Coen’s story has a fixed window. Everything in The Blood of Dawnwalker is built around the 30-day rescue clock, which means the ending you get is the ending you earned by spending that clock in particular quests, particular regions, and particular company. There are seven distinct endings on the consensus of every major post-launch guide, and three of them are reachable inside the 30-day window if you plan for them.
This page is the hub. If you already know which ending you want, jump to the section you need. If you want the overview, the table below covers all seven at once, and the 30-day time mechanic explainer is the companion read for understanding why two endings turn on the calendar and not the quest log.
All Seven Endings At A Glance
| Ending | Window | Key Trigger | Companion Path |
|---|---|---|---|
| Coward’s Path | Any time after the prologue | Shadowstep across the broken bridge near Coward’s Path Shrine at night, then leave | Solo, no quest dependency |
| Together Forever | Mid-campaign, side content | Complete five dream loops in the Home Sweet Home sequence at Silts Tower | Trapped inside Aurelius’s loop |
| Time Runs Out | After the 30-day clock expires | Let the timer hit zero with no ending triggered first | Default “failure” epilogue |
| Turncoat (A Deal with the Devil) | Within 30 days | Defeat all three Boyars, take Brencis’s offer at Shrike’s Crag, mark the Manumit hideout | Betray the resistance |
| Folk Hero | Within 30 days | Enter Greifberg Castle alone (key from a camp east of the city, or wall-hop at night) | Solo finale, no allies |
| Patricide | Within 30 days, at night | Complete every Lacra quest, then descend through the ancient ruins beneath the city | Lacra-led final assault |
| Knyazmaker (Rise at Dawn) | Within 30 days, by day | Complete the Manumit questline through Who Pulls the Strings, side with Catalin at Eastridge | Crake and Catalin-led final assault |
How The Window Changes Everything
Two of the seven endings exist because the calendar runs out, not because of any choice you make. Time Runs Out triggers if Coen fails to reach Brencis inside 30 in-game days; the family is already dead by the time the final fight begins, and the epilogue plays in a different visual register. In the Nick of Time is the implicit modifier on every quest-led ending — if you reach Brencis within the window, your family survives the immediate climax.
That means the design decision Rebel Wolves made was to fold “did you make it in time?” into the ending system, rather than treat it as a separate score. The hourglass UI is the only reliable indicator of how much time a quest will spend, and the first 30 days survival guide walks through the early habits that keep the clock legible. If you want any of the quest-led endings below, the rule is the same: read the cost before you commit.
Endings Outside The 30-Day Window
Coward’s Path is the easiest ending to reach because it does not require a final fight. The sequence: travel to the broken bridge near the Coward’s Path Shrine at night, use Shadowstep to cross, then choose the “leave the valley” option when it appears. The achievement is “A Hero They Deserve.” This ending does not contest with the calendar because Coen leaves Vale Sangora before any of the major quest lines close.
Together Forever is the secret ending players miss the most. Inside the Home Sweet Home quest at Silts Tower (the southwest-edge tower used to sync nearby icons), completing five dream loops triggers the trap: on loop five, the family stops Coen from leaving the home, and he stays in Aurelius the Astrologer’s trance forever, eventually becoming one of the clay gargoyles the loop is built around. There is no achievement tied to it, which is why most players never notice the trigger. It is fully reachable from inside the main campaign, and it does not lock out other endings if you reload the prior save.
Endings Inside The Window
The remaining four endings all end with Brencis’s defeat at Greifberg Castle. The differences are the route in, the allies who help, and what happens to the valley afterward.
Turncoat — also labeled “A Deal with the Devil” in some guides — requires clearing all three Boyars first by completing The Lunar Game, The Guilded Gauntlet, and The Cycle of Love. With the Boyars down, Brencis summons Coen to a parley at Shrike’s Crag. The deal: Coen marks the Manumit hideout for Brencis in exchange for Laslea being exempted from the blood tax and his family being allowed to live. This ending is reachable even if you finished the Lacra or Crake questline, because Brencis offers a final betrayal choice. Skipping the deal and attacking Brencis during the parley collapses into the Folk Hero path but kills the family during the fight.
