Radiance

The Radiance is a higher being who created the moth tribe and ruled over parts of Hallownest before The Pale King arrived. She is described as a light similar to Essence, but much brighter still. She is also said to represent "nature". In her Dream Nail dialogue, the Radiance suggests that the Void is her ancient enemy and that she refuses to be consumed by it.

After the Pale King arrived in Hallownest and expanded the minds of some species of bugs, the moth tribe turned their backs on her and worshipped the Pale King instead. The Radiance was almost entirely forgotten. However, traces of the Radiance's memory remained, and at a certain point, all of Hallownest began to dream of her. Most bugs resisted her memory, ultimately resulting in The Infection.

The Radiance offers unity to bugs but also a mind incapable of thought. She has the ability to leave bugs with broken minds and can enslave their wills.

The Pale King tried to stop the Infection by sealing the Radiance within The Hollow Knight, a Vessel that the Pale King thought to be without a mind and a will. However, the Hollow Knight was impure, leaving them susceptible to the Radiance's influence. Although sealed within the Hollow Knight, she was still able to influence bugs through their dreams. Eventually, her influence partially broke out of the Hollow Knight, reigniting the full power of the Infection and prompting the Knight to return to Hallownest.

During the events of the game, the Radiance tries on multiple occasions to kill the Knight directly, such as by instructing Myla to kill them, and using the body of Broken Vessel and those of the Watcher Knights as puppets. The Radiance is able to sense the Knight's progress as well, and will infect the Forgotten Crossroads when one of the Dreamer seals break or Broken Vessel has been killed and the Monarch Wings have been acquired.

In two of the endings (The Hollow Knight and Sealed Siblings) of the game, the Knight can seal the Radiance within themself, replacing the Hollow Knight. In the other endings (Dream no More and Embrace the Void), the Knight fights the Radiance in the dream realm and eventually consumes or kills her after having unified the Void.

Phase Breakdown
{{CollapseTable|More...| In general, panic heals are more costly here than in other fights; as SOUL is limited and damage intake is high for mistakes.

Phase 1
There is ample time when The Radiance is spawning, so use this time to hit her with nail attacks or spells. From here, The Radiance will use her attacks one after the other with ample time between, all while hovering above the floor and teleporting. The hardest attacks to avoid are typically the horizontal walls of swords and the homing projectiles. And as the attacks interval shrinks, it is important to be mindful of Shadow Dash cool-down for Wall of Light. With proper timing and spacing, all attacks (save homing spheres) are good opportunities for healing, though the safest options are the third salvo of the eye beam and a break in Spike Wall where the next wave requires no jump to avoid.

Phase 2
The Radiance continues using the same attacks, but will now create spikes across alternating halves of the platform. The restrained space makes it much harder to manoeuvre and to stall out the cooldown of the Shadow Dash. She will switch the location of the spikes every 5 seconds, outlining their new location with a golden glow for about 2 seconds as a warning before they actually emerge. Be sure to use the warning and not panic; take the time to avoid any in-progress attack before moving to safe ground. Keep in mind the spikes can be despawned by entering their hitbox, which can be done without taking damage if utilizing invincibility frames. However, these Spikes only deal one mask of damage, so if forced to take damage between these and other attacks, it is better to hit the spiked ground.

Phase 3
The Radiance will float in the centre of the platform, place spikes at the edges and endlessly rain down swords from above. This is generally not a good time to heal as the spikes come down in fairly short intervals. It is better to get through the phase as there is ample time before phase 3 starts to heal.

Phase 4
The Radiance resumes using all of her normal attacks but is now fought on a field of small platforms over the Void. To the player's advantage, they can gain a lot more distance from The Radiance to heal, as all attacks have a lot more ground to cover before reaching The Knight. Wall of Light is an especially good opportunity to heal, as the attack's sound can be heard when it is off-screen, making it easier to know well ahead of time when it is possible to heal. Though when it comes to approaching The Radiance for the offence, several things have to be taken into account: if she is off-screen when she is prepping her next attack, there is limited time to react appropriately, making it more likely to be caught mid-jump by an unexpected attack. In this case, it is much better to maintain distance and wait for the next opening.

Phase 5
The last phase involves ascending by jumping up platforms as The Radiance flees again. Her only attack in this phase is the Big Beam. Upon reaching the Radiance, hit her one more time with the Nail to end the fight and trigger the final sequence.

In the final sequence, The Radiance is bound by Void Tendrils and the shade of the Hollow Knight appears, tearing open a weak point on her face. The Knight bursts out of their body and becomes their Shade. Attacking causes the Shade to repeatedly whip The Radiance's weak point with long tendrils until it's defeated and dragged into the Void below. }}

Charm Sets
The Radiance is the true final boss of Hollow Knight. To access her, the player must have acquired Void Heart and have used the Dream Nail on The Hollow Knight when Hornet holds them down. The Radiance does not count as a dream battle, so The Hollow Knight will need to be fought from the beginning on every death.

