Hollow Knight: Silksong Ending Explained: Grand Mother Silk, Lace, the Weavers and Every Ending Before Sea of Sorrow

More than a year after launch, Hollow Knight: Silksong is still one of the most discussed games of the decade, and with Team Cherry’s free Sea of Sorrow expansion due in 2026, players are revisiting Pharloom to make sense of everything that happened. Who is Grand Mother Silk? Why was Hornet kidnapped? What is Lace, and how do you get the true ending? Here is the Silksong ending explained, together with the full Hollow Knight: Silksong lore, from the origin of the Weavers to every ending and the secret third act.

We clearly separate what the game itself shows, what Team Cherry has said, and the fan interpretations that try to fill the gaps. Silksong tells most of its story through dialogue, item descriptions and environments, so anything that goes beyond that is marked as speculation.

⚠️ Spoiler Warning ⚠️ This article spoils the full story of Hollow Knight: Silksong, including Act 3 and all endings, as well as key parts of the original Hollow Knight.

🧾 Quick Facts: Hollow Knight: Silksong at a Glance

• Game: Hollow Knight: Silksong by Team Cherry, released on September 4, 2025 for PC, Nintendo Switch, Switch 2, PlayStation 4, PS5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S
• Protagonist: Hornet, princess-protector of Hallownest and daughter of the Pale King and Herrah the Beast
• Setting: Pharloom, a kingdom of pilgrims climbing toward the Citadel at its peak
• Main villain: Grand Mother Silk, a higher being, Pharloom’s true monarch and the source of all Silk
• Structure: three acts, Pharloom, Citadel of Song and Abyss
• Endings: Weaver Queen, Twisted Child, Snared Silk and the true ending Sister of the Void, plus the bonus ending Passing of the Age
• What’s next: the free, nautically themed expansion Sea of Sorrow, announced for 2026

🕷️ Before Pharloom: Who Is Hornet?

Hornet is one of the most important characters of the original Hollow Knight. She is the daughter of the Pale King, ruler of Hallownest, and Herrah the Beast, the spider queen of Deepnest. When the Infection threatened Hallownest, the Pale King needed three Dreamers to keep the Hollow Knight’s seal in place. Herrah agreed to become one of them, but only if the king gave her a child. That child was Hornet.

Because she shares a father with the Vessels, Hornet is the half-sister of the Hollow Knight and of the Knight, the silent hero of the first game. Through her mother, she carries the blood of the Weavers, and that is the key to everything that happens in Silksong. Only the Weavers, their descendants and Grand Mother Silk can produce Silk, and Hornet can do exactly that.

🧵 Hollow Knight: Silksong Lore Explained: Grand Mother Silk and the Weavers

The history of Pharloom is told in fragments, but the core is clear. Long ago, the land was home to many kingdoms and tribes, such as the Order of Karak and the Verdanians. Then a pale higher being appeared: Grand Mother Silk, the primal source of Silk. She displaced the old powers and used her threads to evolve the Pharlids, small instinct-driven arachnids, into the Weavers. She told them they were her daughters and that they were divine, which was a lie.

At first, the Weavers served their “mother” and sustained her light with their song. Eventually, they turned on her. They lulled Grand Mother Silk to sleep, sealed her in the Cradle at the top of the kingdom and built a whole religion around her prison. The Citadel beneath the Cradle used song and prayer to keep her dormant, while her threads were harvested for the Citadel’s own use. Pilgrims were lured from across Pharloom and even from the surface with promises of reward, and those who reached the Citadel were made to sing in its Choir. Most of them never knew what they were really singing for.

The Weavers came to realize that Grand Mother Silk would always be the true monarch of Pharloom. In hidden Weavenests, they built traps and bindings to free themselves from her for good, including the Snare Setter, but every attempt failed. In the end, many Weavers fled Pharloom. A group of them, including Herrah, ended up in Hallownest. The ones who stayed behind faded away, and the Citadel’s Conductors seized control of the kingdom.

👻 What Is the Haunting? Why Hornet Was Kidnapped

Much of Pharloom has fallen silent under the Haunting by the time Hornet arrives.

Even asleep, Grand Mother Silk was never powerless. For generations, the physicians of the Citadel’s Whiteward placed Silk inside bugs to prolong their lives, and over time threads seeped into the shells of Pharloom’s people. That made it easy for the slumbering monarch to seize control of them. The result is the Haunting, a curse that pulls bugs, beasts and even corpses on invisible strings and drives them to madness. The Citadel was among the first places to fall. Grand Mother Silk’s goal is to bind all the souls of Pharloom into one mind devoted to her forever.

To fully wake, she needed Silk, and she sent her haunted choir bugs beyond Pharloom to hunt down descendants of the Weavers. Some time after the events of Hollow Knight, they found Hornet in Hallownest and carried her off in a cage sealed with a rune. At the entrance to Pharloom, a Silk Fly breaks the rune, Hornet breaks free and falls into the depths of the kingdom. That is where Silksong begins.

