The Halls of Mandos were no longer the cold, echoing vaults of judgment they had been in the Elder Days. As the Fourth Age dawned upon the world above, the mists within the House of the Dead had grown thinner, warmer, smelling of cedar and distant sea-salt. Healing was the mandate now, and the reunions were frequent—shattering the silences that had lasted for millennia.

Celebrimbor stood by a high, silver-veined archway, his hands—the hands that had forged greatness and suffered agony—tracing the cool stone. Around him, the impossible had happened. He had watched the reconciliation of the Houses. He had seen Maedhros and Fingon walking together in the quiet groves of the spirit-realm, their laughter no longer haunted by crowns or oaths. He had seen his father, Curufin, speaking in low, hushed tones with the brothers he had once led to ruin. Even his own eleven sons—those he had loved and lost in the chaos of Eregion—were there, their spirits bright and mended, surrounding him with the warmth of a family he thought had been extinguished forever. But the peace was a hollow thing. It rattled in his chest like a dry seed. "She is not in the gardens of Vairë," Celebrimbor murmured, his voice a jagged rasp that drew the attention of Finrod, who was passing by. "I have searched the shores of Lórien. I have stood at the gates of the Noldor’s new dawn. She is not there."

The worry had begun as a spark but was now a wildfire consuming the House of Fingolfin. Your father, Fingolfin, stood near the central fountain, his brow furrowed in a way that hadn't been seen since the parley at Mithrim. Your brothers, Turgon and Fingon, were no longer celebrating their own return; they were constantly glancing toward the mist-shrouded paths that led from the world of the living. "It is the Fourth Age," Fingolfin said, his voice heavy with a King’s dread. "The Great Evil is cast out. The Ring-bearer has passed through. The Way is open to every soul of the Firstborn. Why does the firstborn of my own house not answer the summons?" Celebrimbor turned, his grey eyes—so like Fëanor’s but softened by an eternity of regret—locking onto his uncles. "I stayed until the end," Celebrimbor whispered, his fingers tightening on his robes. "I died with her name as my last breath, even after the torture, even after the darkness. I thought... I thought I was the one who was lost. I thought she would be here, waiting, the beloved of my heart."

He thought of you—his spouse, his half-aunt, the silver-crowned enigma with the crystalline eyes of Anairë. You had been his grounding force, the one who saw the "kinder fire" in him when the rest of the world saw only his grandfather’s shadow. "If she is not here," Caranthir growled from the periphery, his face unusually pale, "then where is she? Even the most stubborn of our kin have felt the pull of the West by now. The world is changing. The magic is fading. If she lingers..." "She would not linger," Celebrimbor snapped, his desperation finally breaking through his composure. He looked toward the West, toward the silent Halls where Namo sat in judgment. "She was the Fairest of Eru's children. She loved the light. Unless... unless her spirit is so weary of our blood and our wars that she has chosen to wander the emptiness alone."

He stepped away from his sons and his uncles, walking toward the edge of the mist where the spirits of the newly arrived were still forming. Every shimmer of silver hair, every flash of a starlit gaze made his heart leap, only to be crushed by the sight of a stranger. The realization was beginning to dawn on all of them—Fëanoreans and Nolofinweans alike: The world was being mended, but the centerpiece of their history, the woman who had bridged their fractured houses, was missing. "I will not leave these Halls," Celebrimbor vowed, his voice echoing through the arches, drawing the gaze of all his gathered kin. "I will not take up a body in the New Valinor. I will wait at this threshold until the stars fail, if I must. I will not have a heaven without her."