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Those who see souls. There are few of them, and on the square they are known by name. A Keeper does not kill an infected beast — he wears it down in battle and gives back the stolen soul.

Lumi, Flora, Garr and Vale — four voices of the Source itself. They arrive not by choice but by the story: light, living roots, a stone hum, and a weeping that weakens the strongest.

Malkar tears souls out of the living, and bodies without souls become monsters. The Blight keeps the memories of the souls it swallowed — and so remembers more than anyone alive.

A standing company for the long haul: shared weekly tasks, a treasury and a vault of items for everyone. One Keeper is a sorrow; an Order of Keepers is a score in your favour.

The only place where a light still burns. From here they leave for the lands and here they return: the shop, the forge, the jeweller, the mail, the order board and the hall of Orders.

The first land. The water in the brook is black as pitch, and the forest is silent. Here a Keeper wakes, meets Lumi for the first time, and gives a soul back for the first time.

The trees repeat the voices of the missing. The wood will let nobody go while the Stag of a Thousand Eyes lives, and the ruined Sanctuary of the Source keeps silent — for now.

People work the fields and make no sound: the Faceless Reaper stole their voices and their names. He waits by the dead mill.

The Blight has woken the rocks themselves, and the stone underfoot is warm. Deep in the rift an ancient warden sleeps, and inside him an Echo of the mountains is locked.

The surf casts onto the rocks what should have drowned. The land of those who have already walked half the road.

The bottom of the old world — the funnel the Blight comes out of. Nobody comes here to learn — you come with a full relic build and a full party.

Beyond the Heart's funnel the water stands still. Nobody dies here — they fall asleep.

The floor of a departed sea: salt, a sunken temple, whale bones and a lighthouse that shines towards the bottom. The first Reach south of the Swamp of the Sleepers.

Ice, barrows and ships frozen in place. The Blight freezes here as badly as people do — it just does not die of it.

A land that burned so long that ash became soil. Glass instead of sand, masks instead of faces, and the forge in which the world was made.

A road above the clouds: hanging gardens, storm spires, a monastery where the bells ring by themselves, and the shards of a fallen moon.

Beneath the world the Blight grows like mycelium: quietly and everywhere at once. Grottoes, mines, the roots of the world and a lake where no one sees.

They fought here so long that the land learned to fight on its own. Rusted trenches, a crimson forest, an unconquered fortress and a plague town.

This is no longer a land — it is its reflection. A mirror forest, an inverted chapel, a garden of bones and the Throne from which the Blight rules the world.

The road from waking by the dead brook to the sleeping Titan of the Rift.

The Titan sleeps, but his song is left with no owner. Five lands hold one note each.

The Blight does not flow into the funnel — it flows OUT of it. Beyond the stone there is only the bottom.

Beyond the Sinkhole nobody fights — they sleep. People lay down to rest by the causeway and never got up, and the Mother of Nightmares keeps rocking them.

The Cradle fell silent, but the thread of Blight did not snap — it runs south, through seven Reaches, to the Throne itself. At every campfire wait those who still hold the land. Take their errands, fell the pack leaders and the lord — and the land will be people's again.

The first voice a Keeper hears, and the only one who explains the world to him.

The Echo of the Whispering Woods: her roots heal the party, and her voice is heard at the Sanctuary of the Source.

For a thousand years he slept in the warden’s stone. His hum deafens enemies, and his back holds any blow.

Her weeping weakens the strongest — and in her voice the world asks for mercy before the descent.

The cause of everything that roams the lands: he tears souls out of the living, and bodies without souls become monsters.

The Void speaks for the first time — and does not speak as an enemy: it is as much a victim of the funnel, eaten out to the bottom.

Once people threw coins into it and made wishes. Now the people are silent and the water is bitter.

Strikes them all at once. Sturdier in a fight and steadier in a trade — he is where people start who want to understand the game rather than the tables.

Moves faster than anyone and hits a single target three times as hard, and her strike heals the party. Fragile: she pays health for speed.

Store companions are creatures of their own, with mechanics of their own. Each has its own body, move and a second mechanic, while its strength is fair — that of a story companion: Flora, Garr or Vale. Victory cannot be bought.

The first lord of the game and the first step in the chain of chapter 1. While he lives the wood keeps silent; with his fall the bear’s soul goes free, and the Keeper takes his first named trophy.

