IS LAST RITE THE NEXT NACHZEHRER KING?

Is Last Rite the next Nachzehrer King? Endfield hasn’t said it outright, but M3 brings up Nezzsalem, the King whose army fed on the dead, and Fleming warns that the next Sovereign of the Nachzehrers will appear.

This shy girl might be the next Nachzehrer King. In the first Arknights, that King led an army that fed on the dead, and it turned whole farmlands into wasteland. Last Rite is a Nachzehrer too. But she refuses to feed on the dead, so she’s starving all the time. And when she tries to use her power, people see a huge, ancient shadow standing behind her. This post follows our long-form video, line by line, from the army she comes from to that shadow.

How we checked this. Every quote is from the official English text of the original Arknights or Arknights Endfield. Where the game only implies something, we say it is our reading. The images are frames from our own video, built from official Hypergryph and Gryphline art and footage.

Endfield Hub is a fan-made resource and is not affiliated with Hypergryph or Yostar.

TL;DR

• The Nachzehrers were an army that fed on the dead. In Arknights, every soldier who dies near them makes them stronger, and their King, Nezzsalem, led them into the war for Londinium.
• Logos cut off the King’s right arm in chapter 14, nearly dying in the fall.
• On Talos-II, the Sarkaz built a flying theme park. Seš’qa holds a “Parade of the Royal Courts”, and the old war courts are now a show for kids.
• Last Rite grew up looking after a cemetery, and a man paid to watch her quit, sure she was “an eater of the dead”.
• She refuses to feed, because using her powers “would disturb the dead”. That’s why she’s always hungry.
• A cold, ancient shadow stands behind her when she uses her power, and nobody knows what it is.
• M3 names Nezzsalem while talking about her, and Fleming warns that “the next Sovereign of the Nachzehrers” will one day appear.

Who Were the Nachzehrers in Arknights?

Arknights takes place on a world called Terra. One of its peoples is the Sarkaz. They have horns, and most other people on Terra fear them and treat them like demons. Endfield’s own encyclopedia calls them “the original natives of Terra”. Over the centuries they fought wars with almost every other people on the planet, and the hate went both ways.

You can hear that hate in Arknights. In its roguelike mode, a relic carries a child’s words: “A vampire killed my sister, a Nachzehrer took my papa, and mama escaped with me. I’ll never compromise with the Sarkaz.”

The Sarkaz homeland is a nation called Kazdel. In Arknights it’s torn apart by a civil war, and Rhodes Island, the heroes of the game, was born out of that war. Inside Kazdel, the most powerful Sarkaz are organized into great houses called the Royal Courts. Each one is its own kind of Sarkaz with its own ruler. The Vampires have one. The Banshees have one. And so do the Nachzehrers.

Every kind of Sarkaz has its own power, and the Nachzehrers have a scary one. When someone dies near them, they can take that person’s strength for themselves. In a war, that means every soldier who dies, on either side, makes the Nachzehrers stronger. The longer the battle goes on, the harder they are to beat.

They don’t see anything wrong with it, either. An old Arknights story asks the leaders of the Sarkaz what saying goodbye means to them. “The Patriarch of the Nachzehrer denied that farewell had meaning. The dead become nutrition for new life, and the cycle of life continues, always a unified whole.”

And they aren’t only monsters. A lighter line from the roguelike mode says “Kazdel’s lifts always have long queues, with Nachzehrers handling uninvited guests trying to sneak into the city. Their summons also provide shade for everyone waiting.”

What Did the Nachzehrer Army Do in Londinium?

At war, they live up to their reputation. In the Arknights main story, a Sarkaz general named Theresis takes over Londinium, the capital of a country called Victoria. The Nachzehrer King joins him and leads his army out to fight the country’s nobles.

The game’s enemy files show you who is in that army. Rot Eaters are “absorbing the enemy’s strength as they grow increasingly deadly.” Witherers are worse after they fall: “their corpses continue to corrupt the land.”

The King also makes creatures with his own magic, the Seeds of Withering: “Originium Arts creation of the Nachzehrer King. Mindless except for an obsession with self-destruction. They create death for others to feed upon.”

Wherever this army goes, it leaves nothing behind. One mission, “Decaying Wastes”, says “The armies of the Nachzehrer ravage the fields, turning fertile farmland to barren wastes.” The game’s picture of the army carries one line: “They are War itself.”

