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unwaveringsThere was an attempt to keep this short, but it still ended up longer than expected — because of the lack of information on the game anywhere, I felt it was necessary to keep a lot of the information in. And a (wonderful, beautiful, fantastic—) friend trimmed and rewrote it to help out. Also, only some of the terms are localized terms, as we've gotten a few from trailers. Most, however, are their original Japanese terms.
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Sorey is a human boy with the unique ability to see the Seraphim - beings that reside with him in the village of Izuchi. One day, he explores nearby ruins with his best friend, Mikleo, where they find the artifacts of a Shepherd and come across a woman by the name of Alisha, whom they escort back to Izuchi. That same night, the Hellion Lunarre attacks and eats the Seraph Maisen.
Alisha informs Sorey of a ceremony in Lady Lake - he who pulls the sword out of its pedestal becomes the Shepherd - before embarking on the return journey to her home in the same city. However, Sorey suspects Lunarre may have been targeting Alisha and grows uneasy, then sets out in the middle of the night after her. At the village entrance, Mikleo intercepts Sorey and joins him.
Sorey and Mikleo head to the capital city of Lady Lake, passing a merchant’s guild on the way inside. After their arrival, they learn about the serious threat of malevolence behind many people’s transformation into Hellions - beings born from humans or Seraphim who’ve become warped as a result of succumbing to “impurity.” While Hellions look normal to humans, Sorey and the Seraphim see them for the monsters they truly are; however, due to their deceptive appearance, the latter are able to engage them before the public eye.
On arriving to Alisha’s house, Sorey and Mikleo have a run-in with Lunarre. Their subsequent battle is interrupted by a group of assassins, whose original task had been to murder Alisha; they abandon the job and take their leave. Concerned by this discovery, Sorey is determined to warn Alisha of the dangers surrounding her and attempt to meet her at the ceremony. But the building is too crowded for them to enter, and they’re stopped at the back by security. By presenting the knife Alisha had left behind in Izuchi, Sorey is let in and finally meets Alisha, who reveals her dangerous situation to be a fairly common occurrence but still appreciates their gesture.
The ceremony begins, and Sorey and Mikleo bear witness to the awakening of the Seraph to whom the occasion is dedicated – Lailah, known as the Lady of the Lake. Before long, a few people in the audience are overcome with malevolence and transform into Hellions. Pressed by the circumstance, Sorey pulls the sword out of its pedestal, thereby becoming the Shepherd and acquiring the power to purify Hellions and therefore restore them to their original being; however, he also becomes a vessel to Lailah (wherein Lailah, in the form of a ball of light, can enter his body as she pleases) and bound to a “lonely” task. Because Sorey’s dream is to see the world and create one where Seraphim and humans can live alongside each other, he embraces the role of the Shepherd. With his newfound powers, he purifies the Hellions in the ceremony room. Due to Lailah’s presence being treated as a foreign agent, Sorey’s body attempts to reject her and suffers a fever that knocks him out for three days.
When he awakens at last, Sorey takes a walk and realizes that, as the Shepherd, he can sense the malevolence around the city much more clearly than before. Lailah informs him and Mikleo of the Shepherd’s duties – to quell the source of Hellions and malevolence, the Lord of Calamity. She wants him to see the world and its state and then decide on his answer on his own, all while she guides him.
On returning to the inn, they find a letter and items, one of which is a Shepherd’s garment that Sorey from then on dons, from Alisha and go to thank her. Sorey attempts to introduce Alisha to Mikleo and Lailah, and they discover that she can hear them should Sorey cut off his senses (i.e., shut his eyes, cover his ears, stop breathing). Such is the power granted to the Shepherd.
Wandering the city, the party head inside the waterways to save a missing person from Hellions. Sorey offends Mikleo by asking him to stand back, because only Sorey and Lailah are able to fight and purify Hellions. While Mikleo is willing to become Lailah’s subordinate and receive the power to purify Hellions as well, Sorey does not wish this from his friend and a fight ensues, culminating in Mikleo’s sore departure. Sorey and Lailah head deeper inside to find the ruins of an altar and a “Memory of the Earth” jewel, although the former is unable to see what it can show him for the time being. On the way out, he learns about Armitization – the act of fusing with a Seraph, which grants him their elemental power and the usage of a special weapon called Shinki.