Not a story lord but a hunt: he stands aside from the chain, waits for his level, and hands over the rusted diadem of a king who rules nothing but black water.

He sits at the end of the game’s first labyrinth and stands at the gate of the Spiral’s first layer. Fast and soft on defence — he teaches that speed decides no less than a health pool.

While the Stag lives, the Whispering Woods let nobody go. His fall gives Flora back to the world — the first time a Keeper’s victory turns into a new voice in the party.

All the grief of the Whispering Woods sleeps in her tear. On the tiers of the Spiral she stands as lord of the forest layer; in the world she waits in the Weeping Grove for level ten.

He stole the voices and names of the dwellers of the Fields. Beating him does not bring back the dead — it brings back memory: people begin to recall what they were called.

He stands on the Rotten Field, holds the Fields layer on the tiers of the Spiral, and waits at the end of the mill cellars — the game’s second labyrinth, which opens after the Reaper falls.

His scythe is a blade of everlasting flame that reaps both the living and the memory of them. The hunt for him opens around level fourteen, on a scorched boundary of the Fields.

An ancient warden the Blight woke with rage, and inside him the Echo of the mountains is locked. The Titan is not killed but put to sleep: with that the first chapter ends and the second begins.

His core is a beating crystal heart of the rift that does not go out even in the dark. The same Tyrant waits at the end of the third labyrinth and holds the rift layer on the tiers of the Spiral.

The song of the sleeping Titan, having found itself an old body. It strikes with a voice rather than a fist, and grows with the Keeper only to the top of the chapter’s corridor — no higher, so that someone stuck still has room to grow.

He stands by the Salt Lighthouse and locks the whole rest of the game behind him: the road into the Heart of the Blight opens only to a fallen Tide Lord. His crown is a ring of wet salt: the sea remembers everyone left in it.

The game’s fourth labyrinth is a ring of halls with a dead-end lair, and in that dead end the Choir sings. You hold its shell to your ear to hear those the crypt would not release.

The first of the three lords of the Heart and the mildest of them — mild by endgame standards: he heals from his own bites, and his fang later drains strength from whoever the Keeper strikes.

He guards the barrow under which the names of earlier Keepers lie. Black incense smoulders in his censer, and the smoke remembers every field it mowed down.

He holds the gate with a shield, and with the same stubborn slab he holds a blow when he becomes the Keeper’s armour. He also stands as lord of the last layer of the Endless Spiral — the one only an endgame build ever reaches.

Neither beast nor god: a steady beating under the skin of the world, out of which the Blight comes like sweat. It knows the Keeper by name and waits for him — and after the fight the world demands a choice, and that choice stays as a seal in your palm.

She does not steal souls the way Malkar does — she rocks them to sleep. A cloud of her moths lulls the party, and whoever sat down by the causeway never got up. She lives in the Cradle at the bottom of the mire, beyond the Sinkhole of the Heart.

Salt keeps everything that drowned, and the Mother of Salt keeps the salt. Because of her the marsh water turned bitter and the crabs put on armour of salt.

In the Sunken Temple the tide reads the prayers, and the Bishop of the Abyss serves them. His flock is ink priests and drowned novices, and he poisons no worse than they do.

The sea left and abandoned its dead, and the Whalebone Lich raised them. Fragile, like everything in the Coral Graveyard — but he hits hard.

The light of the Lighthouse of the Drowned leads to the bottom, and it burns for the Devourer of Light. The last lord of the Salt Reaches: beyond him the ice of the North begins.

On Rimefrost Pass the banners froze before they fell. The Lord of the Pass stands on the road north — heavy and patient, like the ice itself.

The Icewood bears his name: the trees there ring like glass, and the cold comes from him, not from the sky.

The dead in the Barrows are silent — and they listen to him. The Silent God is thick and slow, like barrow stone, and the fight with him is a war of attrition.

In the Frozen Harbor the ships froze halfway home, and the Queen of Ice holds them there. The last mistress of the Northern Reach: fell her, and spring will find its way back.

Here ash falls instead of snow. They say the King of Ash remembers when this country was green — and hates it for that.

Beneath the Glass Dunes, in the Worm's Lair, the Worm of the Red Sun stirs. The sand above him cuts, and the scorpions and serpents of the dunes sting for him.

