Major spoilers ahead for Hollow Knight: Silksong.

Red Memory is a late-game, story-critical sequence in Hollow Knight: Silksong that sends Hornet into a crimson, dreamlike space built from her own past. It’s both a mechanics gate to the true ending path and a concentrated lore reveal, with deliberate callbacks to Hallownest and new clarity on Hornet’s lineage. The moment is underscored by its own score cue — “Red Memory” from the official soundtrack — which you can hear on the composer’s Bandcamp release.

How Red Memory unlocks

Red Memory sits inside Act III’s mainline quest and can’t be skipped if you’re on the track to the true ending. The broad outline:

  • Enter Act III after clearing the late Act II gate. Expect to meet the Snail Shamans and to be directed toward the Abyss, only to find the way blocked at first.
  • Acquire the traversal and awareness tools introduced around this point (you’ll need the high jump and the ability to reveal hidden routes), then return to the Shamans.
  • They’ll teach Hornet the Elegy of the Deep on her Needolin and open a new quest to retrieve three ancient “hearts.”

You collect any three of four hearts in whatever order you prefer. Each is hidden behind a bespoke combat/platforming gauntlet and a boss encounter, accessed by playing the Elegy at specific sites:

  • Hunter’s Heart: Reached by threading from Hunter’s March into a concealed Far Fields annex; culminates in a duel with a Skarrsinger.
  • Encrusted Heart: Buried in the Sands of Karak beyond a tall shaft and shellwork; you’ll fight through waves before facing the area’s monarch.
  • Pollen Heart: Discovered off the Grand Gate’s main elevator line via a breakable wall; guarded by a paired shrine fight.
  • Optional fourth heart: A separate chain in a verdant side area tied to an NPC rescue. It’s not required for Red Memory, and you can grab it before or after the sequence without locking anything out.

Once you’ve turned in three hearts to the Snail Shamans, they perform a ritual that drops Hornet into Red Memory.

What Red Memory actually is (and what you get)

Mechanically, Red Memory is a self-contained traversal and combat run-through that plays like a stitched-together memoryscape, with familiar silhouettes and motifs set against a pulsing, red backdrop.

Clear it, and Hornet receives the Everbloom — a late-game ability whose sole purpose is to let her descend past the void barrier in the Abyss. That unlocks the final stretch of Act III and the route to the campaign’s real last boss.

Note: Finishing Red Memory does not invalidate the optional fourth heart; if you skipped it, you can still return and complete that arena later.

Why this sequence matters for the story

Red Memory is where Silksong threads together callbacks to Hallownest with direct, personal beats about Hornet. Players encounter memory-echoes of key places — the great elevator architecture of the City of Tears, the Distant Village’s stag station, and the stark geometry that evokes the White Palace — while the score quotes that lineage. In parallel, a series of exchanges anchor Hornet’s identity: she’s positioned between Weaver and Wyrm heritage, and the game spells out the three-queen lineage that earlier entries only hinted at. You also see how those influences formed her — including explicit training under Vespa — and why Herrah made the choices that ultimately created Hornet.

A clever detail: when Hornet “remembers” Herrah before the Dreamer era, her face is indistinct. It lands as a character note as much as a stylistic one — this is a memory space, and Hornet didn’t spend enough time with that version of her mother to recall the fine features.

The design language of Red Memory

Silksong uses a tight set of visual and sonic cues to ground the space as otherworldly but personal: floating red motes, a steady heart-thrum in the mix, and a curated set of memory tableaux instead of literal flashbacks. The enemies and hazards here aren’t just difficulty spikes; they’re chosen to resonate with Hornet’s history — weavers’ techniques, void-touched forms, and court imagery all have a place.

There’s a strong thematic rhyme to the way you enter: three powerful hearts are offered to open a sealed realm, mediated by ritual and song. The game never labels Red Memory as one of Hollow Knight’s named dream planes, but the parallels to that cosmology are intentional enough to invite close reading without requiring it.

Practical prep before you go

  • Bring a build you can sustain: Red Memory leans on precision platforming into boss pressure. If you have a crest setup that trades bursts of damage for survivability, this is a good place to use it.
  • Top off permanent upgrades first: more masks and stronger needle tiers reduce the number of phases you need to execute cleanly. If you’ve been putting off optional gauntlets for shards or upgrade materials, finish them before you turn in the hearts.
  • Scout benches and shortcuts: the arenas that gate the hearts telegraph where you’ll respawn and how much you’ll need to redo on a failed attempt. Use nearby benches to minimize backtracking fatigue.
  • Expect difficulty spikes: one heart in particular strings dozens of wave encounters before its monarch fight. Treat these like endurance trials — conserve resources, learn enemy order, and reset if a wave goes off the rails early.

The music cue that ties it together

Christopher Larkin’s “Red Memory” binds the sequence with a restrained theme that weaves in silhouettes of earlier motifs. If you want to zero in on what you heard during the memory dive, it’s part of the official soundtrack and available to stream or purchase on Bandcamp.

After Red Memory: what changes

The immediate payoff is the Everbloom and the ability to push deeper into the Abyss. The narrative payoff is broader: Silksong uses the sequence to affirm canon that’s been teased for years and to position Hornet’s choices — both in Pharloom and beyond — against the legacy of three queens and a vanished king. From here, the final act moves quickly; if you’re chasing remaining side bosses or optional hearts, wrap them before you commit to the descent.

Red Memory works because it serves three roles at once without feeling mechanical: a key to the final door, a bridge to the prior game’s iconography, and a character study built from Hornet’s own recollection. It’s the moment Silksong stops alluding to her past and lets you walk through it.