'Upon dying, you will be revived at the last site of grace that you visited. You will drop any runes in your possession at the site of your death. If you die again before reclaiming those runes, they will be lost forever.' The Sites of Lost Grace are the canon's metaphysical infrastructure : small motes of gold, fluttering above the ground at fixed sacred points, which the Tarnished can rest at to recover, memorise spells, level up via the Finger Maiden, and fast-travel between. Each is a leak from the Erdtree's central grace : the Erdtree, dying, sheds gold faster than it can keep, and the gold-motes that drift outward find earth and stay lit. Some are at obvious places, castle gates, road forks, ruin courtyards. Some are deep underground, in caves or in dragon-bones. Each is a possible second-chance.

'Staff of the astrologers. A glintstone is embedded in the tip, enabling it to be used a catalyst for sorceries. Sorceries must be memorized first at a site of lost grace, and a staff must be equipped to cast them.' The grace at these sites is described as 'lost' precisely because the Tarnished's lineage was once given grace by Marika, then stripped of it, then partly returned now that Marika has shattered. The grace at a Site of Lost Grace is what the Erdtree is leaking, not what it is giving. Some sites only flare in the presence of a Tarnished whose Maiden Melina has approved the path : these mark the canonical questline. Others stay lit even with no Tarnished present : they are the Erdtree's involuntary scars. The geography of the canon is mapped, in the deepest reading, by where a tree that has been broken can no longer hold itself together.