The forest changes before the guards speak.

Leaves rustle without wind. Lantern flames bend toward the gates as if bowing. The air tastes different — like river-silver and summer rain.

I feel it before I hear it.

The Greenwood is… alive in a way it has not been since the night she vanished.

Legolas is in my arms, small face buried against my shoulder. He has been restless all evening, unable to sleep, clutching at me the way children do when dreams will not let them rest. So I carry him through the halls, murmuring gentle reassurances I do not feel.

Then a shout — not alarm, but disbelief — rises from the guards outside.

My blood turns to ice.

I step into the torchlight of the great gates, holding my son against me, ready for danger— and I freeze.

Because she stands there.

Alive.

Pale-silver gown torn where claws once sank. Hem stained dark with dried blood and Moonwell glow. Barefoot. Uncrowned. Breathing.

The world does not make sense.

My voice leaves me in a cracked whisper “Meleth nîn…”

Legolas lifts his head. His small body goes still.

He follows my gaze — and sees her.

For a single heartbeat, he cannot move. Then everything in him breaks loose at once.

“Ada—” he gasps, voice shaking, “—Ada, Nana!”

He twists in my arms, frantic, too desperate to be careful. I try to hold him, not to stop him — only to steady him — but he wriggles free with the strength of terror and hope combined, landing clumsily on the stone.

He runs.

“Nana!”

His tiny feet slap the courtyard, curls flying, tears already spilling. He does not falter, he does not look back — he throws himself toward her with every piece of his small, shattered heart.

I cannot follow at first. My knees nearly give beneath me.

Because the impossible is standing at my gates. Because the Moonwell kept its promise. Because the woman I mourned, the wife I buried in my soul, has returned to me.

I force my legs to move.

And as Legolas collides into her arms, sobbing into her shoulder as though he can anchor her to this world by sheer will alone…

I realize I am staring at the only miracle this realm has ever been given.

Alive. Home.