⛪ Act 1 and Act 2: The Climb to the Citadel of Song

Act 1, simply called Pharloom, follows Hornet’s climb from the Moss Grotto through Bone Bottom, the Deep Docks, Greymoor, Shellwood and other areas toward the Citadel. She wants answers from her captors. Along the way, she meets the mysterious fencer Lace, who taunts her, fights her in the Deep Docks and seems to know a lot about Hornet’s fall from the cage. Hornet enters the Citadel either by ringing five Bellshrines and defeating the Last Judge at the Grand Gate, or by defeating Lace’s discarded sibling Phantom.

Act 2, Citadel of Song, reveals the truth. Almost everyone in the Citadel is haunted, and Grand Mother Silk raises the corpses of its former inhabitants against Hornet. Hornet realizes that a higher being is behind the Haunting and vows to confront it. To reach the Cradle, she has to learn the Threefold Melody, made of the Conductor’s Melody, the Architect’s Melody and the Vaultkeeper’s Melody, and play it at the lift to the top.

🎭 Who Is Lace in Silksong?

At the top of the lift, Lace challenges Hornet a second time. After her defeat, the truth comes out: Lace is Grand Mother Silk’s daughter, a bug spun entirely from her mother’s Silk. She was made to be the loyal child the Weavers never were, one who would want her mother to wake up. Her body is frail, and she sees herself as broken. As Hornet climbs higher, Lace becomes convinced that her mother wants Hornet instead of her. Phantom, her sibling, had already been thrown away when their Silk began to fray.

This makes Lace one of Silksong’s most tragic characters. She is not simply a rival, but a mirror of Hornet: both are daughters shaped by powerful parents for a purpose they never chose.

👑 Silksong Ending Explained: Weaver Queen

In the Cradle, Hornet finally faces Grand Mother Silk. If the player has not prepared anything special, the fight ends with the Weaver Queen ending. Hornet binds the higher being’s power and takes her place. Threads pour down from the Cradle until the Citadel is completely wrapped in Silk, and Hornet, curled up at its center, grows six extra arms.

So is the Weaver Queen ending good or bad? Team Cherry has deliberately left that open. In a November 2025 Bloomberg interview, the developers indicated that the ending is meant to be ambiguous. Hornet has defeated the monarch, but she has also become what she fought: the new ruler at the top of Pharloom’s web, exactly the fate her mother hoped she could escape.

🌱 The Twisted Child Ending

The second alternative ending depends on a curse. If Hornet gives the Twisted Bud to Greyroot in Shellwood during the Rite of Rebirth wish, the bud infests her shell and locks her into the Cursed Crest. If she defeats Grand Mother Silk while still cursed, without curing herself through the Infestation Operation wish, vines burst from her shell and ensnare the higher being. Hornet, Grand Mother Silk and the Cradle are overgrown and turned into roots, a crack appears and a scream rings out before the screen goes black.

The game never explains what exactly hatches, so the Twisted Child ending remains the most mysterious of all. The most common reading is that both Hornet and the monarch are consumed, but anything beyond that is speculation.

🔔 The Snared Silk Ending and How Act 3 Begins

Helping Pharloom’s bugs through countless wishes is what opens the path to the true ending.

Players who help the people of Pharloom through a long list of wishes eventually unlock Silk and Soul, a wish from the Caretaker. He is a disguised Snail Shaman who has been hiding from Grand Mother Silk and knows of a trap that could unseat her without Hornet having to take the crown. To build the Soul Snare, Hornet collects the Maiden’s Soul from the Chapel Maid, the Hermit’s Soul from the Bell Hermit, the Seeker’s Soul from a fallen Snail Shaman in Bilewater and the Weavers’ old Snare Setter.

After the fight with Grand Mother Silk, Hornet plays her Needolin instead of binding her. The trap binds the monarch to the Void and opens a portal into the Abyss. Grand Mother Silk grabs Hornet to drag her down too, but Lace intervenes. She cuts off her mother’s arm, stabs her with her pin and frees Hornet, then falls into the Void together with her mother. This is the Snared Silk ending. After the credits, the save file is covered in black threads, and reopening it starts Act 3: Abyss.

🌑 Act 3 Explained: The Void and the Everbloom

The trap did not simply kill Grand Mother Silk. Inside the Void, she spins a protective cocoon around Lace to save her daughter, even after Lace betrayed her. She has to keep renewing it as the Void eats away at the outside, and because her threads still reach across Pharloom, the Void climbs up through them. Bugs and bosses fall under the Void’s control, quakes shake the kingdom and Bone Bottom is almost destroyed.

