Lhutel is named the headless because she chose to be, the same self-inflicted curse the Mausoleum Knights as an order chose, undertaken first, by a captain whose command they would later inherit. The Lhutel the Headless Spirit Ash description preserves her arc in three sentences : 'Spirit of a headless knight who leads the mausoleum soldiers. Wields a lance enrobed in Death and hurls spectral lances at foes. Lhutel sacrificed her life so that in Death she could continue to protect a soulless demigod until their revival, earning her the hero's honor of Erdtree Burial.'

What that gloss does not name is which soulless demigod she protects. The Wandering Mausoleums carry the bodies of the demigods whose Empyrean candidacy was stripped or whose flesh, spared from Erdtree-burial, the Greater Will would not accept back. Lhutel was a captain in the order that chose Death over the loss of a charge : she beheaded herself first, before the formal Mausoleum Knight rite was codified, and her ashes still summon the lance of a knight who hurls spectral spears identical to those her order would later master. Her Erdtree burial, granted, in canon's strangest twist, by the very Erdtree she had chosen Death to protect against, is the oldest example of an honour the Lands Between had not yet decided how to refuse.