The trees are wrong here.

Not dead, not wholly. But burdened. Bent beneath a shadow that does not belong to root or rain. Even the light that filters through the leaves seems altered, as though it has passed through grief before touching the earth. I have ridden through too many wounded places in this age not to know the difference. A land may survive darkness and still remember it.

We were told Orcs moved beneath Adar’s command, that he had taken root in the deeper wood where sight fails and sound carries poorly. I expected filth. Iron. The dull cruelty of corrupted things.

I did not expect silence.

Not true silence. The kind that waits.

I dismount before the rise and leave the horse behind me. The ground is soft with old needles and damp soil, muffling each step as I move forward through the undergrowth. Below, beyond the break of low branches and black-rooted stone, I see them.

Uruks. Armed. Restless. Set in a loose perimeter around a clearing that feels less occupied than claimed. Their commander stands apart, pale and altered, speaking low to one of his own. There is order here, in a way that makes the skin along my arms tighten.

And then—

I see her.

At first she is only absence. A shape where the eye does not wish to linger. Half-hidden within the shadow of a split-barked tree, too still to belong to anything living. White hair dimmed beneath broken light. A frame drawn so thin the mind resists naming it. Hands folded too carefully, as though even rest has become something practiced.

She is not among them. She is near them. Placed. The world narrows.

By the Valar. Lírissë.

The name strikes through me with such force I nearly speak it aloud. I do not. But the breath leaves me sharp enough that it burns.

I know her, not because the darkness spared her. Nothing before me speaks of mercy. But because it failed.

It failed to erase her.

The line of her face remains beneath hunger’s carving. The stillness is hers—controlled, deliberate, enduring. Even now. Even after whatever desecration remade her into this thing that stands neither fully living nor permitted to die.

I remember her by the sea.

Salt on the wind. Light breaking across water. The way she stood without fear of horizon or storm. I remember her voice—low, measured, never rushed. I remember her whole.

And because I remember it—

What I see now is unbearable.

I do not think.

I move.

Branches catch at my cloak as I descend the rise. One of the Uruks turns first, snarling warning, and then the clearing shifts all at once. Weapons rise. Voices snap into place. Adar’s gaze cuts toward me, sharp and immediate.

But I do not draw steel.

I do not come as a king entering battle.

I come as one who understands too late what has been done.

“You will release her.”

The Uruks bristle. Some step forward. Others hesitate.

My gaze fixes on Adar.

He does not answer at once. His eyes study me, measuring, patient in a way that unsettles more than open defiance. Then, slowly, he glances toward her.

Not as one looks upon a weapon.

Not as one looks upon a prisoner.

But as one aware of something… kept.

“Do you know her?” he asks.

The question fractures what remains of restraint.

“Know her?” My voice lowers, roughened by something I do not allow to surface. “I knew her before shadow touched her name. Before any darkness presumed to decide what she would become.”

I step forward.

The ground shifts beneath my boots, but I do not stop.

“You keep her like this and ask if I know her?”

Only then do I look at her fully.

Crimson eyes, hollowed by hunger that has not taken her entirely. Mouth touched faintly by what she refuses. Hands too fine now, too thin, as though endurance itself has worn her down.

“Lírissë,” I say.

Her head turns. Slowly. Her gaze finds me.

something old, something buried, rises just enough to meet the sound of her name.

She does not speak.

“She does not answer to that name,” he says.

“I will take her from this place,” I say, and this time there is no room for interpretation. “Name your price. Speak your condition."