"You keep coming back," the knight said, his voice Marco's own, but warped. "But you never stay. You finish. You find the 'truth.' And then you delete the save. You mod. You break the world to find a new feeling. Do you think the worlds don't feel it? The jagged tear when you force a debug menu? The scream of a texture you've displaced?"

"You wanted the Scholar," the knight continued, standing up. "You wanted the sin. Here it is. The sin isn't Gwyn's fear of dark. It isn't Aldia's curiosity. It's yours . The sin of the player who will not let a world end. Who digs through the code like a grave robber."

Marco tried to move his controller. His character was frozen.

The screen went white. When his vision returned, he was standing in the Firelink Shrine of the first Dark Souls . But it was decayed, buried under grey ash. A figure sat by the bonfire—not the Crestfallen Warrior, but a knight in armor Marco recognized. It was his own main character from Dark Souls 3 . The armor was cracked. The helmet was off. The face underneath was Marco's own, but older, eyes hollow and wet.

The ogre dissolved into a cloud of silver dust. The dust coalesced into a new item: . The description read: Soul of one who quit here, forever. Use to acquire 0 souls and a single memory.