Little Match Girl
BLACK SOULS · Deep route · Optional
Andersen's frozen child, found only by 13.7% of players in the deepest reaches of the route structure. One of the saddest fights in the game — and the series knows it.
Where and when
Little Match Girl is Elma's failed-rescue boss state. It appears when Elma is not rescued safely and the four-princess progression advances, so fighting it means giving up Elma's companion route for that cycle.
Location
Outside the burned Match Shop in Old Rotten Burg after the failure state.
Prerequisites
- Meet Elma at the Match Shop, then deliberately allow her rescue route to fail.
- Advance through the four-princess state until the shop burns and the transformed boss appears.
- Use a branch save if the cycle also needs Elma End.
Attack cues and responses
Loadout
- A late-route general build and broad recovery
- A pre-rescue branch save for comparing Elma and boss outcomes
Rewards
- Little Match Girl achievement
- Little Match Girl tale / hostile-route reward
Route risks
- Creating this boss closes Elma's companion route and Elma End for the cycle.
- The precise failure can involve rescue timing, the living Pied Piper, or reaching the princess deadline; capture each condition separately.
First-hand verification backlog
Capture these in one documented Steam-version run before this page becomes indexable:
- Match Shop before and after the failure
- Lamia, Pied Piper and four-princess failure variants
- Transformed spawn outside the shop
- Full attack log and rewards
Context and planning notes
At 13.7%, she is the fourth-rarest kill in BLACK SOULS, below the Cursed Siblings and above only the Golden Goose, Jeanne and Catherine. You do not stumble into her; you reach her by following deep routes.
The source story is a child freezing to death while selling matches, warming herself on visions. Expect a fight built on that imagery, and expect it to hurt for non-mechanical reasons.
The sequel's Fairy Tale [The Little Match Girl] ('Warm...', 34.1%) is her epitaph — notably easier to find than the fight itself, as if the series wanted her remembered even by those who never met her.