The Mist Walkthrough

Hornet's journey through Hollow Knight: Silksong can carry you in one of two directions as you make your way upward through Pharloom and toward the Citadel. While most will find the path to the northwest through the Blasted Steps the main route, there is an optional route to the Citadel that will take you through a mysterious area called The Mist.

This guide walks through how to get to The Mist in Silksong, how to get through The Mist, and how to defeat the boss responsible for creating this maze-like area so that you can begin Act 2 and enter the Citadel.

How to Get to The Mist in Silksong

Map to The Mist

The above map includes the path from Halfway Home to unlock the elevator.

There are two different entrances to the Mist in Silksong, which is less of an actual region and more of a barrier connecting both the Sinner's Road and Bilewater to the Citadel's Choral Chambers above. The earliest you can reach this area is after getting the Cling Grip by defeating the Sister Splinter in Shellwood, and then free Bellhart by defeating the Widow, as you will also need the Needolin ability to progress.

Directions to The Mist from Greymoor

The most straightforward way is by traveling up through Sinner's Road, which you can reach from the tops of the mills above Greymoor once you have the ability to wall-jump. If you've already unlocked the elevator at Halfway Home, you can skip this part. Otherwise, here's how to get it and make your way to Sinner's Road:

From Halfway Home, go left two rooms toward the tall mill-like room with the platforms patrolled by the Silk Snippers. Make your way up, and after the platforms surrounded by the two spinning spike wheels, go right and climb the wall up using the Cling Grip.

Continue right, and face off (or run past) the Thread Raker up on this higher level. In the next room, cross the gap again, following the sign to the elevator.

One more room over and you'll be above Halfway Home! Activate the elevator by standing on the button, and get a quick rest at Halfway Home if you need it. If not, continue on across by hopping on top of the elevator and jumping to the hanging platform on the right that's guarded by an obnoxious Fluttermite.

Continue right, pogoing on the balloon to reach the next platform where another Fluttermite hovers. You can go past it, jumping up to the larger platform on the right. Here, you can hop up the the platforms and take the narrow vertical path up to wall jump to the entrance to Sinner's Road.

Getting Through Sinner's Road

After reaching Sinner's Road, your goals is to travel to the first large main vertical room. If you haven't been here before, try to move quickly while staying atop the cages in the first room. Then, in the tall room, do not hit the switch (shown in the left screenshot above) and climb all the way to the top, past a room with Shakra and a Bench you need to fix by breaking the roots that have messed up its gears, and up to a long horizontal room.

Travel all the way to the left over the spiked traps and under the large enemy, and climb up the far left wall to strike at it and reveal a secret passage.

The Sinner's Road also has an entrance to Bilewater if you take the opposite route further east, which then loops around above and over Sinner's Rest to reveal a second path to The Mist. You're more likely to find this route if you've already reached the Citadel, as there's a secondary entrance to Bilewater by falling down from the Underworks. However, since you can't get the map to Bilewater until you've gained the ability to double jump, we highly recommend using the Sinner's Road route.

Jump to a section:

• How to Get Through The Mist
  • How to Defeat Wraiths
• The Exhaust Organ
  • Exhaust Organ Boss Fight

How to Get Through The Mist in Silksong

Regardless of which point of entry you take, you'll arrive in the same courtyard area littered with the corpses of bugs, and a few glowing butterflies that will float off ahead through the far door.

In fact, this little detail is your biggest clue for how to get through The Mist instead of getting lost for an eternity!

Miranda's TLDR for Getting Through the Mist 🐻

Play the Needolin near the white butterflies, and they'll fly to the door you need use as an exit. The Mist rooms are randomized, and the one enemy type you'll find here — Wraiths — drain your silk in addition to doing damage.

As soon as you enter the next area, you'll find that The Mist is actually comprised of completely random rooms with several entrances and exits. Take the wrong exit, and you'll keep finding yourself in different trap-filled rooms with no way out.

Be aware: if you fall down one of the bottomless pits, you'll get transported back to the start, no matter how far you've gone.

These large areas are filled with mist, making it hard to spot a way forward, but the difficulty doesn't stop there. These areas are lined with traps, and can take the form of swinging radial spikes to bounce off, ceiling spikes that can fall down from above, floor spikes that can thrust out with very little warning, and hanging cages that can fall a moment after you land on them.

There is only one enemy type in this area, but can be a real pain to deal with: Wraiths. These silken specters will float around and shriek at you before diving in your direction. If you get caught in their grab, you'll take double damage and lose some of your Silk — which is also a necessary resource in this area.

How to Defeat Wraiths

Thankfully, beating Wraiths just requires you to completely focus on countering. The moment you draw their attention, find a sturdy platform to brace yourself on. Wait for them to dash from the side, then jump and slash downward once as they pass. It may not sound like you're doing damage, but don't worry. Simply rinse and repeat until they vanish before moving on, and you can also use tools like the Threefold Pin to damage at range.

