Fire is honest.
It does not pretend.It does not bargain.It does not lie.
It devours what it touches, and in its hunger it confesses every fear hidden in flesh.
So when Gandalf, the dwarves, and Bilbo found themselves trapped atop a pine—condemned souls clinging to the last splinter above the gallows—there was no dignity left in the world. Only heat, smoke, and the certainty of fangs and iron closing in.
Below them, the mountainside writhed.
Orcs poured through the flames like ants through spilled pitch, howling and hammering weapons against shields, drunk on the scent of triumph. Warg riders circled, their beasts snarling as if the very air offended them. Firelight turned their eyes into glints of wet glass.
The pine groaned beneath the strain. Its bark blistered. Resin bled down the trunk like molten tears.
Thorin stood high upon a branch, boots planted with the stubbornness of stone. Smoke curled around his crown, embers dying upon his cloak as if ashamed to touch him. His face was blackened with soot, but his eyes were bright—too bright, like steel before it breaks.
Below him, Bilbo clung to the branch with the desperate devotion of a creature that had never believed in glory and had no wish to die for it. His fingers burned. His throat closed. Every breath tasted of ash and panic. The world narrowed to a single commandment:
Hold.
The dwarves crowded the branches, packed tight, muttering prayers in old Khuzdul between curses and coughs. Beards were singed. Armor scorched. Still, they bared their teeth at the orcs below, for pride is often the last thing a warrior surrenders.
Gandalf stood near the trunk, leaning on his staff as though upon memory itself. His hat sat askew, his hair wild with sweat. For a heartbeat, he looked merely old—caught in a tale too young for him.
But his eyes remained deep and awake, watching for the moment when the air of the world begins to change.
Azog the Defiler paced beneath them, carving a slow circle through fire and shadow. Pale skin gleamed in the blaze, scars catching the light like lightning trapped beneath flesh. The jagged blade in his hand rose and fell with a predator's patience.
He smiled up at Thorin, and in that smile lived the promise of a wound that would never close.
"You can smell it, can't you?" Azog called. "The end. I will carve my name into your line."
Orcs laughed. Wargs barked. The mountain echoed their ugliness.
Gandalf tightened his grip on his staff—not seeking escape, but a rent in doom.
And then—
The air went wrong.
At first it was subtle. A hush slipping between sounds. A pressure behind the eyes.
Then the cold arrived.
It did not fall from the sky, nor rise from the earth.
It simply was—sudden, intimate, absolute.
It slid into lungs and stole breath before it could become air. It tightened around bone as though marrow itself were being touched by unseen fingers.
It was not winter.
It was the cold of an opened grave.
The flames faltered.
They did not die at once. They recoiled, shrinking back as if the dark itself had grown teeth.
Orcs noticed. Laughter stumbled. Howls faltered into muttered confusion.
Azog's smile flickered.
Then something appeared between smoke and shadow—a distant silver glimmer, faint as the first star seen through tears.
It drifted closer, slow as a verdict.
Relief stirred among the orcs. Jeers followed.
Then relief curdled.
The light was not one thing.
Within it floated skulls—silver and deep blue—circling in patient, measured paths. They did not hurry. They did not rage.
They approached with the calm of something that has never been refused.
Bilbo's stomach dropped.
The dwarves went still.
Gandalf's eyes widened—not in surprise, but recognition.
Death had wandered into Middle-earth wearing a foreign face.
The skulls entered the ring of firelight.
Their hollowness looked back at the living.
And all—orc, dwarf, wizard, hobbit—understood without words:
This was not an ally.Not a weapon.But a sentence.
One orc raised his axe and spat a curse.
A skull moved toward him—quiet, unhurried.
It struck his chest.
The scream that followed did not belong to any tongue.
Flesh did not burn. It froze.
Blackness crawled over skin like ink beneath ice. Veins hardened. Eyes clouded. The mouth opened wider, but the sound broke into a wet, strangled sob as the jaw cracked.
He fell—and shattered like brittle coal.
Silence swept the mountain, cut clean as if sound itself had been struck down.
Orcs stared. Wargs whimpered. Courage collapsed into animal dread.
Azog lowered his blade a fraction. Something in him—older than hate—recognized peril.
On the pine, the dwarves exhaled in sudden, foolish hope.
Gandalf's voice lashed through it.
"Why do you exult, fools?" he roared. "Leap! What draws near is Death!"
There was no time to argue.
Thorin moved first.
He leapt.
The dwarves followed, dropping into darkness like stones cast into a bottomless well.
Bilbo hesitated only long enough to know he could not stay.
He jumped.
Wind tore at him. Fire spun. The world dissolved into falling.
Then—
Wings.
A storm of feathers and talons. Giant eagles swept from the sky and caught them midair. Pain flared as joints wrenched—but pain was mercy compared to the cold below.
