Ethan

Ethan Winters (イーサン・ウィンターズ Īsan Wintāzu?) (c.1984-10 February 2021) was an American mutant trained as systems engineer. One of many mutant victims of biological weaponry, Winters was infected with a weaponised species of "Mold" during the 2017 Dulvey incident. He and his wife Mia were rescued by the Bioterrorism Security Assessment Alliance, and were placed under witness protection in Eastern Europe. This protection ultimately unravelled in February 2021 when their daughter, Rosemary, was abducted by Mother Miranda. Winters was successful in rescuing Rosemary, but gave his life to protect a BSAA tiltrotor.

Early life
Little is known of Winters' early life, though it is known that by 2017 he was living and working in Los Angeles, California as a systems engineer. In May 2011 he married his Texan girlfriend, Mia, who he believed was a high-ranking employee in a trading company but was in fact a research assistant for The Connections, a manufacturer of illegal bioweapons. Mia disappeared in October 2014 while crossing the Gulf of Mexico during a hurricane, and was assumed dead.

2017 Baker House Incident
On 18 July 2017, Winters received an email purported to be from Mia, giving him instructions to pick her up at the Baker ranch in Dulvey Parish, Louisiana. Rather than alert the authorities, Winters promptly drove out alone to find out for himself. Due to this choice in action, Winters was left unaware the general area was being investigated by law enforcement following a spate of disappearances, in fact instigated by the Baker family. Winters' initial search of the "Old House" uncovered Mia's driver's license, as well as a snuff film depicting the death of Andre Stickland, with Winters finding his remains soon after. When searching the basement, Winters found Mia locked in a cell and freed her. Mia was found to be amnesiac, hearing voices and actively self-harming, before becoming hostile and forcing Winters to defend himself with an axe. Locked in the house by Jack Baker, Winters received a phone call from his daughter, Zoe, which warned him too escape via the attic window. During this attempt, Winters was attacked once more by Mia, who cut his left hand off with a chainsaw before he could take her down with a handgun. This escape attempt was all for naught, however, and he was quickly captured by Jack, who inflicted severe brain damage on him with a stomp on the head. He then took the two back with him to the Main House.

Unaware to Winters at the time, he and Mia as well as the Baker family had become contaminated by the Mold by a human bio-weapon named Eveline; this fungus replaces cells with more resilient fungal imitations. For mere minutes he was in a state of clinical death, only to begin waking up while being dragged into the Main House. As night fell, he was patched up by Zoe, who re-attached his hand and provided him with the Genome Codex, a special device which once belonged to Mia. Seeking a means of escape herself, she conscripted Winters into helping her, using his mutations to her advantage.

Winters woke up strapped to a chair as the rest of the Baker family ate dinner - Jack, Marguerite, their son Lucas and Eveline. The family tried to pressure him into eating contaminated food to speed up the spread, but when he refused he was threatened with murder. Winters was, at this moment, only saved by the arrival of Deputy David Anderson on the property, who was sent out to investigate the disappearances. As the family left, Winters unstrapped himself and got the deputy's attention, though he was killed by Jack once entering the garage. Using the deputy's sidearm, Winters was able to weaken Jack, who then shot himself with the gun as a psychological tactic, knowing he would only recover later. With Winters, for the time being, free from pursuit, he received another call from Zoe, who instructed him on how to escape from the house by restoring puzzle pieces Jack had taken away to trap runaway victims.

