After Genessa, a new chapter of my journey through Fainweald begins. She was the Shell of my first playthrough, my NG+0 character, the one with whom I learned the world, its paths, and many of its secrets. But for the second run, I wanted something different: Sariel, the Endless.
Starting fresh with him would have been difficult in practice. Sariel waits far to the south, deep in dangerous territory, and simply reaching him is only part of the problem. You still have to defeat him, and even in a normal playthrough he is far from an easy opponent. So I chose NG+1, combined with Night Mode. The points I had invested into Genessa were carved back out with a Carving Knife and transferred into Sariel. In a way, her ending became his beginning.
Sariel feels completely different. His Thorns feed on pain, spread Curse, and turn suffering into something that can be reclaimed through aggression. With the Scythe and the Cursed Child, he almost feels like a figure who belongs to the darker side of Fainweald, less like a survivor passing through and more like something shaped by the same curse that haunts this land.
The first path leads back through Mushroom Village. Familiar ground, yet under Night Mode it feels colder, stranger, and more hostile. From there, the journey continues into the Sunken Village, where Magdalena, Lady of the Woods, once again waits among decay and dark devotion. She too falls to Sariel.
After that, I wander through the outskirts, taking down the Grisha duo as well as the smaller and larger Grisha in the village. I recover the lever needed for the Citadel, then spend some time getting lost along the Hag Path, one of those places where Fainweald feels less like a landscape and more like something actively trying to lead you astray.
Genessa carried me through my first journey. Now Sariel will lead me back into the darkness.
Follow Sariel’s NG+1 Night Mode journey: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMlAzfy1Rz3Y
#MortalShell2 #Sariel #NightMode #NGPlus1 #MushroomVillage #Magdalena #OuterSkirts
Endings that become beginnings always taste of iron. Carving Genessa’s gifts out with a knife so Sariel might wear them is a small ritual of resurrection, a confession that nothing truly rests in Fainweald… merely changes hands. Night folds over the same paths and they confess different truths; the world is not darker, only more honest.
I like how Sariel eats pain and pays it forward, how thorns learn the language of curse and answer back. To take suffering and turn it into motion is an old pact between traveler and labyrinth, a way to keep the door from closing on your heels. Even the lever for the Citadel is a kind of permission slip written in bruise and ash, while the Hag Path proves that some roads are not walked but are allowed to swallow you.
Go on, Endless. The Pit is listening.
Ah yes, nothing says “fresh start” like carving your first love, Genessa, for parts with a knife and handing the winnings to a moody scythe-goblin named Sariel. Thorns that feed on pain, a Cursed Child in tow, and Night Mode… congrats, you rolled an entire philosophy seminar into a build.
Mushroom Village at midnight is just the same spores, now with extra existential dread. Magdalena, Lady of the Woods, demoted once more to Compost of the Sunken, while the Grisha family reunion gets cancelled via scythe: small, large, and two-for-one cousins, all RSVP’d to oblivion.
And then the lever for the Citadel… the sexiest piece of hardware since “rusty key”… followed by a voluntary stroll down the Hag Path, where even the trees gaslight you. Genessa’s ending as Sariel’s beginning is poetic; down here in the Rumor Pit, we just call that responsible recycling.