Ember and Blade Bosses: Baphomet and the Judicators

Ember and Blade names three tiers of antagonist and only one of them has a playable fight. Knowing which is which saves you from reading boss lists that invent the rest.

Baphomet, the Turncoat Beast

Baphomet closes Act 1. He is the only boss in any public build, which makes him the only fight that can be described in specifics rather than in speculation.

What is documented about the fight:

• A Break gauge sits under his health bar. Emptying it stops him for a moment and multiplies the damage he takes, which makes the fight a two-bar problem rather than a damage race.
• The arena was rebuilt for Demo 2.0. His entrance sequence was remade to be more solemn, and the room around it was reworked to carry that presentation.
• The route to him telegraphs itself. Puddles turn from blue to red as you approach, the mid-boss room drops its lighting, and the ground shifts colour. The approach is the tutorial for the fight.
• He is also a training dummy. Since Demo 2.1 the Sanctuary dummy is a Baphomet dummy, complete with damage numbers — the cheapest way to learn how much damage a combo actually does.

Official media

How the fight is meant to be lost

Two failure modes account for most attempts. The first is chipping the health bar while the Break gauge refills — the boss heals nothing, but every second spent not breaking him is a second he spends resetting space. The second is arriving without stamina discipline: the arena has nowhere to hide and no trash to farm, so a run that enters depleted enters already behind.

Elites on the way in matter more than they look. Act 1's optional fights weaken him before the arena, which is the only lever the game gives you over the fight's starting conditions.

Arcanus and the Forsaken Library

Act 2's boss is Arcanus, the Faceless, and his arena is the Forsaken Library. His theme was released as a soundtrack single before the act was playable, built around a solo violin and described as the track that plays when a soul has lost everything.

Arcanus also settles the question of what "Judicator" means in practice: he is one of the boss-tier enemies the store page describes as once-mortal, and his fight is the first one the game promoted by name after Baphomet.

Arbor's Crucible and the Infernal Trial

Not every boss-shaped fight is in the campaign. Arbor's Crucible is a separate arena reached from the Sanctuary elevator, first opened during Steam Next Fest in October 2025.

The Infernal Trial is the event version: waves of enemies under randomised Blessings, scored on a global leaderboard, run as a limited-time window — the November 2025 edition ran from the 10th to December 8. Its leaderboard was split into Sword, Dagger and Hammer categories so that each style competed separately, with ten winners across three places.

The rewards are the interesting part: first place in each category gets a weapon variant named after them, adapted into the game's lore, plus a credit and a launch key. That is a competitive mode built on top of the same combat system, which is why the Crucible is the best place to test a build against something other than Act 1.

Each act appears to close on one of them, and only Act 1 has shipped, so the tier's shape is known while its members are not.

Judicators of Fate

The store page describes them directly: once mortals who sold their souls to become demons, now wielding immense power and devastating attacks. They are the tier the marketing copy leads with — the "Souls-like bosses" the game promises — and they sit above the act bosses rather than inside Act 1.

None of them is playable yet. No names have been published beyond the collective title, so any list of individual Judicators is invention.

Asmodeus

The archdemon the entire game is built around. He has been sealed for five hundred years inside the realm the game takes place in, and the seal is failing — which is why Fenrix is there, and why Ariella, its guardian, is suspicious of him.

Whether Asmodeus is fought, and in what form, is not public. He is the final tier by narrative position, not by any announced encounter design.

What the boss list will look like

The demo covers Act 1 of five acts. Acts 2 through 5 exist in the full game and arrive after Early Access begins, which means the boss list grows through 2027 rather than at launch.

That has one practical consequence for anyone planning a run: do not wait for a complete boss guide. Act 1's boss is the only one with a date attached to it, and the demo already contains him.