Tip for defeating Wraiths from IGN's Silksong reviewer, Tom Marks:
"The feedback when you hit Wraiths seems like it's not working, but you CAN kill them. Tool weapons seem especially effective because you can keep your distance! Be wary of a ton of traps, too."

How to Find the Correct Exit

The Mist may feel like an endless nightmare, but there is one key trick to making it through: the glowing white butterflies. Each of the randomized rooms always contains several clusters of 2-3 butterflies by a platform. Carefully make your way to one (making sure to clear any Wraiths nearby first) and then play your Needolin. After a few moments, the butterflies will pulse softly, and then begin to fly off in a direction.

Follow the fleeing butterflies, and you'll find that whichever room exit they take is your path forward. Just be sure not to get too overzealous chasing them. If you can, just get a sense for which direction they are heading, and use a second cluster to pinpoint the exit as needed -- but don't sabatoge yourself by racing alongside them so quickly you hit a trap and fall into a pit!

After three rooms, you'll hit a checkpoint of sorts as you pass through a long linear passage with more butterflies, alerting you that you're halfway to the goal.

You should only need to pass through two more areas with the help of the glowing butterflies. Expect traps and Wraiths to be more numerous, so take your time and always be sure you have a path to follow the butterflies. Once you pass a second long tunnel, you'll find yourself finally free of The Mist.

The Mist

The Exhaust Organ

The pathway leading from The Mist will bring you to a large structure where the mist is spilling out from: The Exhaust Organ. It seems all this time the maze had been created from a bellowing musical organ, but once you defeat whoever is controlling it, the Mist will disappear!

Enter this structure, which is fairly desolate apart from a few Drapeflies that will flutter down from the ceilings to swoop at you. The structure itself isn't too big, but has a few twisting pathways up to the organ itself.

Move right into a large, two-tiered entrance room. Jump up to the upper platform and look to the left for a pathway up to a room with a Bench to rest at before making the climb up to the organ.

From the Bench, head back down and to the right to find the twisting columns of damaging steam being pushed out by the organ. Wait for the steam in the first column to dissipate, and quickly wall-jump upwards to find an alcove on the right to ride out the next blast.

Quickly hop up and alternate sides to avoid the spikes until you can jump left to catch a breather between two exhaust tubes. The next tube is much shorter, but has more spikes you'll need to carefully avoid by using quick wall jumps (or dash while clinging to the wall to sprint upward a few paces, then jump to the left to find another safe spot.

Drop down the third tube after a blast and dash left to find a four-way intersection that's thankfully devoid of hazards. There's no room to go up, but you can drop all the way down to find a pathway. Take it all the way to the right to find several hanging silk cocoons. Strike the biggest one enough times and you'll gain a Silkeater, which can be used to recover your Rosaries lost on death without having to find your own cocoon - use it wisely!

Jump back up the shaft but look for a middle opening below the four-way intersection, and take the path left. This leads to a lift that seems to have gotten clogged up. Strike it a few times, and it will crash down into the foyer below where the bench was, giving you new shortcut upward.

If you travel up from where the lift was clogged, you can head left to find a free silk spool. There's actually a secret here - keep walking left through the curtains along the wall to find a passageway leading down and outside the organ building.

Jump left across several platforms high above the main entrance to the building, and you'll find a ledge you can climb up to using the Cling Grip. You'll need to keep heading left over a muckmaggot filled pool by using the hanging cages, and at the far end you'll find a Lost Flea stuck in the roots.

Bilewater Lost Flea 2

Return back the way you came back inside, and this time at the top of the lift shaft, head right from the top to find another exhaust tube blowing steam. Drop down and dash right after the spikes, and then slowly jump up the next empty tube to avoid its spikes.

One last tube with steam awaits on the far right side. Wait for an opening to quickly wall-jump up to the top and dash left before the next steam vents, and use the alcove to the right to stock up on Silk if you've had to heal. The pathway to the left will lead all the way out of the exhaust and put you against the organ player themselves - a truly formidable opponent who will try to stop you from reaching The Citadel!

Phantom Boss Fight

• Recommended Crest: Any
• Recommended Tools: Threefold Pin/Flea Brew, Fractured Mask, Magnetite Dice
• Recommended Skills: Silk Spear

More similar to Lace than the Widow, the Phantom is a fight against a small agile fighter who relies heavily on quick strikes with their pin, along with hiding themselves in the mist of the organ's exhaust to strike without warning.

The Phantom heavily relies on three types of attacks with their pin to take you down. The first will happen when they jump into the air -- usually to the center of the room, but can sometimes jump to one of the sides first. They'll throw their pin at your last location, which will often slam into the ground and damage you if you aren't quick enough to dodge. After a brief moment, they'll leap after it, landing on the ground to pick it up and performing a small hop after, which is your best time to quickly get in a strike or two.

