Talk:Unkindled/@comment-31218426-20170326025816/@comment-29522860-20170328021233

I never read it as having nessicarilly failed, but also as just getting obliterated, or being short term fuel. As one remembers, linking the first flame is more or less a nuclear explosion, but Gwyn survived that explosion the first time the fire was linked. Ludleth also survived, and the implication thereof is that one must simply survive the linking, and dying does not neccisarily mean that you failed.

With the current lords of cinder, this could still apply. Aldrich was exeptional due to the darkness that powered him. The Undead Legion was a collective soul (implied to be Artorias' own soul) and a collective sacrifice, which I believe lightened the load on each individual person. Yhorm was a giant and therefore likely took the process differently than undead humans. Ludleth, despite being crippled and haunted by the pain, also survived. And Lothric was specially bred, through means undescrible, to link the flame and become a lord of cinder.

So the Unkindled One could have outright failed to be of use, or succesfully linked the flame, but I think the important difference is that they died while doing it.

As for the flame, I interperet that it all ties back to the concept of ashes, and the crumbling fabric of reality due to the artificial sustaining of the Age of Gods. So much death, and absorbing souls to get strength, and burning it all in the First Flame over perhaps a million or more cycles. The flame made all souls, and by now most of them have already been recycled back into the fire, and only ashes remain of what the flame made. So you gather all this burnt matter into your own burnt self and try to fuel the fire once again, but it merely smolders on uselessly. It's time to let the world progress into the next.