Kaen gazed upon his warriors, faces still fierce with battle-lust, eyes burning with the hunger for pursuit—and slowly shook his head.
"No," he said quietly, but his voice carried across the cold plains like the toll of a great bell. "We will not advance upon the Ettenmoors."
The murmurs began at once. Commanders exchanged confused glances; even the soldiers, still clutching their bloodied blades, looked upon their king in disbelief.
Aragorn frowned. "Why, my lord? We have struck them down! The Witch-king retreats! Now is the moment to end it!"
Kaen turned northward. In the far distance, the Ettenmoors loomed beneath the veil of stormclouds—cold, jagged, and dark.
"The Ettenmoors are no open plain," he said. "They are a labyrinth of ridges and cliffs, as treacherous as the Misty Mountains themselves. Our cavalry cannot charge there. Our siege engines cannot pass. Even the light of the Sacred Tree falters beneath the pall of Morgoth's power. The Witch-king's sorcery would smother our strength before the first sword was raised."
He looked over his army, two ranks deep, battered and bleeding. "And we have barely twenty thousand soldiers left fit to fight. To march upon the Ettenmoors now would be folly. We would be offering ourselves to death."
The murmuring ceased. The commanders' fervor cooled; the truth of his words sank in like the bite of winter air.
Then, in a quiet, steady tone, Kaen spoke to Aragorn alone through the bond of command between them.
"A true king," he said, "is not blinded by victory. War is a blade, a tool to strike the enemy, but never should it be swung without purpose. Battle is born of death, not glory. We may fight, but never at the cost of reason."
With that, he turned his steed toward the ruins. "Build fortifications around the ruins," he commanded. "Set patrols. Erect tents and tend to the wounded first. Record every life lost and every deed of valor. Send the names back to Elarothiel. The kingdom does not forget its heroes."
A thousand voices answered as one:
"Yes, my lord!"
The soldiers bowed, and Aragorn remained kneeling, his brow furrowed in thought. He understood now, the restraint of a king was not weakness, but wisdom.
Kaen knew the truth better than any of them: though Eowenría stood as the mightiest realm of the North, it was still but a rising star among ancient powers.
Gondor—mighty Gondor—held millions of souls. Even if its army of more than two hundred thousand were slain to the last, new hosts could rise swiftly.
Rohan—five million strong—was a kingdom of horse-lords; every man and woman could fight. That was the power of a great nation: land, blood, and time.
But Eowenría?
Three million souls across six million square kilometers, an empire vast, but thin as stretched goldleaf.
Its armies numbered two hundred thousand at most, scattered across borders and fortresses. This expedition, the forty thousand who had marched north, was the greatest host Kaen could assemble without leaving the kingdom unguarded.
He could not, would not, gamble that strength in reckless conquest.
Eowenría's might was still in its ascension. A war of attrition would choke that momentum before it bloomed.
From the start, Kaen had never sought to destroy Angmar with this single campaign.
He knew the Witch-king's nature too well, how Morgoth's ancient corruption had hardened the Orcs into elite warriors, how Cold-drakes and monstrous beasts bolstered their legions.
No. The purpose of this war had never been annihilation.
It was warning.
To show the Witch-king the power of Eowenría, to make him think twice before casting his shadow southward again.
Kaen's plan was to raise a line of defense across the northern frontier, to ensure that war would never again touch the heart of his realm.
"Give me time," he thought. "Give me decades. When our roots deepen and our armies swell… I will bring the light of the Tree to every shadowed valley of the Ettenmoors."
He dismounted beside the corpse of the fallen Cold-drake, the massive creature now half-buried in frost and snow. The beast's scales glimmered faintly with remnants of dark magic.
"Circle off this area," Kaen ordered the nearest soldiers. "The remains of these beasts are steeped in corruption. None shall approach until the Grey wizard, Gandalf, comes to cleanse and burn them."
The soldiers saluted. "Yes, my lord."
Kaen said nothing more. He walked in silence across the field, a graveyard of warriors and monsters.
Orcs and Trolls, Wargs and men, all lay mingled together beneath the pale starlight.
That night, he climbed alone to the ruined heights overlooking the battlefield. From there he could see the white expanse of snow, the long trails of smoke rising from the pyres, and the shadows that lingered among the dead.
And there, he saw them.
The spirits.
Dozens, hundreds, flickering figures in tattered armor, their forms wavering like mist. They were the souls of his fallen warriors, wandering in silence, bound to the world by the unburied bodies they once called home.
It was a gift of his new divinity—a sight beyond mortal eyes, a window into the Unseen Realm.
That realm existed alongside the living world, a mirror of shadow and memory. The souls of the dead drifted there until released or guided away. It was the same realm into which Bilbo had slipped when wearing the One Ring, unseen by mortal sight.
The Nazgûl were not true spirits; they were bound half between the worlds, neither living nor dead, forever denied peace.
But Kaen now stood between both realms, mortal yet divine.
He watched his fallen warriors wander aimlessly through the mist and felt a deep ache within his heart.
Then he raised his eyes to the star-flecked heavens.
"Eru Ilúvatar," he whispered, his voice trembling. "If you hear me,
let my people find their rest.
Let them go to the place you have prepared for them."
He knew what awaited them:
The Elves would go to the Halls of Mandos, judged and renewed in the timeless West.
Men, however, would journey beyond the circles of the world, to a place even the Valar could not see, the true gift of Ilúvatar.
And then,
Hummmm.
A vast, invisible power descended. The air shimmered with ethereal light, and from the heavens, a radiant path, like a stairway of stars, unfolded upon the battlefield.
The wandering souls turned toward it. Their ghostly faces lifted in awe, eyes shining with tears that were not tears.
Kaen drew his sword and raised it high. Its edge gleamed with the light of gold, silver, and white.
"You who died for the kingdom," he cried, his voice echoing through both worlds,
"I, Kaen Eowenríel, your king, send you now to your final rest.
Go, my brethren,go to the place beyond the sea."
"Your families shall be cared for. Your names shall be remembered for all time."
Light burst from him, cascading like waves upon the snow.
From the encampments below, soldiers and commanders emerged, their faces lit by the brilliance upon the hill.
They saw their king standing in radiant splendor,despite not being able to see the familiar faces of comrades who had fallen at their side,tears welled in their eyes. One by one, they knelt.
And from the spectral host upon the battlefield came a final cry, thunderous and eternal:
"Courage and glory!"
"For Eowenría!"
The voices of the living and the dead rose together, blending into a single hymn that shook the heavens,
A song of light that no shadow could ever silence.
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