in practice, nothing good came from any of it. Not for Yharnam, not for Loran, not for the Healing Church or Byrgenwerth, and not for the then-ancient Pthumerians who had been the first to communicate with the Great Ones.
Discovering this had pitted Chopt against Rom, the Vacuous Spider and a human transitioning into becoming a Great One. And with Rom's demise came the blood red Moon, worsening the crisis in Yharnam even further as the School of Mensis, a branch of the Healing Church, was able to finally commune with the half-human Great One Mergo, born of the formless Great One Oeden and the Pthumerian queen named Yharnam for whom the city was named after. Yharnam the city was virtually lost, but nevertheless Chopt did what she could to save what was left of the city and ensure the Beastly Scourge ended then and there. She defeated the Great Ones Ebrietas, the source of the Healing Blood; the Orphan of Kos, another half-human Great One who maintained a "Hunter's Nightmare" Dream dimension to torture the minds of the sleeping and dead hunters; and Mergo's own Wet Nurse, who had maintained another Dream dimension to allow Mergo to survive. Deprived of its protective Dream, the in-reality stillborn Mergo died. The Hunt was over, and Gehrman offered to free Chopt from it once and for all.
But Chopt refused to leave just yet. The blood red Moon remained, and more than simply lingering, was now in the Hunter's Dream as well, for the Dream was Gehrman's but was maintained by yet another Great One. Gehrman took Chopt's refusal as a challenge and attacked, but Chopt ultimately proved too much for him. Gehrman died, finally freed from the Dream at long last... and in killing him Chopt earned the ire and attention of the Moon Presence; the Great One who had made Gehrman's Dream into what it was and now intended to use Chopt as a replacement. But Chopt's battles had heightened her awareness and existence such that she was able to match the Moon Presence as well, killing it and freeing humanity from the influence of all the Great Ones.
... Unfortunately for her, the heightened existence came with a steep, terrifying cost, causing Chopt to be transformed into a squid-like being, a new Great One. Virtually helpless in this new state, Chopt was tended to by the Plain Doll in the final moments of the Hunter's Dream before returning to the material world, waking up naked to find herself in the fishing nets of a sailor's ship. Though it hadn't been an actual death, her resurrective powers restored her humanity after an extended period of time. But the world had changed again, and not for the better.
In the absence of the Great Ones, a mad, false god had seized an opportunity for power. Answering the prayers of men and women who wanted more in their lives, this Nameless God granted all that they wished for, only to take it back with compounded interest when the time came for recompense. On the precipice of reaching the modern era, the world began a backwards slide as various rulers had their prayers answered only for all the innovation achieved as a result taken away. At least one small pantheon was murdered by the Nameless God in his pursuit for power and it took their worshippers for his own, and religious wars became commonplace as the world's descent into ruin continued. Some followers of the God would even stave off the inevitable reclamation of their material gains by sending sacrificial offerings by boat off across the sea... always given some noble goal, only for the vessel to be destroyed and its crew claimed by the Nameless God and brought to his domain: an island rooted in an astral plane. And rather than be concerned with Souls or Blood Echoes, the god preferred another, more physical medium for power: Salt. Salt was eternal, and a component of both organic and inorganic material, and through the power of Salt Alkymancy and what he took from his unwitting followers, the Nameless God's power grew.
That all came to an end when it brought the ship holding Chopt to its island. Having been told that a princess had been on the ship to secure a marriage alliance that was the last hope for peace between two kingdoms, she struck out in search for the missing princess only to gradually discover the truth about the island, the Nameless God, and the empty purpose of the ship in the first place. Her persistence proved more than the God had anticipated, and what she wanted most in this world -to be reunited with her family- was something the god neither understood or could offer to her. Seeing her as just a stubborn upstart, the Nameless God never realized that Chopt was the only reason he had been able to come to power in the first place. Not until it was too late.
Chopt cut a bloody, salty swath through the island, making use of the very Salt that the god had built his domain with to restore her power. A critical blow was finally struck when Chopt killed the Salt Alkymancer who had been the very architect of the island, depriving the God of any way of expanding his domain. And shortly thereafter Chopt reached the Still Palace at the very bottom of the island, finally confronting and killing the bottom-feeder of a god in a pitched duel. Without its god or architect, the island was unmade, Chopt returning to the physical world, adrift among a shipwreck in the middle of the ocean.
Lost out at sea and with little hope of being rescued, Chopt began the long, long journey of swimming back to shore. She did not get very far though, for the Nameless God's influence in causing the world to regress caused something nobody could have predicted: a resurgence of the First Flame. But weak and starved of Souls, it might have sputtered back out again if not for the well-meaning mistake of a man named Ludleth who found and chose to link the Flame, believing that would end the crisis. How wrong he was.
The Fire returned, still hungry for more. The reversal of time had caused an awakening within it of the Old One's craving for Souls, and time and space began fracturing once more so the it could appease its overwhelming need for fuel. The northern land of Lothric became a transitory realm, the kingdoms where the Fire had been linked converging there in a way not unsimilar to the Nameless God's island. But it wasn't just the kingdoms that returned; multiple Lords of Cinder were resurrected to help fuel the flame along with Ludleth, and the cycle began once more as Undead struggled to reach the First Flame to become either new Lords of Cinder or Dark. Even those that had previously Hollowed or otherwise failed in their previous attempts to link the Fire weren't exempt, as they too were brought to Lothric as "Unkindled", a subclass of Undead who were immune to Hollowing just to increase the likelihood that someone would provide further fuel for the Fire.
