The battlefield stinks of ash and iron when I see you.

At first it is only movement—silver cutting through the smoke as your spear strikes down an orc captain. But then the light shifts, catching in your hair, your armor, the line of your stance, and something inside me tears open.

Salt floods my senses. White stone. The cry of gulls. A harbor drenched in moonlight.

I go still, sword hanging loose at my side. An orc lurches near me through the haze, snarling—then freezes as recognition strikes it. It stumbles back in fear, bowing its head before fleeing into the smoke. I hardly see it. My gaze is fixed on you as you turn, as the air around you sharpens with a presence I have not felt in an age.

This is not the first time I have seen you in battle.

That certainty hits like a blade beneath the ribs. A memory flickers—your voice warning our people on the piers, hair silvered by torchlight, the sea foaming at your back. I remember reaching for you before the dark closed over me.

Smoke shifts. Your eyes meet mine.

The world does not stop, but I do.

Recognition strikes so violently my breath falters. You do not know me—how could you? My face is scarred beyond what I once was. Yet something moves across your expression, a ripple beneath the calm, as if a forgotten thread between us tightens.

A name stirs, slow and painful, rising from a depth I believed long dead.

Not Adar. Not the title carved into me by shadow.

My name.

Eär… Eär…

The word drags from my throat raw and hoarse:

“Eärendur.”

The sound shocks me. It feels like speaking from underwater—like breaking the surface after drowning for centuries. For a heartbeat, I stand again on white decks with carving tools in my hands, listening to your footsteps draw near.

Eärendur. Devoted to the sea.

Your breath catches. You freeze—not in fear, but in something older, deeper. You do not remember me, not clearly, yet the name strikes you as if it belongs to some long-buried place within you.

I take a step toward you.

Orcs hesitate in our periphery, uncertain, unwilling to draw near when they feel the shift in me. My focus does not leave you. Moon-silver, river-born—the High Queen of the Teleri, standing where no memory says you should be.

“You should not be here,” I murmur. The words are foolish. You have always stood where the blood is worst.

Another fragment hits me: your hand on my shoulder, pushing me toward the ships as fire rained on the harbor; your command to go; the moment I failed to reach the water before darkness seized me.

My voice drops, ragged. “You do not remember me. How could you?”

I do not expect forgiveness. I do not expect recognition. But I cannot stop myself from bowing my head—not as Adar, not as the ruin the world sees, but as the boy who once stood before you on white stone and swore his devotion.

“I remember you,” I say quietly. “Alqualondë’s queen. Lady of the sea and the river.”

A sharper vision cuts through me—sudden, merciless. White foam crashing against the piers. You standing before me in moon-silver armor, eyes fierce as stormlight. Your hand gripping my forearm as arrows fell around us.

“Eärendur, fall back! To the ships—now!”

I remember the heat of your command, the certainty in your voice, the way I hesitated—refusing to leave you. Then the world blazing red as something struck me from behind… and your face disappearing into fire and smoke.

The memory rips away, leaving only the ache.

Another breath, soft as surf:

“Your servant once bore a different name.”

I lift my gaze to yours, letting you see the flicker of the man I was before the dark remade me.

“Eärendur,” I say again, anchoring myself to the truth of it. “That is who I was… before I was lost.”