One of the King’s servants is the strangest of all. “The Sudaram is the shroud of the dead. Once gaunt from hunger, it is now nourished by the power of the Nachzehrer King.”

Who Is Nezzsalem, the Nachzehrer King?

The game calls him the sovereign of the Nachzehrers, which just means their ruler, and his people still see him as their lord. One roguelike relic, the Sigil Mystery, finally gives his name. He is Nezzsalem.

That relic also shows he wasn’t just a brute: “With the sovereign’s approval, the Northwind Witch Qalaiša taught the Nachzehrers how to draw energy from the Eternal Hunt’s rigid laws. To Nezzsalem, that was the start of his subjects surpassing nature with reason.” And “the Nachzehrers continue to revere him as their liege.”

What Happened When Logos Fought the Nachzehrer King?

Nezzsalem fights for Theresis. The rest of Victoria wants its capital back, so the country’s dukes build one giant alliance and march on the city. Rhodes Island joins the Victorian side to stop Theresis’s war. In chapter 14 the two sides finally clash. Nezzsalem leads his army onto the battlefield himself and duels one of the dukes. For a while, the Sarkaz are winning.

Then the Victorians turn it around. But the King and his creatures are still out there, and Logos stays behind to face him alone. Logos is one of Rhodes Island’s strongest fighters, a Sarkaz too, and the young lord of a different house, the Banshees. So this is one Sarkaz royal facing another.

Logos goes in expecting to die. The game’s summary of 14-11 says he “fights the Nachzehrer King and rings his own death knell.” He’s a spellcaster, not a swordsman, so he uses his magic to recreate the swordsmanship of Theresis, the very general Nezzsalem is fighting for.

It works. Logos cuts off the King’s right arm. But “The full blast of the Nachzehrer King’s power hits Logos in the chest. He falls from the cliff” into a river. As he sinks, the song of the Banshees, his own people, pulls him back, and a voice tells him: “Hang in there, Aefanyl. We’re with you. We’ve always been with you.” Then Logos sings, and “All the pursuers are compelled to stop.”

So that is who the Nachzehrers were in Arknights. A people with a king who could take on armies, and an army that grows stronger every time someone dies.

How Did the Sarkaz End Up in a Flying Theme Park?

Arknights Endfield takes place more than a hundred years later, on a different planet called Talos-II. People from Terra travelled there through a giant portal called the Cosmic Gate, and many Sarkaz came along. Then the gate broke. Nobody could go back.

Endfield’s encyclopedia says “most Sarkaz living on Talos-II have chosen to leave the past behind.” Talos-II wasn’t kind to them, either. In Seš’qa’s founding story, “The Aggeloi were like an unending flood”, forcing the Sarkaz out of their northern outposts. They sit in a circle in the snow, low on food, with no idea what to do next.

That’s when a Sarkaz merchant named Fleming tries to get everyone talking again. But the idea comes from someone else: “a Vampiress sitting furthest away, one that Fleming hardly knew, whose name even escaped his memories.” She leans on “her thorny spear of blood red carmine”, shapes a little city out of her own blood and asks: “Tell me how many Sarkazian cities did we have back on Terra?” Then: “I believe the time has come for us to raise our new home.”

Plenty of players will think of Warfarin, the most famous Vampire from the first game. But Warfarin is a doctor, not a spear fighter, so the game leaves it open. (The spear is an Endfield weapon, Blessing of Lustrous Carmine, and this story is its archive text.)

Fleming takes her idea and runs with it: a city that floats in the sky. Someone blurts out the name, Seš’qa, “A midway stopping point between the road forward and the road home.” And Fleming adds his own idea: “Why should the Sarkaz be a dark, brooding people with a penchant for violence and seek only warfare as their companion? No. The new city should be a theme park with a giant wheel ride, open-air bazaar, theaters, and every element of fun that could fit.”

He even plans the festivals, including a “Parade of the Royal Courts”. On Terra, the Royal Courts were the great Sarkaz houses, and the Nachzehrers were one of them. So the most feared people on Terra moved to a new planet and started selling ride tickets.

A hundred years later, it really is a theme park. Another Endfield story is told by a thief who sneaks into Seš’qa without a ticket. A huge, silent Sarkaz warrior catches him, and the thief panics so badly that he confesses to a robbery he hasn’t even done yet. The children watching think it’s part of the show: “I was the ‘lucky’ guy who got to interact with the Kings of the Royal Court.” On Terra, these courts led armies into war. On Talos-II, they’re a show for kids.