During Winters' search of the house he avoided attacks by the Molded, humanoid colonies of Mold created by the Bakers out of the decomposing corpses of their victims. During his search of the basement he encountered Jack once more, who was in the possession of one of the puzzle pieces while propping up Anderson's body. In his attempt to reach for it, he unknowingly walked into a trap, and was cornered in the Morgue with Jack armed with a chainsaw. Winters was, ultimately, victorious having used a second chainsaw to horizontally bisect him. After his escape from the Main House, Winters received further instructions by phone at Zoe's trailer in the back yard. There he was told that she and Mia were indeed infected by the same substance that afflicted her family, but there was a chance of treating them with a serum. Having already planned this for the past three years with Mia, Zoe pointed Winters to the dilapidated Old House, where he was to recover the arm of Dahlia, a human bio-weapon prototype; Zoe meanwhile had already recovered the head of Dahlia's sister, Dolores. In his search of the Old House, Winters briefly met up with Mia, who was no longer in a delirium. She was, however, snatched by Lucas from behind a chainlink fence, leaving him alone once more. As he explored further, Winters was attacked by Marguerite, who anticipated his search for Dahlia's arm. Their fighting collapsed part of the house, where a sinkhole had formed beneath the floorboards. Following Marguerite through a tunnel, the two fought once more at the nearby greenhouse where was killed and calcified. Returning to the Old House, Winters ventured upstairs and tracked down Dahlia's arm, attached to a lifelike doll in a shrine created by Marguerite. During his search of the upstairs he began to suffer visual and auditory hallucinations indicative of Mold infection, both seeing and hearing Eveline as a child.

When Winters returned to the trailer to meet with Zoe, he found that Zoe had been captured by Lucas and was being held captive with Mia at the family barn. To gain entry, however, Lucas forced him to return to the Main House to recover two keycards. During the search, Winters was forced to insert his hand into Anderson's headless corpse, which was being quickly consumed by the Mold. When he did arrive at the barn, he was made to watch a video recording of Lucas self-harming while boasting the regenerative powers he had gained from the Mold, finally mocking Zoe's obsession with seeking a treatment. While navigating the barn and the many traps rigged by Lucas, Winters was forced to participate in an escape room activity themed on a birthday party. While solving the puzzle, Lucas tossed a bomb into the room through a hidden doorway when his intended booby trap failed. Winters' quick timing sent the bomb back, and Lucas ran out across the bayou to escape the explosion, leaving Dolores' head behind.

Heading across the bayou, Winters reached the Boathouse where Mia and Zoe were being held captive. Winters freed the two women and gave the ingredients to Zoe to make the serum, intending to use a docked boat as their escape. When serum was produced, however, they were attacked by a heavily mutated Jack, who burst through the building and dragged Winters out where they fought once more. During the fight he was forced to use one of the serums, which caused an extreme reaction in Jack's body, causing rabid calcification. With one remaining serum left, Winters made the difficult choice of treating his own wife Mia over Zoe. Despite telling Zoe that he would help her, she angrily ordered him to leave with Mia on the boat. During their travel through the bayou, the two came across the wreckage of Annabelle, the tanker which transported Mia and Eveline. The ship had become home to a Fungal Root, which responded to their presence by destroying the boat and snatching away Winters. Embedded within a pile of Mold, he became mentally linked to the Fungal Root, and encountered an archive of Jack's mind. The man begged him to save his family in the real world by killing Eveline, but still he sympathised with her for her need of affection. Winters woke up being dragged out of the Fungal Root by Mia, who threw him off the ship to continue his mission while she remained on board, giving him a preserved tissue fragment from Eveline on the way.

Close to the wreckage of Annabelle, Winters found himself at the Abercrombie Salt Mine, an abandoned mine being used both for Lucas' research and as storage space for hundreds of the Bakers' victims who were being consumed by the Mold. When he reached Lucas' lab, Winters was able to produce E-Necrotoxin, a poison designed by The Connections as a contingency should Eveline go rogue. As dawn arrived, a major operation was underway handled by the BSAA and Louisiana Army National Guard with support from the Louisiana State Police; while preparing for this battle however Eveline was not unaware of Winters' own progress in the caverns and sent Molded after him. Chased throughout by Molded, Winters found himself being led back to the Guest House he rescued Mia from the day before. As he explored the building, he was tortured with hallucinations of Mia attacking him with a chainsaw. In the attic he discovered Eveline herself, who was hiding from the BSAA that had already taken control of the Main House. Though she was able to hurt Winters with painful hallucinations, he was ultimately successful in injecting the E-Necrotoxin into her body. No longer being fooled by her hallucinatory abilities, he saw Eveline as the rapidly aged woman he met at the dining table rather than the child she once was.

