If you’ve been searching for a very secluded area in Hollow Knight: Silksong, known as The Slab, or if you’ve wondered what’s up with all those strange, naked sprites of Hornet, this is your one stop shop for all that information.
To get to the slab, first, you need to have progressed the Flea Caravan quest quite a bit. This means getting the caravan to move into Greymoor, grabbing even more fleas to make them move out, and fighting the Moorwing if you didn’t before. If you haven’t, make sure to free the thief in Deep Docks, as well.
After this, enemies that look like strange, bulky flies wearing big suits of armor and carrying around cages will begin spawning. One spawns directly in the Flea Caravan’s spot in Greymoor, which is now vacant.
Instead of dodging and immediately murdering this guy, let it capture Hornet in its cage, and it will use some silk binding to keep her in place. If you were successful, the screen will fade to black, and you’re ready to start The Slab.
The Opening
From the start, after mashing buttons to break out of her cell, you’ll notice Hornet has been stripped of her nail and her clothes. This means no floating, no tools, and no combat strength, but you do have the ability to punch, and maintain your dash and wall cling.
You can enter a couple doors, but you’ll find everything is locked. Head down and to the left, where there’s another locked door, and a very breakable ceiling above it, which we can use to start our prison break.
Heading up through the hole, you’ll find the gang of thieves that stole your cloak and nail, and a passage outside. It’s very cold out and Hornet has nothing to bundle up with, so be brief, and head down and into the first door on the right.
There are a couple of enemies here, but they’re absolute pushovers and can be dispatched with ease. Take them out, and head through the hole in the floor, and you’ll meet up with your good friend, Grindle, on the other side of a door.
Key of Indolent
Grindle will be of absolutely no help. I just thought it was funny enough to make you free him as a pre-requisite. Head to the left, and make sure to run, as there’s quite a few traps that can catch you if you aren’t dashing across.
You’ll find a key being held up by a chain here, and will be ambushed by more enemies as soon as you grab it. This is the Key of Indolent, and the door to your right is the Door of Indolent, so naturally, open that thing up.
Head to the entrance on your right and speak to Grindle, who will again be of absolutely no help. The bench directly next to him is nice, though. On top of this, jump into a hole in the rightmost wall, and you can get a map of the place.
Feel free to break the debris at the top of the previous room to make a shortcut, and head down and to the left to free a flea. After that, run back over to the righmost door, and open up another Door of Indolent.
Be wary, as the final pressure plate in this room locks the doors, and spawns a bunch of enemies. These are really easy to take out by manipulating their position, then stepping on the traps intentionally, killing them in a couple hits.
Once you’re out, start ascending the wall, making careful use of your dash to avoid landing directly on the spikes. Before heading all the way up, when the left side starts to converge in the middle, break the rocks in the little alcove to enter a secret tunnel.
You can find some shards, a frayed Rosary String, and open up a shortcut to the central room again, so it’s a worthwhile diversion. Back out on the side, head all the way up the tower, and be mindful of the massive pressure plates on the side.
Freezing Cold
As soon as you head up, Hornet will start freezing again, so avoid combat and be quick. Make your way to the left, dash up a bit, and take a pit stop at the flaming coals. These will keep you warm, and you can keep running back to them when you need to.
From the first flame, run left, past a spike trap, and drop down to find another safe zone. Keep heading left across the spikes on the bottom route, as the guards deal quite a hefty amount of damage, and you aren’t equipped to deal with them.
Run left and quickly dash back to see the guard. Do your best to make a mental note of where the guard is, and jump up on the right wall, dash quickly through the corridor, and either take the top route or jump over the guard, as the next safe zone is a loading zone.
Head down the pit, and head further down and to the left to rest at a bench, because you’re going to need it. Heading right, you can find the top part of the room where your clothes and needle are being kept, and you will need to fight for them back.
Key of Heretic
Hornet starts you off by snapping the neck of the guy wearing her clothes, immediately re-equipping you with all your abilities and your needle again. You are going to have to fight your way out of this, though, so hopefully you came in equipped for combat.
The first guy is pretty easy to mash buttons at, but the bigger flies take better dodging. Make sure to dodge out the way of its ground slam, hit it a few times, and watch patiently to see what it’s going to do next, counter-attacking where appropriate.
Getting stuck in the grey goop isn’t the end of the world, as it just keeps you locked in place for a couple seconds, but it can lead to a lot of unnecessary damage. Once you’ve dispatched everyone, claim your prize of the Key of Heretic.
We only need the Key of Apostate now, and the only direction left to go in is directly south, so go ahead and drop all the way down. Just be aware that those jerks unequipped all your tools, so you should fix that at the nearest bench.
The Underbelly
Unlock the floor at the bottom of the central room, and flick a few switches till you can enter a door to the left. You can nab a shard bundle on the left of this room, then jump up the chain-bound platforms and exit into a hole on the top. This will lead to another outdoors segment, so be quick yet again.
Wall jump right up to nab a spool upgrade, then go right back down and into the hole, as there isn’t anything on the bottom of this room. You can head down to where the Bellway sign points to. You need to fight your way to find the station, but these enemies are child’s play now.
There’s another Apostate-locked door, but you can just head further down. Over to the left, you’ll find the Bellway toll for 50 Rosaries, which also means you can leave if you have backtracking to do. You can head to the left of this to find the freezing cold Mount Fay, but you can’t progress there without a grapple.
Enter the tunnel to the right for a quick bench. Above this is a flea, but you need the double jump to obtain it. Now that we’ve done that, we are pretty much done here, as you need to head over to Bilewater out of Sinner’s Road to get the Key of Apostate. You will need the grapple and the double jump, plus, it will suck.