Sorey and Lailah ask Alisha about finding a Lord of the Land Seraph, a vessel, and someone who can help with providing enshrinement and worship for the Lord of the Land: The city requires these in order to fully purify the malevolence blanketing it. Alisha recommends the clergyman Bruno, who is unfortunately out of the city. Before leaving for a nearby area whose pure water they can use as a vessel, Sorey takes Alisha on as his disciple in the same way that Lailah could have taken Mikleo as her subordinate.
In the ruins where the pure water lies, Sorey, Lailah, and Alisha come across a bow Shinki of the water element. Sorey immediately banishes the thought of using it for fear of involving Mikleo, who is a water Seraph capable of using it. Alisha questions why Sorey would deny Mikleo what he has allowed her, and he responds that her dream to help her beloved city demanded the process, whereas Mikleo’s does not.
They move on, but are attacked by Hellions and saved by Mikleo. An argument ensues, and Sorey realizes that Mikleo is acting on what he truly desires, and that forming a contract with Lailah is also a step in his dream. Mikleo becomes Lailah’s subordinate, and he and Sorey utilize their Armitization to purify the Hellion. Due to this increase in power that Sorey gains, Alisha becomes able to both hear and see the Seraphim. Following this, they move on to the waterfall and obtain the pure water.
The Memory of the Earth Sorey had been holding onto shines, and the party is shown a vision of a man in his study with a woman and her baby watching as he writes a book. He is the author of the Celestial Record that details the Seraphim and Shepherds of the past. Lailah tells Sorey that they can see more visions like this if they acquire more Memories of the Earth, to which Sorey is overcome with excitement before collapsing. Like Lailah, Mikleo’s coming under Sorey’s power caused his body to react again, and he’s carried back to the city, where he recovers within a day.
Upon awaking, Sorey sets out to continue preparations for the Lord of the Land. They meet Bruno and run off to find a Seraph to become Lady Lake’s Lord of the Land. Along their journey, they come upon a bridge that had been destroyed by heavy rainfall – or so a soldier reports, but Sorey realizes that the true culprit is the serpent-like Hellion that emerges from the water. Upon defeat, the Hellion reverts back to its original form of a Seraph. (When Seraphim become Hellion, they’re powerful enough to be seen by humans, and those that have fully transformed are known as dragons.) The Seraph Uno agrees to become Lady Lake’s Lord of the Land, and protection is restored to the capital city.
Suddenly, a mysterious man emerges and hands Sorey a dinner invitation from Highland Kingdom’s Ministar Baltro. Sorey accepts and learns of how truly corrupt the authorities are there as they attempt to bribe him onto their side. Alisha bursts in and the party decides to escape when the assassin’s guild arrives, whom they convince not to kill the authorities before escaping through the underground waterways.
Alisha decides to go to the diseased city of Marlind, necessitating the party to fix the broken bridge they must cross to get there. They head to the nearby mountain to find an Earth Seraph with the power to fix the bridge and meet Zaveid, who takes it upon himself to kill a Hellion rather than let Sorey purify it, greatly upsetting the latter. The party travel farther up the mountain and encounter their first real dragon, as well as an Earth Seraph named Edna. Knowing they cannot win, the party and Edna flee. They learn afterward that the dragon is Edna’s brother. Convinced to travel the world in hopes of finding a way to save him, Edna becomes one of Lailah’s subordinates.
After fixing the bridge, the party enter Marlind and work toward purification to weaken the drake, a lesser dragon, residing in the town. With the help of a creature known as a Normin, they purify the drake and ask if the Seraph will become the Lord of the Land for Marlind; however, some malevolence still lurks in the area, and they leave to dispel the source while entrusting the town to a mercenary group led by Lucas. The party defeats the responsible monster, then learn that Sorey is all but blind in one eye as a result of Alisha being his disciple. Guilty and forced by other responsibilities, Alisha leaves the party once they return to Marlind.
