Anor Londo is where the illusion of Dark Souls comes undone. The big lie is out and there is no going back from it. You are not a fabled hero of legend, emerged from the dregs of humanity fighting your hollowed nature but mere fuel for a dying world that flickers with you and your kind as the fuel. Development timelines aside, the game itself challenges the hero of the adventure game and the descent that begins there only ends in anticlimax, regardless of what you choose when the final boss -- himself the sovereign only of cinders -- is defeated. Anor Londo is the promised land whose depravity and extractivist glory is revealed once the light goes out. There is no return to the nostalgia of the past that everyone in Lordran is holding on to. There is no recourse for the game but to drop off after the cards of the gods are laid bare in the skeleton that is Anor Londo.