If they stay on the ground and you are at range, they can also throw the pin horizontally across the arena toward you, which will usually stop after a certain distance. Again, the Phantom will leap after it, but without any sort of follow-up slice, letting you get in hits. Since they only travel along the ground, its a good time to jump over and use downward strikes as they pass or pick up the weapon.

Finally, at closer range, they'll sometimes adopt a ready stance with one leg lifted and their pin held at a horizontal angle. A moment after this stance, they will perform a series of 2 quick jabs that move them forward to cover a deceptive amount of ground. Be warned they will usually follow this up by performing another series of jabs back the way they came, which is another good time to stay airborne and strike downward.

One of the trickier parts of this battle is The Phantom's use of a parry. They can perform it a few moments after any of the above mentioned attacks: flashing white, they'll adopt a raised stance with their weapon angled down. If struck, they will deflect the blow and quickly dash back and forth in a flurry of strikes that is extremely hard to dodge if you aren't already airborne or at a good distance. Because of the severity of this parry counter, we recommend against using tools like the Sting Shard or Tacks that might activate their parry at an inopportune time, and instead use quick darts when you have an open window.

After taking enough damage, The Phantom can also quickly jump out of sight. A pulsing light will appear on the ground, indicating a large area that you'll need to quickly avoid before the Phantom comes crashing back down in a large blast attack. The good news is the blast only ignites the area for a moment, allowing you to dash in a second after the Phantom lands to perform a dash attack.

With her weapon prowess, you'll want to pick your openings carefully, and rely more on reacting to her weapon tosses or jabs and striking when she pauses to pick up her pin, or jump over the Phantom when its safe to strike downward.

If you need a moment to heal, try to wait until she's committed to a ground-based horizontal strike to jump into the air and bind while in the air -- or wait until she comes crashing down from above.

Once the Phantom has been stunned a few times, she'll cry out for the fight's second phase. The good news is not much will change, but you'll have to survive her new opening salvo.

Instead of disappearing to slam down once, she'll repeat this attack five times in rapid succession, so do not try and counter by dashing in after her. Stick to running back and forth to avoid the hits and wait until she resumes her normal attacks.

At this point, more mist will have flooded the arena from her attacks, and can make things harder to see. Instead of jumping around to attack, she'll now vanish into the mist and reappear from a new direction to perform one of her pin tosses or melee jabs.

This shouldn't change your strategy, but you will need to keep an eye out for the angles of her attack, as she can sprinkle in more slams from above while also appearing out of the mist to toss her pin in your direction. Stay defensive and ready to react the moment she vanishes to either dash to the side or jump out of the way of whichever move she uses when she reappears. You should still be able to counter most of her moves after she strikes (she rapidly slam down anymore), but you'll need to strike quick or wait out her parry before attacking.

Once she's been damaged enough, The Phantom and Hornet will lock blades and perform a series of clashes. When the boss charges and time freezes, press RB/R1 to perform a parry of your own to defeat the Phantom in style.

In doing so, you'll unlock a new Silk Skill: Cross Stitch. You can now expend a bit of Silk to ready your own parry stance, which will catch an incoming attack and quickly slash back in an unblockable strike!

Phantom Defeated

Cross Stitch

With the Phantom defeated, so too will the Mist be dispersed, removing the small maze from the game entirely, and instead connecting Sinner's Road to Bilewater directly. You'll also have unlocked a new path to the left, where a lift will lead upwards.

You'll find yourself in an isolated section of the Citadel's Underworks, and can wall jump up the long exhaust vent around the spikes.

This pathway will exit into a crawlspace above a Grand Terminal room, but be sure to break apart the debris to the far left to find a closed balcony where a corpse holds a Memory Locket.

Choral Chambers Memory Locket

Once you've gotten it, jump down to enter the Choral Chambers, and officially enter Act 2: Citadel of Song. Note that this will lead to a different part of the Citadel than if you had gone up through the Blasted Steps to the Grand Gate, though this path will take you directly to a new Bellway where you can easily take the main route if you haven't already.

The Mist / Exhaust Organ Checklist
Bosses Defeated
Phantom Defeated
Lost Fleas Found
Bilewater Lost Flea 2
Silk Skills Learned
Cross Stitch
Memory Lockets
Choral Chambers Memory Locket

Up Next: The Slab Walkthrough

PreviousSinner's Road WalkthroughNextThe Slab Walkthrough

Top Guide Sections

• Differences and New Features
• Essential Tips and Tricks
• Walkthrough
• Boss Guides and Boss Order

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Hollow Knight: SilksongTeam Cherry

Initial Release: Sep 4, 2025

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