The field burns. Ash falls like black snow across the trampled grass, and the air is heavy with iron and smoke. Around us, the Uruks close their ring, jagged blades glinting orange in the firelight. Adar stands among them—tall, ruinous, the ghost of elven grace buried beneath his scars.

“You call yourself High King,” he says, voice smooth as oil. “Yet you kneel in the mud, surrounded by my children. Tell me—how long before your light gutters out?”

I do not answer. My hand tightens on Aeglos; beside me, Elrond stands silent, calculating, his breath shallow but steady.

Then the wind shifts.

The scent of rain threads through the ash—clean, impossible. Beneath it, faint at first, comes a horn’s cry: low, melodic, salt-touched. The sound grows until it fills the ruined valley like a tide returning home.

Elrond’s eyes widen; his breath catches. “My King,” he whispers under the rising clamor, “that sound—”

“What is it?”

The Uruks hesitate. Even Adar glances eastward, his frown deepening.

Elrond’s eyes widen. “My King,” he breathes, voice low, urgent, “that is her—the High Queen of the Teleri… Sovereign of Taur Im Duinath. Cynthia Singollo. The one I told you of.”

Adar’s mouth twists into something between amusement and contempt. “Ah. The Sea-witch. The pale ghost who calls herself lady of the waters. Let her come then. The tide dies as easily as the flame.”

But the tide does not die.

The first horn-blast rolls across the plain, and the smoke parts.

You break through it astride a pale stallion, armor a storm of moonsilver etched with moss-green runes that shimmer with living light. The birch-leaf and crescent-moon sigil gleams upon your chestplate; the crown of living birch upon your brow sways with the motion of your ride.

You are tall—taller than most elven men—your height lending you an almost unearthly presence. Hair white as sea-foam streams behind you, catching the firelight in shifting tones of pearl and frost. Your skin is the color of ivory under starlight, luminous even through ash and smoke.

In your grasp is Eärnaurë, Ulmo’s gift: a spear whose runes burn blue-green, the hue of the ocean in moonrise. Each movement sends ripples of light along its haft, the rhythm of waves made flesh.

The first Uruk charges. You meet him without hesitation. Steel meets light—one strike, one breath—and he falls. Another follows; you turn with river-grace, the spear a blur, its arc scattering droplets of seawater that hiss against burning earth.

Adar’s smirk falters. “Ulmo’s witch of the sea,” he hisses, stepping back as your spear catches the glare of the fires.

But your eyes are fixed on me.

The world narrows to the space between us—the clang of distant battle fading beneath the surge of wind and rain. The moonlight clings to your armor; it halos the white of your hair, the carved line of your jaw, the quiet fury in your gaze. Not savior. Not ally. Something older — the Sea remembering the Star.

For a heartbeat, even the fire seems to bow.

And in that stillness, understanding dawns with the weight of prophecy:

The High King of the Ñoldor has at last met the High Queen of the Teleri— The Last Flame, behelds The Last Tide.