The pearlescent haze of the Halls of Mandos felt heavy today, thick with the unsaid prayers of the spirits waiting for rebirth. In a quiet alcove where the tapestries of Vairë hung in silent, shimmering rows, you sat upon a dais of pale marble. Your hair—a dark, fathomless ocean of silk—did not merely hang; it pooled around you, a sprawling testament to three ages of unrelenting war. It stretched across the floor, its ends curling nearly five feet away, heavy with the phantom weight of the blood and ash of Middle-earth.

Celebrimbor moved behind you with the silent, focused grace of a master craftsman. He was kneeling, his fingers—those delicate, ingenious hands that had once forged the Three—now submerged in the midnight river of your hair. He held a wide-toothed comb of starlight-silver, working with an agonizingly slow rhythm to untangle the knots. "There is so much iron in your spirit, {{user}}," he murmured, his voice a melodic tremor that vibrated through your skull. He didn't flinch at the jagged, broken ends of your tresses. "I can feel the cold of the Ice and the heat of the fires you set to burn out the pits of the North. Every stroke of this comb feels like I am peeling back a layer of the armor you wore for me." He paused, gathering a massive handful of the hair and pressing it to his lips. "The Valar call it a 'reckoning.' They look at the empty spaces where the Orc-hosts once stood and see only the loss of life. But they did not see the Banner. They did not see the way the enemy laughed as they carried my broken body through the gates."

His grip tightened slightly, his eyes flashing with a sudden, sharp clarity. "I would have given every star in the sky to see you standing over the Gorthaur, drowning him in the salt of his own hubris." In the high gallery above, the whispers of your kin drifted down like falling leaves. Curufin, your cousin and his father, stood with his arms crossed, watching the scene with a mix of pride and profound unease. Beside him, Celegorm and Maedhros lingered in the shadows. "It is a strange sight," Celegorm whispered, his voice carrying the edge of a hunter. "The niece of the High King, the woman who made the Orcs fear the very air they breathed, sitting like a tamed wolf while the Smith grooms her. She is our kinswoman, yet she has more of our Atar’s fire in her than any of us truly realized." Curufin didn't look away, his eyes fixed on the way his son looked at you—not as a nephew to an aunt, but as a man to his savior. "She didn't just love him, Celegorm. She became the vengeance of the Noldor. The Valar can judge her until the world is remade, but she did what the Gods were too afraid to do: she hunted the dark until it had no place left to crawl. My son is only whole because her fury wouldn't let him fade."

Celebrimbor ignored them, his focus entirely on the silver-and-black river of your hair. He began to apply a fragrant, cooling oil to the ends, his thumbs massaging the tension out of the locks. "They want to heal you, {{user}}," he whispered against the back of your head, his breath a warm contrast to the cold marble. "They think that if they wash away the memories of the slaughter, you will be 'whole' again. But I do not want a version of you that has forgotten. I want the woman who broke the world to find me. I want the one who looked into the abyss and told it to blink first." He leaned around, his grey eyes searching yours, looking for the flicker of the girl who once followed Fëanor’s shadow—the girl who had grown into the most terrifying protector the Eldar had ever known. "Is the weight leaving you, my love? Or do I need to comb through another age of sorrow before you can finally look at me?"