A war is brewing, and the party evacuate the townsmen. A soldier confronts them, saying that Alisha has been accused of conspiring against Highland; she will be executed if Sorey does not participate in the war with his power as the Shepherd. The Shepherd is obligated to absolute neutrality and therefore must not take a side in wars. But because Alisha’s life hangs in the balance, Sorey is forced to head into the battlegrounds, where he scares the enemy soldiers off rather than killing them when a surge of malevolence takes over, signifying the Lord of Calamity’s arrival. Outmatched, Sorey is abandoned by the Lord of Calamity and assaulted by soldiers overcome with malevolence. A member of the assassin’s guild rescues him and they fall from a cliff during their escape.
They wake up in a forest. The assassin, Rose, brings Sorey to her hideout, where he meets the rest of the guild. Sorey’s jammed ability to sense the Seraphim during the war returns to him, after which he learns that he’d momentarily lost the ability due to the drastic difference in power between him and the Lord of Calamity. He meets the Wind Seraph Dezel, who seems to be following Rose.
The party explores the ruins connected to the hideout with Rose and Dezel. There, Rose becomes one of Sorey’s disciples despite her initial inability to admit that the Seraphim exist, and Dezel becomes a subordinate of Lailah. After Sorey’s defeat at the hands of the Lord of Calamity, it becomes clear that Sorey needs a human to remain with him, having been left alone when he couldn’t sense the Seraphim, and the role falls to Rose, who already possesses a higher affinity toward sensing the Seraphim than Alisha. Upon becoming Sorey’s disciple, she, too, gains the power of Armitization. The party then finishes exploring the ruins and finds out that Sorey must undergo trials as the Shepherd across the world.
Arriving at Laston Bell, the party lies their way in past the soldier Sergei: The Kingdom of Lowlance doesn’t have the best view of the Shepherd. Sergei eventually confronts them, knowing that Sorey is the Shepherd, and desires his help. Relations between the knights and the church have been poor, and the knights’ leader and other knights have gone missing.
They head to Pendragon, where they learn the knights are looking for the Pope. Shortly thereafter, it's revealed that the assassin’s guild Rose is a part of used to be a guild of mercenaries; their purpose changed after they were betrayed by the Lowlance Empire. The party follows Rose after she leaves through the back door, fearing she might have left to kill someone. While that was not the case, they do learn that Rose has been asked to assassinate one of the authorities who caused the war; however, she is the not the type of person to kill blindly and instead wishes to judge the target beforehand.
At the church sanctuary, the party meets a priest, who tells them that Maoteras, a Seraph, provides protection for the Greenwood continent. The priest shows them a stone that contains the history of the Shepherd, although they are unable to read it. The Seraphim disappear and the priest turns to stone, and Cardinal Photon enters. Obsessed with protecting Lowlance, she speaks to Sorey, and when the situation seems dire, Mikleo is able to appear and save them.
After their escape, Rose and her guild discover that the Pope might be in Godojin. There, they realize that the village elder is in the fact Pope himself and that he fled from his duties and took up selling fake elixirs to bring the town much needed profit. He is capable of translating the stone with the Shepherd’s history and, luckily, has also memorized it, and informs Sorey that he must travel to four temples that each represent an element in order to advance as the Shepherd.
The party make their way through the Fire Temple Igraine. Sorey is commanded to either burn his own face or that of a Fire Seraph with a flaming sword in order to form a contract with the flames. He hesitates, nearly burning himself, before Lailah stops him. They fuse and finish off the boss, learning afterward that the choice with the flaming sword was also a test, which Sorey passed. Sorey also acquires knowledge of the two ways through which a Seraph is born – by birth or by transformation.
While the Lord of Calamity watches from afar, the party returns to the knights and comes across a medusa at the end of the church sanctuary. She is Photon, warped by the malevolence, and she has turned people into the stone statutes around them. Dezel steps forward to take the lead in battle, revealing that he is blind and therefore unaffected by Photon’s gaze. Despite Sorey’s aversion to killing, the party has no choice but to put down Photon, who is beyond the salvation of purification. He attempts to take responsibility by being the one to deal the finishing blow, but Rose beats him to the punch and states that it is her job to kill while he lets live.
Back outside, Sorey meets a man named Meyvin and learns a little more about Maoteras. They arrive to the conclusion that the Age of Calamity must have begun when Maoteras’ protection disappeared from the land, and so they set out to seek it within one of the elemental temples, the next of which they visit is the Earth Temple Morgause, where they purify a minotaurus Hellion while Edna and Sorey gain more power in their Armitized form.