Even Arknights jokes about this. In its roguelike mode, a dirt-covered Sarkaz offers you a glowing stone with “the Royal Court’s imprint”, and “promises to throw in a ticket to the ‘Lost Kazdel Museum.’ ‘It’s a popular attraction, you know?’”

What Happened to the Nachzehrers on Talos-II?

Not every Nachzehrer on Talos-II got a happy ending. The archive story of one Endfield greatsword, Khravengger, is about a Nachzehrer mercenary who is starving. “When he took the sword of frost from his fathers, he swore to treat it as dearly as his own life. But now, his only wish was to find an inhabited place and trade his old friend for some clean water and food.”

A gang of bandits finds him. They want the sword, and him with it: “If you’re good enough, we’ll buy you too, devil horns.” To test him, they tell him to cut a boulder in half. He does, and under it is a hidden cave full of frightened villagers. “The eyes that gazed out from the cave stared hard at his horns.” He had walked through the Cosmic Gate hoping never to see those eyes again.

“This sword isn’t for sale.” The Nachzehrer took one deep breath and raised his great weapon into the air. “This Sarkaz isn’t for sale either.”

The story skips the fight. It only tells us that afterwards, “The exhausted and famished frame of the Nachzehrer continued to trudge into the distance.” He chose to protect the people instead of eating. Last Rite makes the same choice, every single day.

What Was Last Rite’s Childhood Like?

Last Rite’s real name is Adelheid. She grew up in a small, faraway town, raised by a Caprinae couple who adopted her, and her family looked after the town cemetery. The other kids thought she was weird. She was shy and slow to answer, and “she never forgot about stuffing herself with apple peelings and turnip leaves.” But to her, the cemetery was simply home. When the town buried its dead, the children saw “the girl and her family cleaning out the resting places, cleaning the headstones, and offering elegies to the deceased.”

Other people found her frightening. One Endfield file is a report from a man who was paid to secretly watch her. We never learn who hired him.

In his report she is the only undertaker at a lonely cemetery in the wild: “the closest Circuit settlement was over a hundred klicks away.” She came in the morning and left “only in the deep of night.” The dead were strangers, “Most were travelers killed by the Aggeloi or Blight accidents”, and “every one of them went missing in recent years.” He got so scared that he quit, and didn’t want the money anymore. His last line:

“She’s definitely an eater of the dead! A Nachzehrer!”

He was right that she’s a Nachzehrer. He was wrong about the eating. In her own words: “using my innate Nachzehrer abilities would disturb the dead. The chances are slim, but I forbid it.” She doesn’t fully understand her powers, so she has chosen never to use them. That’s why she’s always hungry. Her people’s King turned the dead into food. She cleans their headstones.

For the rest of her childhood, including Biggie Tom’s funeral and the crooked wooden knight, see our Last Rite backstory post.

How Did Last Rite Become Seš’qa’s Brand Ambassador?

It started with a truck. “I only flipped a truck toppled by the Aggeloi so it got back on its wheels,” she remembers. All she had wanted was “a broom to chase away the beasts back home.” A wandering peddler saw how strong she was and offered her a job in Seš’qa.

Seš’qa was a shock. She had never seen so many Sarkaz, and “she knew nothing about the Sarkaz, despite being one herself.” She nearly ran away. Then a local boy pointed her to the free bread, and she spotted “a massive pile of roasted stockbeast fillet glistening with grease.” She calmed down.

In Seš’qa she became the face of a clothing brand called Witching Hour, and the brand gave her the name Last Rite. She hates it: “Since I’m a Nachzehrer and worked as an undertaker back home, they wanted a name that ‘highlighted the product features’…” She points out that she isn’t the product, the outfit is, and that “the last rites are somber ceremonies meant for the departed!”

Seš’qa also gave her a fancy title in its ads. “They just named me ‘Princess of the Battle Court’ without asking! I never wanted to lie to you…” She goes to the Endmin almost in tears and offers to quit, and the Endmin tells her they knew all along.

Endfield’s notes about her are full of moments like this. Logistics asks someone to tell her “there is no need for her to keep delivering handwritten letters of apology to us”, since “there are other operators who inflict greater losses during routine inspection.” The canteen wants someone to “tell her that this is a buffet-style canteen. No one’s going to be charged extra for big appetites.” And “Specialized Emergency Ice Melter Sprays are now available”, because “Last Rite gives off freeze gases when she panics.”