They rose above flame and screams.
Gandalf clung to the eagle's back and looked down.
Azog and his warriors withdrew, snarling, dragging their pride away like wounded beasts.
But before he fled, Azog looked back.
And Gandalf followed his gaze.
From beyond the dying firelight, she emerged.
Not striding.Not running.
Arriving.
A woman stepped from shadow as though darkness itself had exhaled her.
Her garments drank the light. A helm erased her face, leaving only a hollow void. Wisps of brittle gray hair escaped beneath it.
And her eyes—
Crimson.
Dark, coagulated red, glowing like embers buried in bone.
Her armor was dark as coal and wrong in the way living things can be wrong. It listened as she moved.
In her hand rested a staff carved from the heart of a cursed tree—wood that had learned hunger. Across her back hung a ritual weapon, hooked and blasphemous, drinking the firelight as if starving.
She stood amid the smoke.
The world held its breath.
Bilbo clutched at his shirt.
The Ring pulsed once—faint, affronted.
Not fear.
Jealousy.
Thorin stared down at her, fury fighting terror.
The dwarves fell silent.
And Gandalf—
Gandalf turned his gaze away.
Not in cowardice.
In recognition.
For beneath the cold of death, he felt something else.
Pain.
Ancient. Measureless. A grief so deep it had become an element.
Azog roared—not in courage, but frustration—and fled.
Even as they soared away, certainty followed them like a curse:
This had not been chance.
It was an opening.
The Dream
Later, upon stone that did not burn, the world pretended again to be ordinary.
The eagles departed, leaving feathers drifting like pale omens. Fire was lit. Cloaks were wrapped tight. No one spoke of what they had seen, for language felt too small.
The cold lingered.
It sat behind the eyes. It clung to thought. It made every flame seem temporary.
When sleep finally came, it did not come gently.
It took them.
Mist.
Not fog, but absence given shape. No sky. No ground. Only white, curling emptiness—arranged, deliberate, as though prepared.
Gandalf stood first, staff in hand. Bilbo lingered behind him, smaller than ever, clutching courage he did not trust.
Before them, figures emerged from the mist.
Elrond stood calm as water that remembers its source.Galadriel shone with distant light, her presence like starlight seen through tears.Saruman stood apart, white and severe, eyes sharp with judgment.
They regarded one another with the uneasy familiarity of those who know this meeting was not meant to happen.
"My lady," Gandalf said softly to Galadriel, inclining his head. "It is a comfort to see you."
Her smile was gentle—but her attention was elsewhere, listening to a deeper current beneath the dream.
Bilbo swallowed. "Is this… real?"
No one answered.
Because even the wise felt how solid the mist was. How the silence had weight.
And then—
They saw it.
A city of gold bathed in quiet light. Towers rose gentle rather than proud. Bridges of pale brilliance spanned the air like ribbons. Warmth filled the space—not heat, but welcome.
Above the city stood a tree.
Not one of Arda.
A radiant titan of gold, its leaves shimmering like sunlight caught forever at dawn. Its presence stirred a longing older than memory, as if the heart remembered a home it had never known.
Then came laughter.
Pure. Unburdened.
The laughter of a child.
It warmed the chest. It loosened shoulders. Even Saruman's gaze sharpened.
Galadriel stiffened.
In that sound, she felt a name she had not spoken in centuries.
Celebrían.
They saw the child—pale hair, ruby eyes, elven ears catching golden light—playing among golden sheep, laughing as though nothing had ever been lost.
From above descended three fragments of light.
One drifted toward Galadriel.One toward Bilbo.One toward an unseen presence that lingered just beyond perception.
Galadriel raised her hand.
A golden seed settled into her palm—alive, warm, brimming with will.
Bilbo received a fallen leaf, still warm, as though it remembered sunlight.
As his fingers closed around it, the Ring beneath his shirt pulsed—faint, affronted.
Jealous.
The third fragment darkened as it fell—withered, scorched by sorrow.
Above the city, a rune burned in the air. Unknown. Ancient.
Grace.
The laughter faded.
The mist thickened.
A sound echoed—metal striking metal. Not a bell.
A hammer.
The child spoke, her voice carrying the cadence of law.
"The fallen leaves tell a story…"
She spoke of a distant world. Of a shattered ring. Of gods and demigods. Of betrayal, war, and grace withdrawn.
Her words did not feel like tale.
They felt like decree.
"Oh, rise now, ye Tarnished…"
Names tolled like bells.
And one final calling—of a Tarnished unknown, yet chosen.
The child's gaze lifted.
For a heartbeat, it felt as though another world had looked directly through them.
Then the city dimmed.
The mist closed.
And the dream broke.
They woke gasping, hearts hammering, the night unchanged—and utterly different.