At the Water Temple Le Fey, the party stumble across various diary entries from a previous Shepherd, detailing the beginning of his journey to the moment he became overcome with an obsessive need for power and ultimately became a Hellion. They confront this Hellion at the end of the dungeon and defeat him as he cries out for his sword to be returned to him. Sorey is offered this very sword that can cut anything, but refuses and passes the trial of heart.
Outside of the Wind Temple Guinevere, the party has a scuffle with Zaveid before entering. They then make their way through the tower, save a girl at the top, and finish the trial.
They head back to Pendragon, where they fight with Zaveid again. He gives Sorey his gun, which has one bullet left, and tells him to shoot Dezel under a particular dire circumstance. They enter a series of battles, among them against Lunarre and the Seraph Saimon, which ends with Dezel’s suicide. Zaveid then joins the party, and they conclude that Maoteras may have become a Hellion.
Soon, they come into contact with Heldalf the Lord of Calamity again. The ensuing battle doesn’t proceed well, but Sorey refuses to join Heldalf, who leaves with Saimon. Heldalf seems to be connected to Maoteras somehow and using the earth as its vessel. With this in mind, the party set out to look for Meyvin and meet him in Lowgrin, where they’re told to find the rest of the Memories of the Earth in order to understand the Lord of Calamity. At the end of their quest, Meyvin provides them with the final Memory containing the beginnings of when Heldalf became the Lord of Calamity.
The Memory takes the party to the village of beginnings, Camran, where the previous Shepherd, Mikel, lived. The villagers gossip about how Maoteras may have become a Hellion. Heldalf’s soldiers are stationed to protect the town; however, when word of the Highland soldiers’ approach reaches him, he withdraws his troops and leaves the town to be overrun. After his sister, Muse, is injured, Mikel sacrifices her baby to curse Heldalf into the Lord of Calamity. Sometime later in a different part of town, Sorey and Mikleo’s Gramps – the Seraph who had raised them their whole lives in Izuchi – picks a baby up off the ground and is then approached by Muse with her own. The babies are revealed to be Sorey and Mikleo, who was originally born a human but became a Seraph through reincarnation. It is the hope that these two will become the Shepherd and his subordinate.
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Sorey is a human boy with the unique ability to see the Seraphim - beings that reside with him in the village of Izuchi. One day, he explores nearby ruins with his best friend, Mikleo, where they find the artifacts of a Shepherd and come across a woman by the name of Alisha, whom they escort back to Izuchi. That same night, the Hellion Lunarre attacks and eats the Seraph Maisen.
Alisha informs Sorey of a ceremony in Lady Lake - he who pulls the sword out of its pedestal becomes the Shepherd - before embarking on the return journey to her home in the same city. However, Sorey suspects Lunarre may have been targeting Alisha and grows uneasy, then sets out in the middle of the night after her. At the village entrance, Mikleo intercepts Sorey and joins him.
Sorey and Mikleo head to the capital city of Lady Lake, passing a merchant’s guild on the way inside. After their arrival, they learn about the serious threat of malevolence behind many people’s transformation into Hellions - beings born from humans or Seraphim who’ve become warped as a result of succumbing to “impurity.” While Hellions look normal to humans, Sorey and the Seraphim see them for the monsters they truly are; however, due to their deceptive appearance, the latter are able to engage them before the public eye.
On arriving to Alisha’s house, Sorey and Mikleo have a run-in with Lunarre. Their subsequent battle is interrupted by a group of assassins, whose original task had been to murder Alisha; they abandon the job and take their leave. Concerned by this discovery, Sorey is determined to warn Alisha of the dangers surrounding her and attempt to meet her at the ceremony. But the building is too crowded for them to enter, and they’re stopped at the back by security. By presenting the knife Alisha had left behind in Izuchi, Sorey is let in and finally meets Alisha, who reveals her dangerous situation to be a fairly common occurrence but still appreciates their gesture.