In spite of the poison, Eveline was able to temporarily reconstitute herself, merging with the Mold in and beneath the Guest House to become a gargantuan, eldritch abomination bent on destroying Winters. This quickly got the attention of the BSAA, who flew a helicopter above to supply Winters with experimental anti-B.O.W. weaponry: the "Albert-01" and its "RAMROD" ammunition. The weapon was far more effective against Eveline, and after several rounds she quickly calcified. Following Eveline's death, the BSAA set up a basecamp where they coordinated the quarantine of the area. With information provided by Winters, a team rescued Mia from Annabelle and evacuated the two to the nearest BSAA base to get medical attention, while a search was underway to locate Zoe.

Time in witness protection
In the aftermath of the incident at the Baker ranch, the BSAA Investigations Department kept the Winters family in custody while they were treated for their wounds. The two went through surgery to remove clumps of Mold that had grown in their bodies. Over a period of several weeks they were interrogated for information, with the BSAA concluding that while Winters himself was a victim Mia's ties to the Connections were undeniable. In exchange for her co-operation in the investigation into the crime syndicate, this information was not divulged to Winters and the two were moved to Eastern Europe to live under witness protection. It is possible that Winters was withheld knowledge of his mutant nature as part of this agreement.

During their time in witness protection, the Winters were under constant surveillance from the BSAA. Contact with the outside world was limited, with letters and internet access being restricted to the point of being banned. In their second year of protection Mia fell pregnant, and gave birth to Rosemary in August 2020.

Abduction of Rosemary
In early 2021, the BSAA was subject to a data leak, exposing both the Winterses location and the existence of Rosemary. This information soon reached Miranda, a mutant with shapeshifting abilities who had worked with The Connections on creating Eveline. Seeing Rosemary as an ideal subject for an experiment in consciousness transfer, she abducted Mia and took her form. Miranda lived in the house for several days, and was able to maintain the deception, even going shopping and looking after Rosemary. Although the two argued a number of times, there is evidence to suggest Winters and the real Mia were already having problems, with the only other sign of the switch being Miranda's fondness for local cuisine.

Unknown to Winters and Miranda, they were now subject to reconnaissance by the BSAA, who had obtained reliable information regarding Miranda's base of operations and her fascination with Rosemary. On February 2, 2021, they celebrated Rose's half birthday. On the 6th, he and Mia began to argue when he brought up the Baker House Incident as he felt a part of him still trapped there. On a fateful night, he expresses his concern over his wife Mia telling Rose a local fairy tale named Village of Shadows. She then sarcastically ask him to put his daughter to bed. He complies and takes her to her bed cradle; on the way he thinks how everyone had quickly forgotten the Baker Incident. When she is preparing for dinner, Ethan notes her as someone who had gone full native. Mia then tells Ethan to stop worrying, and he notes recent events moving fast. He and his wife then have an argument, Ethan accusing his wife of forgetting everything that had happened in Louisiana. Mia is then shot in the shoulder by an unseen assailant. Ethan quickly tells her to get down but she is shot multiple times before seemingly being killed by Chris, much to Ethan's horror. When they are ordered to take them out of the house, a member of Chris's Hound Wolf Squad gives Rose to Chris, with Ethan furiously asking Chris what he was doing to his daughter. Ethan plans to attack Chris but before he can do so he is knocked unconscious. He is dragged out of the house on Chris's orders. Ethan recalls a time he argued with Mia about their fears over Rosemary's true nature and the effects she might have inherited from the both of them. Their argument ends when he answers a call from his job.

Ethan awakens at his overturned convoy, with the guards dead and Rosemary nowhere to be seen. He picks up a nearby ringing phone where he demands the caller to divulge Chris's and Rose's location, only to be denied an answer. He then sets off to a nearby trail filled with blood and dead carcasses. He then stumbles on to an old shack and starts to explore the nearby surroundings. He comes across a large village, which he finds recently deserted.