Hornet descends into the Abyss, where a projection of Lace waits on the shore of a sea of Void. To survive a dive into it, Hornet needs the Everbloom. She finds it in a “Red Memory”, where the White Lady, queen of Hallownest and the one who raised Hornet, presents it to her. Hollow Knight fans know this flower as the Delicate Flower, brought to Hallownest by the Great Knight Ze’mer. Its pale light wards off the Void, and Hornet uses her Silk to make the memory real.

💫 Silksong True Ending Explained: Sister of the Void

With the Everbloom, Hornet dives into the Void sea and reaches Grand Mother Silk’s cocoon. Inside, Lace has been taken over by the Void and attacks as Lost Lace, the final boss. Once Hornet defeats her, the Void’s hold loosens. Hornet picks up the unconscious Lace and asks Grand Mother Silk for Silk. In her final act, the mother gives it, and Hornet uses Silk Soar to escape with Lace while the higher being is left behind to be consumed.

The climb is not enough. The Everbloom’s power gives out and black tendrils close in, but then the Knight from the original Hollow Knight appears in the Void together with its siblings and carries Hornet and Lace safely to the surface. With Grand Mother Silk dead, her Void-soaked threads vanish from Pharloom and the Haunting ends. Lace wakes up and shares a quiet moment with Hornet. This is Sister of the Void, Silksong’s true ending, and the name says it all: Hornet, the half-sister of the Vessels, is saved by the Void-born family she shares a father with.

If players also completed Mister Mushroom’s wish, an extra scene called Passing of the Age follows, showing him flying off into the sky before the words “To Be Continued” appear.

🔗 How Silksong Connects to Hollow Knight

• The Weavers: Hollow Knight’s Weavers’ Den in Deepnest finally makes sense. These were the Weavers who fled Pharloom, and Silksong explains why they left.
• Herrah’s bargain: Hornet’s very existence is the result of a deal between a Weaver queen and the Pale King, and Silksong is the story of what her Weaver blood means.
• The Void: the same force that filled the Vessels and saved Hallownest becomes both a weapon and a threat in Pharloom.
• The White Lady and the Delicate Flower: Hornet’s adoptive mother and one of the first game’s most famous items return through the Red Memory.
• The Knight: the true ending reunites the half-siblings, a strong hint that the stories of both games are meant to be read together.

🧩 Fan Theories and Cut Content (Speculation)

Everything in this section goes beyond what the game confirms.

• A cut ending: dataminers found an unused ending called “Strung to Serve” in the game files, labelled as Ending B. It was never part of the released game, so it is not canon.
• What hatches in Twisted Child: some players believe a new being is born from the cracked remains, others read it as a pure death ending. The game gives no answer.
• Is Grand Mother Silk evil? Her final gift to Hornet and her sacrifice for Lace lead many fans to see her as a tragic figure rather than a pure villain. Team Cherry has not commented on this.
• Sea of Sorrow and cut areas: Pharloom’s early concept map, shown at the ACMI Game Worlds exhibition, included areas that were later cut or reworked. Fans hope the expansion brings some of them back, but this is unconfirmed.

🌊 What We Know About Sea of Sorrow

Sea of Sorrow, Silksong’s first expansion, takes Hornet to the sea.

Team Cherry announced Hollow Knight: Silksong – Sea of Sorrow on December 15, 2025, together with the news that more than seven million players had bought the game. It is a free, nautically themed expansion for all players with new areas, bosses and tools, and it is planned for 2026. As of this writing, Team Cherry has not announced an exact release date and has said it will share more details shortly before launch. How the expansion fits into the timeline after the endings is still a secret.

❓ Quick Questions About the Silksong Ending

What is the true ending of Silksong?
Sister of the Void. It requires completing the Silk and Soul wish, reaching the Snared Silk ending, playing through Act 3 and defeating Lost Lace in the Abyss.

How many endings does Silksong have?
Four main endings: Weaver Queen, Twisted Child, Snared Silk and Sister of the Void, plus the extra Passing of the Age scene.

Who is Grand Mother Silk?
A higher being, Pharloom’s true monarch and the primal source of Silk. She created the Weavers and Lace and is the cause of the Haunting.

Is Lace dead at the end of Silksong?
No. In the Sister of the Void ending, Hornet frees her from the Void and the Knight carries both of them back to the surface, where Lace wakes up.

Do you need to play Hollow Knight before Silksong?
It is not required, but knowing who Hornet, the Pale King, Herrah, the White Lady and the Knight are makes the endings far more meaningful.

Final Words

Hollow Knight: Silksong is a story about daughters and the roles they are made for. The Weavers rebelled against a false mother, Lace turned on a real one, and Hornet, who already stood guard over one dying kingdom, refuses to become another queen in a web. The true ending rewards players who care for Pharloom with a rare moment of peace, and Sea of Sorrow will show where Hornet sails next. Want more? Read how Hollow Knight: Silksong broke the internet, our complete Metroidvania genre guide or every Dark Souls ending explained next.

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Picture Source: Team Cherry (Steam), Team Cherry