The ceremony begins, and Sorey and Mikleo bear witness to the awakening of the Seraph to whom the occasion is dedicated – Lailah, known as the Lady of the Lake. Before long, a few people in the audience are overcome with malevolence and transform into Hellions. Pressed by the circumstance, Sorey pulls the sword out of its pedestal, thereby becoming the Shepherd and acquiring the power to purify Hellions and therefore restore them to their original being; however, he also becomes a vessel to Lailah (wherein Lailah, in the form of a ball of light, can enter his body as she pleases) and bound to a “lonely” task. Because Sorey’s dream is to see the world and create one where Seraphim and humans can live alongside each other, he embraces the role of the Shepherd. With his newfound powers, he purifies the Hellions in the ceremony room. Due to Lailah’s presence being treated as a foreign agent, Sorey’s body attempts to reject her and suffers a fever that knocks him out for three days.
When he awakens at last, Sorey takes a walk and realizes that, as the Shepherd, he can sense the malevolence around the city much more clearly than before. Lailah informs him and Mikleo of the Shepherd’s duties – to quell the source of Hellions and malevolence, the Lord of Calamity. She wants him to see the world and its state and then decide on his answer on his own, all while she guides him.
On returning to the inn, they find a letter and items, one of which is a Shepherd’s garment that Sorey from then on dons, from Alisha and go to thank her. Sorey attempts to introduce Alisha to Mikleo and Lailah, and they discover that she can hear them should Sorey cut off his senses (i.e., shut his eyes, cover his ears, stop breathing). Such is the power granted to the Shepherd.
Wandering the city, the party head inside the waterways to save a missing person from Hellions. Sorey offends Mikleo by asking him to stand back, because only Sorey and Lailah are able to fight and purify Hellions. While Mikleo is willing to become Lailah’s subordinate and receive the power to purify Hellions as well, Sorey does not wish this from his friend and a fight ensues, culminating in Mikleo’s sore departure. Sorey and Lailah head deeper inside to find the ruins of an altar and a “Memory of the Earth” jewel, although the former is unable to see what it can show him for the time being. On the way out, he learns about Armitization – the act of fusing with a Seraph, which grants him their elemental power and the usage of a special weapon called Shinki.
Sorey and Lailah ask Alisha about finding a Lord of the Land Seraph, a vessel, and someone who can help with providing enshrinement and worship for the Lord of the Land: The city requires these in order to fully purify the malevolence blanketing it. Alisha recommends the clergyman Bruno, who is unfortunately out of the city. Before leaving for a nearby area whose pure water they can use as a vessel, Sorey takes Alisha on as his disciple in the same way that Lailah could have taken Mikleo as her subordinate.
In the ruins where the pure water lies, Sorey, Lailah, and Alisha come across a bow Shinki of the water element. Sorey immediately banishes the thought of using it for fear of involving Mikleo, who is a water Seraph capable of using it. Alisha questions why Sorey would deny Mikleo what he has allowed her, and he responds that her dream to help her beloved city demanded the process, whereas Mikleo’s does not.
They move on, but are attacked by Hellions and saved by Mikleo. An argument ensues, and Sorey realizes that Mikleo is acting on what he truly desires, and that forming a contract with Lailah is also a step in his dream. Mikleo becomes Lailah’s subordinate, and he and Sorey utilize their Armitization to purify the Hellion. Due to this increase in power that Sorey gains, Alisha becomes able to both hear and see the Seraphim. Following this, they move on to the waterfall and obtain the pure water.
The Memory of the Earth Sorey had been holding onto shines, and the party is shown a vision of a man in his study with a woman and her baby watching as he writes a book. He is the author of the Celestial Record that details the Seraphim and Shepherds of the past. Lailah tells Sorey that they can see more visions like this if they acquire more Memories of the Earth, to which Sorey is overcome with excitement before collapsing. Like Lailah, Mikleo’s coming under Sorey’s power caused his body to react again, and he’s carried back to the city, where he recovers within a day.
Upon awaking, Sorey sets out to continue preparations for the Lord of the Land. They meet Bruno and run off to find a Seraph to become Lady Lake’s Lord of the Land. Along their journey, they come upon a bridge that had been destroyed by heavy rainfall – or so a soldier reports, but Sorey realizes that the true culprit is the serpent-like Hellion that emerges from the water. Upon defeat, the Hellion reverts back to its original form of a Seraph. (When Seraphim become Hellion, they’re powerful enough to be seen by humans, and those that have fully transformed are known as dragons.) The Seraph Uno agrees to become Lady Lake’s Lord of the Land, and protection is restored to the capital city.