He encounters a villager, Grigori, hiding and armed with a shotgun. He interrogates Ethan, but before Ethan can respond, the house is surrounded by werewolf-like people known as Lycans. Grigori offers a handgun to Ethan before he is killed by a Lycan, while Ethan is dragged down to the basement by another Lycan. Landing in a pile of villager corpses, a Lycan attacks and bites his left pinkie and ring finger off. He kills the Lycan and escapes the basement, entering another house. There, he is attacked by a horde of Lycans. Surviving a wave of the monsters, he overhears a radio transmission telling any survivors to come to Luiza's house. However, upon exiting the house, a large pack of Lycans led by the large Uriaș converge on him. Before they can kill him, the bells at the castle ring and the horde runs off.

He then comes across an old woman, who asks if he was the "child's father"; when he confirms this, the woman proclaims that after Rosemary was brought to the village by the village deity Mother Miranda, they have "fallen into darkness" and warns him that she is in great danger. Ethan sees the nearby castle and surmises that he might find Rose there. Eventually, he comes across two surviving villagers, Elena and her injured father, Leonardo, who are hoping to join the rest of the survivors at Luiza's House but no one is letting them in. As the Lycans start to lurk nearby, Ethan manages to climb over Luiza's house and open the gate for Elena and Leonardo before sealing it. Although they are given a cold welcome by a hesitant Iulian, the group is welcomed into the home by Luiza.

Luiza then guides him to the house, meeting other survivors: the drunken Anton, the mourning Roxana, and the crippled Sebastian. Ethan asks if this is all that remains from the village and Anton angrily responds that there is no one left before insulting the survivors and chastising Luiza for letting in the injured Leonardo and Ethan, an outsider. Luiza responds that her house has been protecting her family for generations and that she reassures him that all are welcome and safe in there. When Ethan asks what is going on around the area, she tells him that they were once a quiet devout village, but then the monsters came and attacked them. Elena asks where Luiza's husband is, to which she answers that he went outside to get help. Roxana then suggests for them to pray to Mother Miranda for his safety, they all join hands and pray; Ethan notices the prayer reminded him of the old woman's words. Leonardo calls the old woman crazy, but Luiza instead believes it is through the woman's devotion that she is still alive.

Suddenly, Leonardo roars in pain before attacking and killing Luiza with his machete, as well as knocking over a lantern that causes a fire. Ethan beckons Elena to escape as Leonardo, exhibiting Lycan abilities, kills the rest of the survivors. Leonardo pounces at Ethan before Elena fires at her father with a shotgun blast. As the two escape to the garage, Elena mourns her father as Ethan manages to get Luiza's truck working in hopes to ram their way outside. When he instead crashes the car, the two decide the escape upwards to the attic, where Elena warns Ethan that the castle is "nothing but blood and death."

Leonardo, somehow still alive, manages to climb upward and calls out to Elena in pain. Despite Ethan's warnings, Elena quickly runs to him when the wooden plank providing her way back collapses, separating the two. Leonardo falls through to the fire. Despite Ethan offering help, Elena tells him to go and to save his daughter before the floor collapses and she falls into the fiery depths below. Ethan leaves the burning house through a window and frustratingly notes that people keep dying around him. He steps outside only to witness Mother Miranda killing Iulian; after pursuing her, he then encounters the old woman from before who happily states that death has visited them all. He manages to open the stone door leading to the Castle using two crests found around the village.

Ethan heads to the castle but is captured by a man with electromagnetic powers before he can enter. The man drags him to meeting with Mother Miranda and four other “lords”: Alcina Dimitrescu, Donna Beneviento, Salvatore Moreau, and his captor Karl Heisenberg. Dimitrescu and Heisenberg argue who should have him, with her wanting to kill Ethan, offering his blood to Miranda, and Heisenberg wanting to put on an entertaining show for everyone to enjoy. Miranda decides that Ethan's fate belongs to Heisenberg. He begins counting down from ten as Ethan jumps down a hole in the corner of the room. He narrowly avoids Lycans and traps and manages to escape. Making his way out of the trap tunnel, he arrives in front of Dimitrescu's castle. There he meets The Duke, a merchant who offers him weapons and supplies (in exchange for Lei) for his journey ahead. As he enters the castle in hopes of finding Rose, he is captured by Dimitrescu's daughters Bela, Cassandra, and Daniela. They drag him to meet their mother, who is surprised that he survived Heisenberg's game. She orders them to hang Ethan up by hooking both of his hands. After this, Dimitrescu goes to inform Miranda of Ethan's survival. While they are gone, he manages to free himself by forcefully ripping his hands through the hook. After traversing through areas of the castle, he comes across The Duke, conveniently settled in room in the castle. The Duke suggests that Dimitrescu is keeping Rose in her private chambers somewhere in the castle.