Folk Hero is the solo finale. The unlock is finding a side door key to Greifberg Tower (dropped by a boss at a camp east of the city), or shadowstepping over the castle wall at night. Coen takes Brencis on his own. The epilogue removes Coen’s mother from the survivors and forces his sister Lunka to be turned into a Vrakhiri to save her from becoming a Murohn, which sends Coen out of Vale Sangora on a follow-up rescue while his father and remaining siblings fend for themselves.
Patricide requires finishing every Lacra quest. The route in is the night-only descent through ancient ruins beneath the city, which lets Coen destroy Brencis’s Blood Ritual mid-cast. The destruction turns the castle into a house of the undead during the fight and kills the prisoners inside, but the family is excluded from that effect. Lacra helps throughout the finale, the enemy roster skews more supernatural, and the platforming sections use Shadowstep as the castle is overrun by Anachora.
Knyazmaker (also called “Rise at Dawn” or “The Manumit”) requires the full Manumit questline through Who Pulls the Strings, plus siding with Catalin Dragosti at the Eastridge Outpost assault. The route in is a secret passage into Greifberg Tower alongside Crake’s rebels and Catalin. There is a binary choice mid-finale: save Catalin, in which case Crake survives and Catalin claims the throne to begin a new rule of tyranny (taxes aplenty, per MethodGG), or skip the save, in which case Crake dies and the Manumits scatter.
Which Ending Is “Canonical”
There is no canon ending. Rebel Wolves has not framed any single ending as the canonical resolution, and the studio has hinted in interviews that the saga will continue into new eras and cultures — which means future installments will almost certainly reframe the Brencis arc rather than treat one of these seven as the definitive close. Dev commentary in the launch window, including the public quote that “the game will not be over” if you fail to save your family in time, supports the read that every ending is meant to feel finished rather than feel like a sequel hook.
If you are asking for a recommendation, the design suggests Folk Hero is the most thematically clean run for a first playthrough: it locks you into the solo-vs-tyrant framing the campaign keeps implying, it bypasses the allied path complexity, and it does not require you to clear all three Boyars before the clock runs out. The Patricide and Knyazmaker runs are better on a second file, when you already know the time costs and can route for the alliance quest you actually want to see.
Honest Gaps
- PCGamer lists eight endings. This is an outlier count driven by splitting one variant into two entries (typically Beginner’s Luck as a separate prologue ending from Folk Hero). The MethodGG, TheGamer, PowerPyx, and in-game achievement sets all confirm seven. The “8 endings” framing should be treated as a counting difference, not a missing seventh route.
- Beginner’s Luck is real but not in the seven above. Dev-confirmed on r/Blood_of_Dawnwalker: if you defeat Brencis in his prologue fight phase 1, the game drops you into the Anachora final-form fight and gives you a Folk-Hero-adjacent ending with a thinner epilogue. There is no achievement. We count it as a variant of Folk Hero for the purposes of this hub.
- Steam achievement percentages are not yet stable enough to quote. The launch-week population skews toward early-progression achievements; the dedicated ending achievements will firm up in 30+ days.
- Lunka’s fate is fixed. Per MethodGG: no ending choice alters whether Lunka survives. The Folk Hero path turns her into a Vrakhiri to save her from the Murohn transformation; other endings skip the rescue window entirely.
Related
- The 30-Day Time Mechanic Explained — The calendar that turns two endings into failure states and four endings into rescues.
- First 30 Days: A Survival Guide for New Dawnwalkers — Early habits that keep the time system from collapsing the ending you actually want.
- The Court System Explained: How 41 Activities Unlock Brencis — The Anger meter is what unlocks the Boyar fights that gate every quest-led ending.
- The Infamy System — How notoriety flips the Turncoat ending from unreachable to on-path.