Suddenly, a mysterious man emerges and hands Sorey a dinner invitation from Highland Kingdom’s Ministar Baltro. Sorey accepts and learns of how truly corrupt the authorities are there as they attempt to bribe him onto their side. Alisha bursts in and the party decides to escape when the assassin’s guild arrives, whom they convince not to kill the authorities before escaping through the underground waterways.
Alisha decides to go to the diseased city of Marlind, necessitating the party to fix the broken bridge they must cross to get there. They head to the nearby mountain to find an Earth Seraph with the power to fix the bridge and meet Zaveid, who takes it upon himself to kill a Hellion rather than let Sorey purify it, greatly upsetting the latter. The party travel farther up the mountain and encounter their first real dragon, as well as an Earth Seraph named Edna. Knowing they cannot win, the party and Edna flee. They learn afterward that the dragon is Edna’s brother. Convinced to travel the world in hopes of finding a way to save him, Edna becomes one of Lailah’s subordinates.
After fixing the bridge, the party enter Marlind and work toward purification to weaken the drake, a lesser dragon, residing in the town. With the help of a creature known as a Normin, they purify the drake and ask if the Seraph will become the Lord of the Land for Marlind; however, some malevolence still lurks in the area, and they leave to dispel the source while entrusting the town to a mercenary group led by Lucas. The party defeats the responsible monster, then learn that Sorey is all but blind in one eye as a result of Alisha being his disciple. Guilty and forced by other responsibilities, Alisha leaves the party once they return to Marlind.
A war is brewing, and the party evacuate the townsmen. A soldier confronts them, saying that Alisha has been accused of conspiring against Highland; she will be executed if Sorey does not participate in the war with his power as the Shepherd. The Shepherd is obligated to absolute neutrality and therefore must not take a side in wars. But because Alisha’s life hangs in the balance, Sorey is forced to head into the battlegrounds, where he scares the enemy soldiers off rather than killing them when a surge of malevolence takes over, signifying the Lord of Calamity’s arrival. Outmatched, Sorey is abandoned by the Lord of Calamity and assaulted by soldiers overcome with malevolence. A member of the assassin’s guild rescues him and they fall from a cliff during their escape.
They wake up in a forest. The assassin, Rose, brings Sorey to her hideout, where he meets the rest of the guild. Sorey’s jammed ability to sense the Seraphim during the war returns to him, after which he learns that he’d momentarily lost the ability due to the drastic difference in power between him and the Lord of Calamity. He meets the Wind Seraph Dezel, who seems to be following Rose.
The party explores the ruins connected to the hideout with Rose and Dezel. There, Rose becomes one of Sorey’s disciples despite her initial inability to admit that the Seraphim exist, and Dezel becomes a subordinate of Lailah. After Sorey’s defeat at the hands of the Lord of Calamity, it becomes clear that Sorey needs a human to remain with him, having been left alone when he couldn’t sense the Seraphim, and the role falls to Rose, who already possesses a higher affinity toward sensing the Seraphim than Alisha. Upon becoming Sorey’s disciple, she, too, gains the power of Armitization. The party then finishes exploring the ruins and finds out that Sorey must undergo trials as the Shepherd across the world.
Arriving at Laston Bell, the party lies their way in past the soldier Sergei: The Kingdom of Lowlance doesn’t have the best view of the Shepherd. Sergei eventually confronts them, knowing that Sorey is the Shepherd, and desires his help. Relations between the knights and the church have been poor, and the knights’ leader and other knights have gone missing.
They head to Pendragon, where they learn the knights are looking for the Pope. Shortly thereafter, it's revealed that the assassin’s guild Rose is a part of used to be a guild of mercenaries; their purpose changed after they were betrayed by the Lowlance Empire. The party follows Rose after she leaves through the back door, fearing she might have left to kill someone. While that was not the case, they do learn that Rose has been asked to assassinate one of the authorities who caused the war; however, she is the not the type of person to kill blindly and instead wishes to judge the target beforehand.