So far, she’s a sweet, hungry girl with a cold problem. But one restricted file doesn’t fit that picture.

What Is the Shadow Behind Last Rite?

The file was written by someone who watched her train:

“when this Nachzehrer attempts, bashfully, the manipulation of death, everyone at the scene witnessed a shadowy figure behind the curtain. It felt cold, ancient, grand, and … serene. … What is Seš’qa trying to hide?”

Nobody says what it is. The horned shadow in our video is our own image, made from her silhouette, not official art.

What Did Fleming Tell M3 About Last Rite?

The answer is closest in one Endfield story. Fleming, the merchant who helped build Seš’qa, is the one who recommended Last Rite to Endfield. He meets M3, an ancient and powerful being who works with the Endmin, aboard Dijiang. M3 opens with the food bill: “That means you’ll pay extra for her additional catering fees. Right?”

She watches Last Rite through the window: “I think she’s hungry.” Fleming explains that the girl refuses to feed on the dead. Then they talk about something from long ago. M3: “But the time does not match.” Fleming: “It took place over a century ago. Nevertheless, Adelheid is definitely a young girl of only seventeen or eighteen years.” They never say what that event was.

Then M3 asks about “that thing” following her around, and describes it:

“A vast land has perished in her shadow. Millennia-worth of winters heed her beck and call. Yet she remains hungry.”

Fleming says it’s the blood. Seš’qa has found other Nachzehrers on Talos-II and keeps an eye on them: “We have no desire to see another War Court appear without warning.” But this girl “has not been ‘fed’ because she respects every crew mate, messenger, and soldier who died in the frontiers.” He quotes an assessment from “that wendigo friend of yours”: “Though she did not consume the dead to strengthen herself, Death remains willing to assist her.”

M3’s answer is a name:

”…Nezzsalem would be extremely moved if he were here.”

Fleming adds that “the child is destined to take on burdens that shouldn’t be hers,” and that is why he sent her to Endfield: “If Adelheid hopes to take upon a path of her choice, I believe Endfield Industries will be her best instructor.” M3 tells him he’s kinder than she thought. He asks for one thing: “Let her do what she wants, like a normal child. Let her live, get into trouble, grow up, and earn her keep. It would be wonderful if she gets to make a few friends and discover what she wants out of life…”

And his last words in the story go further:

“But before Talos-II forces humanity to the brink of extinction, before Death completely fashions her bloodied throne, and before the next Sovereign of the Nachzehrers is forced to manifest upon this planet … she simply remains as a shy little Sarkaz girl.”

Fleming never says the next Sovereign is her. But he says it about her, right after M3 brings up their old King.

Is Last Rite the Next Nachzehrer King?

Put the clues side by side:

1. A Nachzehrer is supposed to get strong by feeding on the dead. She never has, yet “Death remains willing to assist her.”
2. Her cold is so strong that M3 talks about “Millennia-worth of winters”.
3. Something “cold, ancient, grand” stands behind her when she uses her power.
4. M3 thinks of an event from over a century ago, then of Nezzsalem himself.
5. Fleming, talking about her, warns that “the next Sovereign of the Nachzehrers” will one day appear.

So, is Last Rite the next Nachzehrer King? The game hasn’t said it outright yet, and reading her as his heir is our interpretation. But a cold, ancient shadow already stands behind her, and the people around her are watching and waiting.

Nezzsalem’s army fed on the dead and grew stronger with every grave. The girl who may carry his power walks into Endfield’s canteen hungry every single day, because she would rather starve than disturb them.

What the text doesn’t say yet: what happened “over a century ago”, what the shadow is, whether Nezzsalem is still alive after chapter 14, and who the Vampire with the blood-red spear was. We will update this page when Endfield says more.

Related Reading

• Last Rite lore: her sad backstory explained: her childhood, Biggie Tom and the crooked knight
• Who is M3 in Arknights Endfield?: the being who names Nezzsalem
• The Sarkaz identity crisis in Seš’qa: what the flying city means for the Sarkaz
• Wiš’adel, the Speaker of Seš’qa: the Speaker Fleming mentions
• Warfarin backstory: from Kazdel to Talos-II: the most famous Vampire of the first game
• Endfield lore hub: every operator backstory and our story videos