As Ethan explores the castle, he encounters Cassandra, who attacks him. He narrowly escapes by jumping down a shaft, and crawls to the castle's wine tasting room. From there, he passes through the castle's dungeon, where he fights off several mutated women known as Moroaicǎ. Arriving back at the main floor of the castle, Ethan is attacked and caught by Bela. Ethan attempts to shoot her, but his bullets do nothing. Instead, a stray shot breaks a window, letting in the cold winter air. Bela, horrified by what he has done, becomes vulnerable to Ethan's attacks. He manages to kill the weakened Bela, who calcifies and crumbles to the ground.

Ethan makes his way through the castle, solving more puzzles and battling various Moroaicǎ, before overhearing a conversation between Dimitrescu and Miranda on the phone. Dimitrescu demands Miranda's permission to kill Ethan as he has already killed one of her daughters, though Miranda refuses and orders that he stay alive to participate in an upcoming 'ceremony'. However, after the call ends, Dimitrescu throws her vanity in frustration, and decides to kill Ethan anyway. He sneaks in to her chambers and finds the Dimitrescu key, but is caught by the Lady. She proceeds to violently slam him against the floor, causing it to break and send him to the dungeons below. He navigates the dungeon and eventually finds the exit door's switch, but gets his hand sliced off by Dimitrescu's sharp claws. Evading her attacks, he retrieves his hand and escapes the dungeon. He is later cornered by Cassandra in the arsenal room, but manages to weaken her by throwing a pipe bomb to a cracked exterior wall. The chilly winter air enters the room and Ethan is able to kill Cassandra. Eventually, he is captured by Daniela in the library. There, he is able to open the skylight and let the wind in to weaken and kill her.

Ethan learns of a weapon called the Dagger of Death's Flowers, which is imbued with poisons from around Europe. He finds it sealed away with the corpse of the last man who attempted to use it against Dimitrescu. The Lady then appears behind him, and stabs him with her claws. In retaliation, he stabs her with the dagger. Dimitrescu becomes furious and throws him through a window, causing the dagger to be lost after it falls off the tower of the castle. Enraged, Dimitrescu mutates into a grotesque dragon-like creature. The two battle atop one of the castle's towers until Ethan emerges victorious, and Lady Dimitrescu's mutated body calcifies. At the base of a tower, he finds a dirty flask and heads to a nearby cave.

There he meets the old woman again chanting the same prayers as before. Ethan demands she tell him what is going on and where Miranda took Rose. She laughs, telling him that Rose will be sacrificed as a life for a life. She points out that the crest of the four families may open a path that he seeks. Ethan stares at the emblem, eerily similar to the logo of the Umbrella Corporation.

He then travels to the Altar, where he meets the Duke once more. Duke then notices he had picked something value and when Ethan shows it to him, he claims that he is holding Rose right in his hands. He then, horrified, realizes that he is holding his own daughter's head inside the flask. Duke clarifies that Rose can be saved; he then points him to a house with a red chimney on the western side of the Village, Ethan is reluctant to go but does so as he has run out of options, but promises to kill the Duke if he is lying. Sometime later, Ethan returns with the four-winged key. Duke then tells him to use it and save his daughter by collecting Rose's remaining flasks and that each of them is guarded by the 3 remaining Houses that served under Miranda.

Following the Duke's advice, Winters ventured south-east through the Potter's Field towards House Beneviento. As he approached the house, Winters suffered a series of hallucinations of Mia and Rose, who beckoned him onward. These were caused by the psychotropic effects of mutant flowers growing in the area, which could be influenced by Donna Beneviento. Winters was lured down an elevator to Beneviento's doll workshop and was sealed below. Down there, Winters' hallucinations became more and more intense, finally encountering a deformed hallucinatory version of Rose so vivid it seemed as though real. In spite of this, Winters was successful in escaping the workshop, something Beneviento herself did not expect. To prevent his escape, she carried Angie around the house with the flask, using her influence on Winters' mind to make her seem invisible to him while she fought back. Armed with a pair of scissors, Winters was ultimately the winner, and killed Beneviento by stabbing her in the face.