Having refused to link the Fire in both Lordran and Drangleic, Chopt was not exempt from this gathering and awoke in a cemetery that lead to a shrine worryingly similar to the Nexus in design. Meeting with both the resurrected Ludleth, and the shrine's blind Fire Keeper, she was able to get a sense for what happened, and what she'd have to do to have a chance of stopping the cycle once more.
Reaching the First Flame would require a gathering of the resurrected Lords of Cinder either in life or in death to prove the strength of the Undead who could be the next Lord. Ludleth was already accounted for, but the others were off, elsewhere in Lothric. There was Yhorm the Giant, who had unwittingly destroyed his kingdom when he linked the Flame due to his non-human nature. There was Saint Aldrich of the Deep, who in his time had devoured men and gods for power, foreseen the oncoming of the Great Ones, and may have even inspired the Nameless God's own practices. There was Prince Lothric himself, who shared the name of his kingdom and had been groomed all his life to be a Lord of Cinder only to now wish for nothing more than an end of the Flame. And there were the Abyss Watchers, an entire legion of Undead from the kingdom of Farron who had dedicated themselves to fighting the Abyss and regarded Artorias as their founder, even imbibing in his blood to more closely commune with him.
Chopt managed to recover some of her long-thought-lost equipment along the way, even her precious greatsword thanks to Ludleth helping her summon it to her by using the Abyss Watchers' collective Soul. And she needed it all as Lothric proved her greatest challenge yet as Chopt faced not just the Lords of Cinder, but the Church of the Deep who worshiped Aldrich, the dying remnants of the demons born of the Bed of Chaos, and even Gwyn's own estranged firstborn. Even more ominously, two mysterious factions lurked behind the scenes: the Sable Church of Londor, the land of Hollows who strove for their own Lord devoid of a Soul; and the Angels of Lothric, whose followers had started a bloody civil war inside Lothric and were possibly connected to a darklurking entity Chopt had fought while in Drangleic.
But nothing compared to the baffling experience of finding an exact replica of the cemetery and shrine where Chopt had started her adventure in Lothric, subsumed in darkness like that of the Abyss's. Nearly devoid of life, she nevertheless found the Fire Keeper of the shrine, dead and holding eyes in her hands. In the "normal" shrine, Ludleth revealed that they were the eyes of the very first Fire Keeper, from the time just before and then after Gwyn had linked the Fire.
And the eyes held what some considered the most damning and horrifying of images, but what Chopt saw as her last hope of fixing the First Flame problem: visions of the the end of the original Age of Fire, and the start of the original Age of Dark. Encouraged by Ludleth to follow her own path through to the end, Chopt gave them to the Fire Keeper, exposing the unsuspecting woman to the horrible truth of the Cycle and the First Flame in a way that words never could.
But what words could do... was reassure her. Even in the visions of Dark, the Fire Keeper still saw faint lights in the distance, and Chopt told her of the world that had been trying to come into existence for millennia, the world she'd been trying to fight through to so she could reunite with her family. And the Fire Keeper, terrified but somehow enamored by the darkness she saw, made a pact with Chopt: trained in the ways of maintaining and sustaining the First Flame, the Keeper would instead decisively snuff it out once the path to it was cleared. Until then, no one was the wiser, save for Ludleth who seemed content in letting his grand mistake be remedied the only way that was left to the world.
After defeating both Prince Lothric and his older brother Lorian, the path to the new Kiln of the First Flame was opened. But the First Flame had one last test left for its next alleged Lord of Cinder... or perhaps it remembered the crisis in Boletaria and the time-traveling girl who had made the Old One lower its guard and ultimately bring about its destruction. What met Chopt was not another Lord of Cinder, but all of them merged into a single, blazing figure: the "Soul of Cinder". With the power of not just the Lords that she had previously fought, but every Lord, it attacked her with a vast, devastating arsenal of weapons and spells and even channeled the full extent of Gwyn's power when he had been in his prime.
But Chopt did not surrender. She hadn't in Boletaria, nor in Lordran, Drangleic, Yharnam, or the Nameless God's island. And while the Soul of Cinder fought with the power of those that had linked the Flame, Chopt fought with the memories and lessons learned across every day of her long, long life. Every triumph, every death, every monster slain and innocent life lost by a cruel twist of fate, and that was power the Soul of Cinder could not hope to match. She overwhelmed and destroyed it with her greatsword, and in the aftermath summoned forth the Fire Keeper to end the First Flame itself. This went beyond even walking away from it in Drangleic; this was having someone who knew how to outright end it kill the First Flame.
Light fast faded away, leaving Chopt and the Keeper in absolute darkness. A final, decisive Age of Dark had finally come, the Furtive Pygmy's descendants at least free of the First Flame and the Undead Curse. There would still be lights, but they would be born of humanity's own efforts; light born from those of the Dark Soul. And Chopt knew it could be done, because it'd been done once before.
Though at the same time... Chopt knew that to safeguard this new, second attempt at a true Age of Dark, she would inevitably have to uncover the truth behind both the Angels and the Sable Church. But that's a chapter not yet written, and DLC not yet released.