Brencis, the vampire lord of Vale Sangora, is the final antagonist of The Blood of Dawnwalker, yet you meet him in combat during the Prologue at the close of the mission “Bad Blood.” The game stages that duel as a loss meant to launch Coen’s story. It is not truly unwinnable, though. With nothing but the starting sword and armor, an expert player can defeat him early and finish the game hours in.
Quick answer: Yes, you can beat Brencis in the Prologue. Win the first form, survive his true form in the Anachora arena, and the game ends there. You keep your family’s fate but lose every companion ending, since you never reach Vale Sangora to meet them.
How the Prologue Brencis fight is structured
The fight has two distinct stages, and the difficulty spikes hard between them. The first stage is manageable, especially on Story difficulty, because Brencis is predictable once you learn his timing. You win it by parrying his attacks and avoiding the moves you cannot block. He flings a blood projectile when he stands at range, and he summons blood weapons to slash at you when he closes in.
The real wall is the second stage. Beating his first form plays a cutscene where Coen knocks him back, and the enraged vampire teleports Coen to the game’s true final battle in Anachora, the vampiric afterlife. There you face his true form, Brencis, Grotesque Ascendant. You start that fight with full health, but a single hit from him kills you outright, while Coen’s under-leveled starter sword barely dents his large health bars. That combination is what makes the encounter, in the developers’ own words, a “feat worthy of legends.”
Note: Reaching Anachora immediately unlocks the Greifberg Castle region, the fortress where the climactic Brencis fight normally happens, and grants the Realmwalker achievement for visiting Anachora for the first time.
What happens when you win
Defeating Brencis this early ends the game. He reacts in disbelief, and the Prologue version of the fight includes a few unique lines you never hear anywhere else. He remarks that he “just turned you,” and he notes that while he took your family, he also took “a little time to get to know them.” Neither line appears when you beat him the normal way later in the story.
Bandai Namco has confirmed this is a genuine, intended ending. Only a couple of developers at Rebel Wolves managed it internally, and the studio described it as “extremely hard to actually do.” Beating him at this point is expected to trigger one of the game’s seven endings, most likely The Folk Hero ending, which is the outcome tied to killing Brencis without help from any of the game’s potential allies.
What you keep and what you lose
The fate of your family lands the same way it does across most endings. If your mother survived the Mass, which depends on brewing her medicine correctly, then your whole family stays alive. Coen’s own ending also plays out as if he practiced witchcraft, even though ending the game in the Prologue means he never touched it.
The biggest cost is everything you skip. Because you never travel through Vale Sangora, you never meet the companions who each carry their own minor ending. That includes Anca, Lacra, Ocha, Vicho, and Crake, among others. In a narrative-driven RPG built around those relationships, cutting the game short at the Prologue removes a large share of its payoff.
| Outcome | Beating Brencis in the Prologue |
|---|---|
| Ending triggered | Likely The Folk Hero (one of seven endings) |
| Family survival | Same as normal, mother lives if the Mass medicine was brewed correctly |
| Coen’s ending | Plays as if he practiced witchcraft, even without doing so |
| Companion minor endings | All lost, no travel through Vale Sangora |
| Unique dialogue | “I just turned you” and the “get to know them” lines |
| Extras unlocked | Greifberg Castle region and the Realmwalker achievement |
How hard it really is
Expect the second form to demand a near-perfect run. Since one attack ends you, the fight requires flawless parry and dodge reads while you slowly chip through his health, which stretches the encounter out considerably. Many players can clear the first form repeatedly and still fail the Grotesque Ascendant stage, because that form is balanced for a fully leveled Coen. Plan on hundreds of attempts and very sharp reflexes if you want to see it through.
You will know it worked when the second-stage fight in Anachora ends and the game rolls into its ending sequence instead of resetting the Prologue. If you would rather experience the full story, the intended path is to lose that first duel and carry on into Vale Sangora, where the companion arcs and their endings open up.