Following Beneviento's defeat, Winters travelled north through the Old Town and headed to the reservoir and the ruins of the fishing village it had swallowed. Moving through a mine, Winters found the third flask, but was prevented from escape by Salvatore Moreau, a greatly deformed mutant unable to control his metamorphic abilities. Following this initial encounter, Winters took off towards the reservoir in search of another way back to the village. During the journey, Winters was ambushed by Redfield, Canine and Night Howl, who were conducting research and reconnaissance on the mutants. Their meeting was brief, and was disrupted by Moreau, who had taken on the form of a large fish-like creature. Crossing the reservoir on the roofs of the former village, Winters was able to restore power to the dam and drain the water. Out of his habitat, Moreau was forced to clumsily fight Winters on land while he remained in his fish form, a battle Moreau soon lost.

On his way back through the mines, Winters saw a television broadcast from Karl Heisenberg, who revealed he had been keeping tabs of his progress. Rather than follow the same pattern as his predecessors, Heisenberg hoped to strike a deal with Winters, who would give him Rose in exchange for his own survival so Miranda could be defeated. Aided by Heisenberg's instructions, Winters was able to recover the fourth flask at the Mediaeval fort to the west. Whether having already begun or just at this point, Winters took Heisenberg's advise and placed all four flasks within the Giant's Chalice, an ancient artefact which restored Rose to life and through which he was able to see her memories. Winters took the chalice to the Ceremony Site, which revealed an ancient and highly sophisticated elevator and bridge mechanism. Ethan puts all of them in the altar and carries the Giant's chalice to the other pedestal where it descends down and opens up to Heisenberg's factory. He gets inside and is greeted by Karl, who tells Ethan that he is being tested to see if he is strong enough to be part of Miranda's family, Ethan angrily exclaims that he doesn't want to be a part of her family and neither did Karl. He also says that even Miranda was scared of how potentially dangerous Rose is. He then offers Ethan to go together and save Rose and use her to kill Miranda. Ethan rejects his offer saying that his daughter is not a weapon for his usurping scheme. Heisenberg then kicks Ethan down to the bottom of his factory.

Ethan is then chased around by Sturm, a creature with its entire body made up of propeller fans. He manages to evade it but finds himself deeper into the factory where he fights off several creatures wearing and gearing metal gears. He navigates around the factory, intending to get upstairs to escape. After solving some puzzles on the way and turning the backup generator on, Heisenberg displays his disappointment towards Ethan through the microphone and explains that she forcefully takes the others as her children, locks them up away in the village and decades of servitude. While the others have no problem with Miranda, Heisenberg wants to be free from her so he needs immense power to destroy her. Miranda had always treated them as nothing but her children, she had never cared for them and has long since lost all of her humanity and if she started the ceremony with Rose then it would be over for her and the village alike. He assures him that he would use Rose to fulfil his cause.

Shortly afterwards he is pursued again by Sturm, he proceeds to evade and battle it, using its weak point to his advantage, Ethan finally kills it. After reaching topside, he is attacked by Heisenberg's electromagnetic abilities and is dropped the ground again. After he crawls through a vent, he is alerted by noises and is subdued and disarmed by Chris, who has infiltrated the factory and is in a middle of planting explosives beneath it. Chris tells him to stay away but Ethan angrily exclaims that he killed Mia but Chris starts to explain that the Mia he shot back there has never been the real Mia but in fact Miranda the entire time, who is a bioweapon and has the ability to change her cells and mimic the person but doesn't have the former's memories. Ethan angrily demanded to know why he was never informed of this only for Chris to shout that Ethan would want to be involved. Ethan asks him to explain everything.

