Bloodborne Secret Ending Explained: How to Unlock Childhood's Beginning

Most players finish Bloodborne without ever realizing they were one item away from its best finale. The Bloodborne secret ending — officially titled Childhood's Beginning — isn't unlocked by a hidden door or a cryptic NPC quest, but by a piece of preparation most hunters never bother with: consuming three Third Umbilical Cords before the final conversation in the Hunter's Dream. Skip that step and the Bloodborne secret ending is locked away until New Game Plus. This guide covers the requirements, every cord location, and the two-boss gauntlet standing between you and one of the strangest finales FromSoftware has ever written.

The Three Endings of Bloodborne, Compared

Structurally, Bloodborne always ends the same way. Once you defeat Mergo's Wet Nurse in the Nightmare of Mensis, the Hunter's Dream catches fire, the workshop burns, and Gehrman waits in the back garden. Your answer to his offer decides everything — and only one of the three outcomes is hidden behind a requirement the game never explains.

Notice the pattern: refusing Gehrman is only the halfway point. The Bloodborne secret ending requires a second fight that most first-time players never see, because the Moon Presence only appears if you've already transformed yourself.

What Makes the Bloodborne Secret Ending Different

The other two endings are about escape and duty. Yharnam Sunrise lets you walk away from the hunt; Honoring Wishes traps you in Gehrman's role, doomed to guide the next hunter. Childhood's Beginning is the only ending where the player stops being human altogether.

The Third Umbilical Cord item text hints at why. Great Ones lose their children and spend eternity seeking a surrogate, and the cords are the physical remnants of that loss. Consuming three of them gives your hunter the "eyes on the inside" that the Healing Church spent generations chasing — enough insight to resist the Moon Presence instead of being absorbed by it.

That's the lore justification for a mechanical requirement. The cords are not collectibles or flavor text; each one you consume is a permanent flag on your save file. Two cords and you're still a mortal. Three cords and the Moon Presence has something new to deal with.

How to Unlock the Bloodborne Secret Ending, Step by Step

The sequence matters more than the individual steps. Here's the full checklist, in order.

You can consume cords the moment you pick them up — there's no reason to save them. Doing it early removes any risk of forgetting before the final prompt.

Common mistakes that lock you out

• Carrying instead of consuming. The single most common error. The cords must be used from your inventory; having three in your bag does nothing.
• Answering Gehrman first. Once you pick "Submit Your Life" or "Refuse," the ending is decided. There's no dialogue option to back out.
• Stopping at two cords. Two is functionally identical to zero. You need three consumed.
• Sending Arianna to the wrong place. If you direct her to Iosefka's Clinic instead of Oedon Chapel, you lose one of the four cord sources.

All Four Third Umbilical Cord Locations

Bloodborne only requires three cords, and four exist per playthrough. That slack is deliberate — it means one missed source won't ruin your run, as long as you find the others.

A few practical notes, based on community reports:

• Arianna must be sent to Oedon Chapel early, and you need to exhaust her dialogue. After the Blood Moon, return to the chapel and interact with her to claim the cord.
• Imposter Iosefka is the easiest to miss. Return to the clinic after the Blood Moon and fight her; the cord is a guaranteed drop.
• The Abandoned Old Workshop cord is available far earlier than the others, which makes it the safest one to grab first.
• Mergo's Wet Nurse is unmissable if you're finishing the game, since she gates the endgame trigger anyway.

Beating Gehrman and the Moon Presence

Both fights happen back to back with no lamp between them. If you die to the Moon Presence, you restart at Gehrman — so treat them as one long encounter and manage your Blood Vials accordingly.

Gehrman, the First Hunter. He's human-sized, which means gun parries and visceral attacks are your best tools. Stay mid-range, bait his scythe swings, and punish the recovery frames. The gravestones in the arena block his dash attacks and give you breathing room to heal.

The Moon Presence. A very different problem: huge, aggressive, and loaded with a grab that drops you to a single hit point. Keep close to its legs to avoid the long-range sweeps, apply fire or bolt paper, and heal the instant that grab lands. Its health pool is smaller than Gehrman's, so a patient close-range approach usually wins.

Seeing all three endings in one playthrough

Bloodborne doesn't let you rewind after the credits, and finishing the game throws you into New Game Plus. According to player experience, the standard workaround is a manual save backup: upload your save to cloud storage right before talking to Gehrman, get one ending, download the backup, and repeat. Back up before consuming cords if you want to see Yharnam Sunrise and Honoring Wishes without the extra bosses.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can you still get the Bloodborne secret ending after defeating Gehrman? No. The cord requirement is checked the moment you answer Gehrman's offer. If you refuse without three cords consumed, you get Honoring Wishes and the Moon Presence never appears.

Do you need all four Third Umbilical Cords for the Bloodborne secret ending? No — three is the threshold. Four exist per playthrough specifically so a missed source doesn't invalidate the run. Just make sure the three you do have are actually consumed.

Does the secret ending unlock anything gameplay-wise? Only the Gold trophy and the ending itself. There's no weapon, outfit, or stat bonus attached, and the game still pushes you toward New Game Plus afterward.

Is Childhood's Beginning considered the canon ending? FromSoftware has never confirmed a canon, but community discussion overwhelmingly treats it as the "true" ending because it's the only one where the hunter ascends rather than submits. For more on the game itself, see the official Bloodborne page on PlayStation.com.

Getting the Bloodborne secret ending is less about skill and more about foresight. Collect the cords early, consume them immediately, and refuse Gehrman with three of them behind you — then survive two fights and watch the sky change.