At the church sanctuary, the party meets a priest, who tells them that Maoteras, a Seraph, provides protection for the Greenwood continent. The priest shows them a stone that contains the history of the Shepherd, although they are unable to read it. The Seraphim disappear and the priest turns to stone, and Cardinal Photon enters. Obsessed with protecting Lowlance, she speaks to Sorey, and when the situation seems dire, Mikleo is able to appear and save them.
After their escape, Rose and her guild discover that the Pope might be in Godojin. There, they realize that the village elder is in the fact Pope himself and that he fled from his duties and took up selling fake elixirs to bring the town much needed profit. He is capable of translating the stone with the Shepherd’s history and, luckily, has also memorized it, and informs Sorey that he must travel to four temples that each represent an element in order to advance as the Shepherd.
The party make their way through the Fire Temple Igraine. Sorey is commanded to either burn his own face or that of a Fire Seraph with a flaming sword in order to form a contract with the flames. He hesitates, nearly burning himself, before Lailah stops him. They fuse and finish off the boss, learning afterward that the choice with the flaming sword was also a test, which Sorey passed. Sorey also acquires knowledge of the two ways through which a Seraph is born – by birth or by transformation.
While the Lord of Calamity watches from afar, the party returns to the knights and comes across a medusa at the end of the church sanctuary. She is Photon, warped by the malevolence, and she has turned people into the stone statutes around them. Dezel steps forward to take the lead in battle, revealing that he is blind and therefore unaffected by Photon’s gaze. Despite Sorey’s aversion to killing, the party has no choice but to put down Photon, who is beyond the salvation of purification. He attempts to take responsibility by being the one to deal the finishing blow, but Rose beats him to the punch and states that it is her job to kill while he lets live.
Back outside, Sorey meets a man named Meyvin and learns a little more about Maoteras. They arrive to the conclusion that the Age of Calamity must have begun when Maoteras’ protection disappeared from the land, and so they set out to seek it within one of the elemental temples, the next of which they visit is the Earth Temple Morgause, where they purify a minotaurus Hellion while Edna and Sorey gain more power in their Armitized form.
At the Water Temple Le Fey, the party stumble across various diary entries from a previous Shepherd, detailing the beginning of his journey to the moment he became overcome with an obsessive need for power and ultimately became a Hellion. They confront this Hellion at the end of the dungeon and defeat him as he cries out for his sword to be returned to him. Sorey is offered this very sword that can cut anything, but refuses and passes the trial of heart.
Outside of the Wind Temple Guinevere, the party has a scuffle with Zaveid before entering. They then make their way through the tower, save a girl at the top, and finish the trial.
They head back to Pendragon, where they fight with Zaveid again. He gives Sorey his gun, which has one bullet left, and tells him to shoot Dezel under a particular dire circumstance. They enter a series of battles, among them against Lunarre and the Seraph Saimon, which ends with Dezel’s suicide. Zaveid then joins the party, and they conclude that Maoteras may have become a Hellion.
Soon, they come into contact with Heldalf the Lord of Calamity again. The ensuing battle doesn’t proceed well, but Sorey refuses to join Heldalf, who leaves with Saimon. Heldalf seems to be connected to Maoteras somehow and using the earth as its vessel. With this in mind, the party set out to look for Meyvin and meet him in Lowgrin, where they’re told to find the rest of the Memories of the Earth in order to understand the Lord of Calamity. At the end of their quest, Meyvin provides them with the final Memory containing the beginnings of when Heldalf became the Lord of Calamity.
The Memory takes the party to the village of beginnings, Camran, where the previous Shepherd, Mikel, lived. The villagers gossip about how Maoteras may have become a Hellion. Heldalf’s soldiers are stationed to protect the town; however, when word of the Highland soldiers’ approach reaches him, he withdraws his troops and leaves the town to be overrun. After his sister, Muse, is injured, Mikel sacrifices her baby to curse Heldalf into the Lord of Calamity. Sometime later in a different part of town, Sorey and Mikleo’s Gramps – the Seraph who had raised them their whole lives in Izuchi – picks a baby up off the ground and is then approached by Muse with her own. The babies are revealed to be Sorey and Mikleo, who was originally born a human but became a Seraph through reincarnation. It is the hope that these two will become the Shepherd and his subordinate.
