The fire was small.
It barely held the dark back
Beyond its flickering light, Moria didn’t so much stretch away, as press inwards as if it was listening.
Litharil sat with her back against a pillar, shield beside her and her sword resting across her knees.
For five days she had wandered the ruins of Khazad-dûm.
It still felt no more familiar than when she first stepped back inside.
Five days of dust.
Five days of hunting goblins or other fell creatures.
Five days of passing through shattered halls where once there was life.
She tore a small piece of the bread free, she ate it slowly.
The taste reminded her of sunlight and running water far above this world of stone.
For a while she just sat there, then she closed her eyes, and remembered.
Not the darkness.
Not the tomb it had become.
But the light.
Endless rows of lamps shining along the vaulted roads.
The sound of hammers, steady and constant, like the heartbeat of the halls.
Deep voices rising in song beneath arches that had once stolen her breath away.
She remembered her first passage through Khazad-dûm in the elder years of the Second Age.
She was in the company of the Lady of Light and her companions, following them east beneath the mountain.
Back then it hadn’t felt like going down into a mine.
It had felt like entering into something that would last forever.
She remembered walking beside Dwarves whose names the world had long forgotten.
Proud smiths with soot-darkened hands.
Warriors laughing loudly beneath their beards.
Merchants arguing cheerfully in crowded markets held beneath the mountain itself.
In those days the gates had stood open without fear.
Dwarves and Elves had walked the same roads together.
Litharil had been young then by the measure of the Eldar.
Still carrying the restlessness of one born in the fading years of Beleriand.
She had wandered those mighty halls in quiet awe, trailing a little behind, just watching it all.
The scale of it.
The life in it.
Even the stone had felt different — not dead, but worked. Known.
In those elder days Khazad-dûm had not felt deep or buried.
It had felt alive.
Litharil opened her eyes once more.
Now it was dead.
Everything sounded wrong here. Too hollow. Too far away.
Now the halls lay drowned beneath shadow and memory alike.
The songs were gone.
The fires were extinguished.
Even the stone itself seemed weary.
Only the dark endured.
The fire had sunk lower. It was almost time.
Somewhere deep in the dark, stone shifted. Or something that lived in it did.
She finished the lembas and stood.
So much had passed into ruin.
Gondolin.
Beleriand.
Eregion.
Now Khazad-dûm.
The ages devoured all things eventually.
Yet still she remained.
Watching.
Remembering.
Guarding the fading edges of a world that was no longer hers.
For a while longer she stood without moving, just listening to the silence of the ancient kingdom around her.
Then she extinguished the fire.
Darkness immediately reclaimed the chamber.
Sword in hand, she moved on, deeper beneath the mountain.