Chris explains that Miranda herself is insane and that the monsters and village was her life's work—her experimentation with the Mold itself. Ethan sulked realizing it's just like that of Dulvey, Louisiana and that he can't save his family nor he can do anything. Chris then tosses him his phone, asking him to look in the pictures. In one of the pictures, Ethan realizes that Miranda has the possession of all four flasks and Chris's men are still monitoring the situation. Ethan wants to save Rose immediately but Chris tells him that he cant go up against Miranda herself. Chris advises him to take Heisenberg's self propelled artillery and meet him topside while he finishes planting explosives. Chris promises Ethan that they will together get his daughter back. Chris then lastly asks him to stay under the radar.

He takes the artillery and rides the elevator up to the surface, he faces against the mutated Heisenberg, who is now a creature that is fused with metal parts. After an intensive battle, Heisenberg overturns the artillery and he is about to kill Ethan until he is momentarily distracted from the explosion in the factory. Ethan is forced to fight him head on with the weapons he has. Heisenberg then uses his ability again in an attempt to kill Ethan but Ethan manages to get to the artillery and fires a grenade shot, killing Karl. Ethan is then called by Chris, who heard an intense explosion from above. He informs him that he has killed Karl and that he is going take Rose back from Miranda. Chris tells him not to go without him and tells him to wait. Ethan is momentarily distracted by the sound of Rose's crying; he turns around to see "Mia" walking towards him and says that Rose is important to her and chastises him for never knowing that she had taken Mia's place. "Mia" is then warped to Miranda, and she begins to tell him about Eveline's power over the Mold and Rose is her successor, her true complete form, and that she will grow up to control the masses and that she must have her. Miranda says that the Fungus Root catalogues all of them and Rose will be reborn as her daughter Eva. Miranda then begins to shift through several forms including that of the crazy old hag. Ethan angrily tells her to come out and face him only for his heart to be ripped out by Miranda who appeared below him, she tells him that he will be a part of the Fungus Root's records.

While unconscious, Winters was taunted by what he discovered was a fragment of Eveline's consciousness that existed within his mind. Eveline mockingly asks him if he had ever questioned why, despite all the fatal injuries he had suffered both at the Baker residence and in the Village, he had always completely recovered. Eveline explains that back at the Baker guest house after he had defeated the Molded Mia for the last time and Jack Baker knocked him unconscious, the head stomp had actually killed him. However, the Mold in the Baker residence had managed to revive him and mutated him as well, thus giving him the same inhuman regenerative abilities as Mia and the Bakers. Although initially in despair, Ethan resolved to save Rose, even if it's the last thing he's going to do. It was revealed that he survived the attack from Miranda due to his regenerative capabilities thanks to the Mold. Ethan wakes up in the Duke's carriage to find Rose and end Miranda once and for all. The Duke takes Ethan to the village where he finds Miranda with Rose, believing she is her daughter, Eva.

Ethan confronts Miranda, as much to her surprise. Ethan demands she give back Rose, with Miranda threatening him, only for Chris to intervene and shoot her in the head, giving Ethan an opportunity to take back Rose. Miranda however, grabs hold of Rose before the Fungus Root spreads around the area, mutating her further.

After a long battle, Ethan strikes a killing blow to Miranda, causing her to yell her daughter's name before calcifying as the barrier around them starts to dissipate as well. Ethan takes his daughter back, only to fall onto his knees in weakness after his right hand calcifies. Chris finds a frail Ethan, assisting them to their safety. Chris informs Ethan of a bomb that will obliterate the entire village and how Mia is actually alive waiting for him. After leaving some tearful parting words to both Rose and Chris, along with his bloodied jacket to cover his daughter, Ethan then gives Rose to Chris before stealing the bomb's trigger as he pushes them when tree root-like Mold grows to surround the area. As one final attempt to destroy the Fungus Root, Ethan activates the trigger, eventually sacrificing himself as the bomb destroys both the Fungus Root and the entire village. His death brought grief to both Mia and Chris.

Years later, his daughter Rose, now a teenager, visited the cemetery with the epitaph "a kind husband and loving father who puts family before all else" written on her father's grave. An agent who was waiting nearby took note that she is a lot like her father, which she took as a compliment.