The faces left, the masks stayed. The Lord of a Thousand Masks waits in the Hall of Masks, followed by the Faceless Priest and the Stone Mask Guardian.

In the Forge of the First burns the fire that forged the world, and the First Smith stands at the furnace. The last lord of the Ashlands: iron, lava and a blow as heavy as a hammer.

The Hanging Gardens grow above the clouds, and the Mother Tree of the Gardens holds them. She takes a blow like an old tree, and the vine serpents strangle for her.

On the Isle of Storm Spires lightning strikes twice — and the second time it is him. The Storm Dragon is as fast as the storm itself.

The bells of the Cloud Monastery ring by themselves, and the Celestial Ox walks to their sound — as sturdy as the monastery wall.

The moon cracked — and fell here. What is left of it rules the Shards as their mistress. The last mistress of the Sky Reach: fragile, but she hits hard.

In the Fungal Grottoes the light grows out of the ground, and the ground out of her mycelium. The Queen of the Mycelium poisons, like everything that grows around her.

In the Crystal Mines the Blight has grown into the stone, and the heart of that growth beats deep in the adit. Crystal armour and the patience of stone.

The roots of the world lead down — to it. The World Root is thick and unmoving, and the fight with it is a war of attrition.

No one sees here — and everyone hears. The Lord of the Blind Depths sits deeper than anyone; fell him, and the Underdeep will breathe for the first time in ages.

The war is over, the soldiers stayed — and the Iron General commands them. Rusted steel takes the blow, and his pack leaders still give his orders.

The leaves of the Crimson Forest are red, and not from autumn. The Crimson Queen rules it from her lair, and the wolves and the ivy drink life for her.

The defenders of the Fortress of the Fallen never surrendered — and the King of the Fallen did not surrender with them. Armour, chains and cursed arrows are all that is left of the garrison.

In Plague Town the doors are boarded up from inside, and everything behind them is his brood. The Father of Plague poisons, like almost every creature of his town. The last lord of the Blood Marches.

In the Mirror Forest reflections live a life of their own, and it is better not to look them in the eye: your own reflection is there. The Reflected Keeper waits in the Dark Mirror and strikes first.

In the Chapel of the Inverted prayers sound backwards — in his voice. The Voice of the Underside is as fragile as stained glass, but it burns.

White flowers grow only on bones, and this garden has a single gardener. The Gardener of Death is followed by the Bride of the Garden and the Bone Giant.

From here the Blight rules the world, and he rules the Blight. The Blight Lord is the end of the thread that runs from the Cradle through seven Reaches: fell him, and the thread will snap.

Drops jewellery and relics — the fine loot of the chasms, which almost nobody else gives.

Pays gold more generously than anyone, and of the loot it hands over weapons more often than anything else.

Showers you with shards and emblems, and its loot is armour and shields.

The claw of the first beast to fall by your hand — it still holds the heat of its rage.

The rusted diadem of a king who rules nothing but black water.

A pulsing core of stolen souls — it beats even torn out.

The Stag’s eye sees through the haze — nothing escapes its gaze.

A frozen tear of the grove; all the sorrow of the Whispering Wood sleeps in it.

A scrap of the shroud of the Reaper who mowed the voices of the Fields — now it stays silent beside you.

A blade of everlasting flame — it reaps the living and the memory of them alike.

The Titan’s crystal armour — its cracks glow with the Source.

The pulsing crystal heart of the rift — it does not go out even in the dark.

A steady low hum in your palm. While you hold it, the Titan’s song sings for you.

A ring of wet salt at the throat — the sea remembers everyone it kept.

Hold it to your ear and you will hear those the crypt never let go, singing.

A tooth an arm’s length long. It still drinks — but now it drinks strength out of those you strike.

Black incense smoulders inside it. The smoke remembers every field it mowed down.

A slab bearing the palm of the Void: it takes a blow as stubbornly as it held the gate.

A warm knot that breathes in time with you. The world breathed it in once — now you breathe it out.

A moth’s feeler, warm and alive. While it hangs at your neck, sleep cannot take you — not in battle, not by the causeway.

To breathe out for the world: close the first breath and quench the Source for good.

Not to quench it but to take it by the hand: the Blight becomes the Keeper’s weapon.

To share the first breath among all: a little Blight for everyone, so that nobody gets all of it.