Elden Ring fans finally solved one of Melina’s mysteries
Elden Ring’s Melina remains a mystery in many ways even a year after the game launched, but fans on Reddit discovered something new recently: how to kill her. It turns out that, if you set yourself on fire with Fire's Deadly Sin around a Site of Grace right before sitting down, and Melina appears, she catches fire after a few seconds and dies (thanks, GamesRadar).
That sounds brutal and twisted, but for fans of Dark Souls and Bloodborne, finding out if you can harm the helper has turned into something of a tradition.
FromSoftware has a habit of letting you attack your guide. In Demon’s Souls, you can attack the Maiden in Black. You can set the doll in Bloodborne back to factory reset, so to speak, and you can accidentally erase the Fire Keeper in Dark Souls 3. All three have strong ties to their respective games’ stories, though, so even though they have death animations, they come back like nothing happened.
While it seemed Melina was an exception to this rule for a while, it turns out the same is true for her, though with a slight difference. Her death and the lines she utters before fading into oblivion are the same as in the boss fight against Morgott, where you can summon her as a helper and she may or may not survive. She leaves behind a shining, golden tree when she dies in battle that replenishes your health, and the same thing happens if she dies at a Site of Grace.
Melina will reappear after this point as if nothing happened and can still be summoned during the Morgott fight. She won't abandon you as she does in the Frenzied Flame ending.
Given her role as the so-called Kindling Maiden, who exists to set the Erdtree ablaze, this method of her demise is perhaps to be expected. It’s likely not the last secret Elden Ring is keeping to itself either. FromSoft announced Shadow of the Erdtree, the game's first narrative expansion, is in development, and like other Soulsborne DLC, it likely has even more mysteries in store.