In the first phase of the fight, she levitates slightly above the floor. Only her body is vulnerable to attack, which requires jumping or ranged attacks. She will often teleport around, making it even harder to get a good string of hits while avoiding her own ruthless attacks.

The Radiance does not deal contact damage; however, all of her attacks except summoning spikes will deal two masks damage upon hit. Falling off the platform will also only do one mask of damage.

=Absolute Radiance=

Absolute Radiance is the final boss in the Pantheon of Hallownest. She looks identical to the standard Radiance but has a bigger ring of light behind her. Her attacks are also almost identical, but Absolute Radiance's attacks come at a much faster pace. She also has an altered final phase. Defeating her will give either of two new endings.

Behaviour and Tactics
Absolute Radiance's fight contains the following attacks with any modifications stated:
 * Beam Burst: Near instantaneous sets of beams fired back to back.
 * Sword Burst: Now summons two sets of swords instead of just one.
 * Sword Rain: Swords come at quicker intervals and faster speeds.
 * Sword Wall: Swords travel fast enough to be jumped over instead of needing to dash.
 * Wall of Light: Absolute Radiance spends a very short period of time idle while the wall is summoned and can quickly perform another attack as soon as the wall reaches halfway point of the arena.
 * Orb: The colour of the orbs is much more yellow, they are much faster and take much tighter turns to home in onto the Knight. Absolute Radiance summons these about half a second apart which can lead to multiple crowding the screen. She summons up to 4 of these orbs.
 * Spike Floor No changes.
 * Big Beam The beam is slightly thinner and only flashes for a few milliseconds before fading instead of lingering. The beams also come at faster intervals with each beam starting just as the last one ends.
 * Orb Barrage The only new attack features slower orbs but are constantly fired as soon as one fades. These orbs behave much more like Standard Radiance's orbs and will disappear if lead off-screen. This attack only happens in Phase 6.

Phase 6
Absolute Radiance's new phase happens only on two small platforms that must be navigated between to score hits. During this phase Absolute Radiance will only use the Orb Barrage attack; she will pause for a second to summon one Orb and then teleport to another portion of the screen to summon another one and the process is repeated. For this phase, it is best to focus on dodging the orbs and only attack Absolute Radiance if she teleports within reach. Although she can only teleport between three locations (left, right and centre), it is hard to predict her exact patterns and chasing her is fruitless as it will usually cause the Knight to run into an Orb.

After all her health has been depleted she will teleport to the middle position and continue to spawn orbs while staying stationary. However, she still requires another additional hit from the Nail to finish the fight.

Trivia

 * There is a statue of The Radiance at the top of the map in Hallownest's Crown where a Pale Ore can be found. Dream Nailing this statue will yield the lines:


 * "...Remember... Light..."


 * Through HUD manipulation, The Radiance is shown to actually have 3000 health, though the "fight" portion of the battle ends when she reaches 1300 health, effectively requiring the player to only have to deal 1700 damage to win the fight.


 * Along with Nightmare King Grimm, The Radiance is one of the only bosses that has a fullscreen title card.


 * The Radiance is confirmed to be female from developer commentary on Slack, as well as from developer notes regarding the Seer:


 * The moth tribe were (perhaps) descended from Radiance. However, the King convinced them somehow to seal Radiance away. I guess so he could rule Hallownest with his singular vision, as a monarch/god with no other gods. The moths sealed Radiance away by forgetting about her. Hallownest was born and flourished. However, the memory of Radiance lingered (eg the statue at Hallownest's crown) and soon she began to reappear in dreams and starting exerting influence. The King and the bugs of Hallownest resisted this memory/power and it started to manifest as the infection. Thus the first attempt to seal Radiance failed, and the King had to try another method - the Vessel.


 * The Radiance is one of the two bosses, excluding statues in the Hall of Gods, that must be challenged to a battle, the other being the Mantis Lords. While the Mantis Lords will have to be challenged every time, the Radiance's intro is abridged after the first time fighting it, causing her to attack directly upon entering her arena.


 * The Absolute Radiance has no proper Hunter's Journal entry. Defeating her unlocks instead the Radiance's entry if it was not already unlocked.


 * The Radiance fight is one of four fights in the game where an NPC aids the player; the other three are Traitor Lord with Cloth, The Hollow Knight with Hornet and Uumuu with the aid of Quirrel.


 * The Design of The Radiance appears to be based off a Silkworm Moth.


 * The Radiance being called "Light" could be a reference to real moths, as they are attracted to light sources.


 * Upon the ending sequence with Radiance's defeat The Knight breaks open their shell and reveals the Lord of Shades within.


 * Defeating The Absolute Radiance is not necessary to unlock her in the Hall of Gods.