>>723792486
No, you are completely missing the point and headcanoning your answer. The soldiers are called soldiers of the grafted, but the same enemies with thorns appear elsewhere, in Caelid, and the thorns appear in other places. Thorns are the mutation of an heretic of the old Order, and this was such an important cultural element of the Golden Order that ever since prisoners were given fake thorns like the Bell Bearing Hunter to mark them.

The only grafted enemies are grafted scions, and the their grafting is limited to human limbs, a crude way to bypass the process of empowerment, just one of the ways sacrifices in Elden Ring can make someone stronger.

The only relation Godwyn has to the area is the (dead) follower who placed a pustule at the bottom

Godwyn didn't access any hidden information and has no agenda himself. The plot for him to die a martyr and being reborn went sideways (as the Finger Reader states) and the foundation of the Death Cult is based entirely on that, so there's no evidence that Godwyn was ever an heretic.

Even if Godwyn was willingly embracing Death and wanted to wed Ranni as Goddess and create an Age of Stars in contrast with the Golden Order, that still would have fuck all to do with Dragon Cult, that became accepted and spread in perfect communion with the precepts of the Golden Order.