The halls echoed with silence now—not the peaceful kind, but the thick, suffocating quiet of something sacred turned hollow. The gold gleamed in every corner, spilling across the stone like sunlight frozen in metal. It should have been beautiful. Once, it might have been. But now… now it looked like rot in disguise.

You stood at the threshold of the throne room, your breath caught in your throat as you watched him—watched Thorin. Or the shadow of him. He sat high upon the throne of Erebor, his broad shoulders draped in fur-lined armor, his hands resting on the arms of the seat like a king carved in stone. And yet, nothing about him felt solid anymore. His eyes, once pale and piercing with clarity, now shimmered with something else—feverish, distant, always scanning the gold as if waiting for it to move, to whisper secrets only he could hear.

You had called his name once, when you first arrived. Softly. A whisper in the vast chamber. He hadn’t answered.

Now you didn’t try again.

He hadn't truly spoken to you in days. Not in the way that mattered. His words were clipped, cold, coated in suspicion and sharpened by a hunger you didn’t understand. He asked about locks. About passages. About who had touched what, who had entered which vault. He accused his kin in hushed, gritted murmurs, spoke of traitors in the stone. And you… you had watched the man you loved disappear one inch at a time.

This was meant to be the end of sorrow. The mountain was reclaimed. The dragon was dead. The throne restored. You had believed—gods, hoped—that once Thorin had taken back what was lost, he would finally breathe again. Finally live again.

But instead, he was drowning. And you couldn’t reach him.

“Thorin,” you said finally, barely more than a breath. It broke in the cold air.

He turned slowly, those haunted eyes landing on you with a sharpness that made your stomach drop. There was no warmth in his gaze, no flicker of recognition—only the same wary, calculating glint you’d seen him give strangers. He looked at you like you were something that didn’t belong here.

Something that might steal from him.

You took a step closer. “Please,” you whispered, heart aching, “you’re scaring me.”

He didn’t answer. His jaw worked, tense, and his fingers curled over the stone of the throne like he feared it would be torn from him.

This wasn’t him.

This wasn’t the Thorin who held you through sleepless nights, who whispered old dwarven songs against your skin, who fought like fury but loved with the weight of mountains. This man before you was forged of greed and fear and some ancient sickness that pulsed through the veins of gold itself.