Key of Apostate
Get into Bilewater, then prepare to climb upwards. Assuming you haven’t done this already, you should make your way to the right, up, then head all the way left and activate the Bellway, as it’s your only bench for a very, very long time.
From that bench, head up, to the right, and climb up the massive room, and take either the left or right exits at the top to enter the next. Wall jump and grapple your way across everything, and enter the top right exit in this room. The bench is a very ill-timed troll that will piss you off beyond belief. Don’t fall for it.
Take this section very slowly, back up whenever you see enemies pop out at you, and try not to take damage. Before you wall jump up the end of this tunnel, break the wall in the maggot water on the bottom right, and it will lead you to a secret bench that makes this whole thing a hundred times more bearable.
Heading over to the left, you’ll be thrown into a combat room with a ton of these surprise bush enemies. I’d recommend getting summons or using projectiles and spamming it as much as you can, because these things are annoying to catch and really hard to dodge.
At the end of it all, you need to contend with Groal the Great. This guy constantly lobs exploding projectiles at you, attempts to vacuum you in, and has a terrible hitbox surrounding him that makes it incredibly hard to get in nail damage. Save a few projectiles and summons for this, and try your best to out-range him.
He will inevitably tank all the tools you have, so take things slow, wait for him to shoot, dodge the projectiles, and get in damage. His second phase has him shooting out the soul blasts from the original game, but this attack is actually well-choreographed, and another great time to get in damage.
After several attempts and hours of your life down the drain, you will get another bench as your reward. Head over to the left, and grab the unrelated item in the house, head to the left, let down the wall, then jump up the wall to your left. This will send you to an area that is just a bit terrifying.
Keep climbing up, then head into the tunnel on the left. There’s a big Moss Charger-esque enemy here, but you could also get grabbed by a Rain World-esque vine and take the tunnel above that. All the way to the left, you can break open a cage, and finally get back to what this guide was actually about.
Apostate Doors
Stag back to the Slab, climb up, and you’ll naturally find the Apostate door that locked you out of the bottom right of the entire map. Open it up with your fancy new bile-covered key, and climb up the walls to open a shortcut back to the main room.
Back down to our newly unlocked cave, you can head right and read about people’s sins, then flutter up into a hole in the ceiling of this room. Jump up through this cave, and make sure to break a crumbling wall on your right to grab a Memory Locket.
At the end of this cave is easy access to the room where there were a ton of traps, and there’s something extra to do while we’re here. Go into the big circular door, and play your mandolin inside. This summons the Old Penitent, who will bring you more lore the longer you play for him.
Upper Door
Heading into the Apostate door near the top that we saw and couldn’t enter all the way back at the beginning of this area, be a little mindful of pressure plates. The spike balls that spawn here move on a predictable track and are pretty sluggish, but you can still get hit.
You need to pogo off of this thing a bunch in order to ascend this, and it will only come around whenever you push the pressure plate, so you better get good at dive kicks. Head up to the middle platform, then wait for your ride to come back around.
You need to dive kick, double jump, and dive kick again to keep riding the spike as it goes straight up, then quickly wall jump on the metal to your right, and time your next wall jump so you can dive kick the spike and land on the upper ledge.
You can usually manage to grapple here and help save yourself, and as long as you get enough height to jump up and ledge grab, you’re good to go. This grants you a Mask Shard, and that’s the entire reason why I think you should come here now.
Lower Caverns
Falling back down the central room, you can find a door on the right with a Heretic lock, which is incredibly ineffective at keeping you out. Keep that in mind, but it’s the way to make progress, so we’re heading further down for now.
In this big pit, head to the left, and break through all the red crystals, jump across the lake, climb up the tunnel and fight off some thieves. After that, break through the wall on the right, open up the shortcut to the main room on your right, and head down.
Drop back into the water at the bottom of the central room, and break the crystals to your right. Be mindful here, as there’s plenty of spikes and crumbling floors to go around. At the end of this tunnel, you’ll grab a Weaver Effigy, which you can give to the collector in Bellhart later.
Head back up the central room using the path you opened earlier, and enter the Heretic room. Inside is around 150 Rosaries, which is a pretty damn good haul after none of the Bilewater enemies dropped any.
Now that you’re here, jump on the chest, and flutter up to another hole in the ceiling. In this cave, you’ll find the first Penitent, locked away for its crimes for eternity. Naturally, we’re going to break all its chains by slashing the point where they connect to the wall.
The Penitent
Inside this cage, you will find a Weaver statue, which will grant you a boss fight with the First Sinner. This fight will function like the Dream Bosses in Hollow Knight, booting you out of the arena without killing you, so feel free to keep throwing yourself at it. You will still need to refresh your tool ammo, though.
Her attacks seem incredibly fast and difficult to dodge, but you simply need to stay in the air, as almost nothing she can do will hit you when you’re high up. Wait out her attack, dodge the needles she shoots out, then try to get behind her and go for your strikes.
Whenever she starts up her binding animation, quickly put a stop to it. This both gives you an easy, free hit, and prevents her from doing whatever she’s doing. Once she’s dead, just like the Widow, it isn’t over, and is actually getting more difficult.
She will spawn exploding circles around the area, and any time you see these pop up, you should immediately run to a safe spot and give up attacking for a bit. She is at her most vulnerable, spawning needles, but you need to watch out for the white lines on screen whenever you attack her.
After she’s dead, you can bind with her, go through some rather simple platforming that makes you use your grapple and double jump a bit, then obtain a new Silk Skill. With that, you have now completed The Slab, and found all the precious goodies hidden inside.
Hollow Knight: Silksong
- Released
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September 4, 2025
- Developer(s)
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Team Cherry
- Publisher(s)
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Team Cherry
- Engine
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Unity
- Franchise
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Hollow Knight
- Number of Players
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Single-player
- Steam Deck Compatibility
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Verified
