Dark Souls III

Dark Souls III takes place in the kingdom of Lothric. The player must avert the apocalypse born of the conflict between the Age of Fire and the previous bearers of the Darksign. To do so, the player has to confront the Lords of Cinder — the heroes who once linked the fire.

After countless heroes have linked the flame, the fire today has grown extremely faint. The appointed Lord of Cinder knows all too well that linking the fire is a road of no return, and refuses to do it. With no suitable candidate to be found, the only option left is to rouse the former Lords of Cinder from their graves and send them to fulfill the duty once more. But three of these Lords also refuse to carry out their charge.

The Lords Who Refuse to Link the Fire

The Abyss Watchers, corrupted by long exposure to the power of the Abyss, have descended into madness. They endlessly slaughter one another, with no thought to spare for the fire. Aldrich, having foreseen the age of the deep sea that would follow the flame's fading, abandoned the linking in despair and devoured countless lives — including one of the gods of the first age — becoming a mass of rot coiled inside the old royal city, awaiting the coming of the deep. Yhorm the Giant, having failed to protect his own people from the flame's harm and watched his capital fall to ruin, sank into guilt and remorse, and so refuses to act at all.

The Burden of Linking the Fire

In the end, the task of linking the fire falls to the Ashen One — the player.

Lords mired in despair aren't going to return to their thrones just because you ask nicely. To claim their power, the player must fight through wave after wave of guardians, kill them, and retrieve what remains of their cinders. Finally, when the cinders of all five Lords have been returned to their thrones at Firelink Shrine, the Ashen One absorbs their combined power.

Then the Ashen One journeys to the Kiln of the First Flame — the place where the First Flame burns — and after defeating the Soul of Cinder standing guard there, gains power enough to link the fire. Depending on your choices, the story branches into four endings: linking the fire, letting it fade, usurping it, or the secret ending.

Perhaps the Age of Fire is finally coming to an end.

The original creator of this video on Bilibili has granted permission.