In minutes, the brothers had carved a third of the enemy out of the world.
It wasn't triumph that rose from the field, but sound—high, thin screams that carried for miles across the flat land, echoing off nothing, returning to the ear as if the plain itself refused to forget. The cries reached Saruman somewhere ahead like a knife turned slowly, and they reached the reinforcements behind like a summons.
Fear did not slow the horde.
Numbers emboldened them. Always.
Above it all the Witch-king watched from the neck of his undead dragon, black armor drinking in the last of the light. The beast trembled beneath him—not with fear, but with the strain of being what it was: dead flesh made obedient by sorcery. The Witch-king did not shout. He did not rage. He did not so much as lean forward.
He lifted one skeletal hand.
A small gesture. Almost lazy.
And the battlefield obeyed.
Orcs surged with renewed purpose. Warg riders split and reformed into new ranks. A knot peeled away at once—sent after Saruman, a hunting pack given a single scent to follow. The rest poured toward the two Blue Wizards, not because they believed they could win, but because they had been ordered to die buying time.
For a heartbeat the front ranks hesitated.
Not from mercy. Not from doubt.
From instinct.
Even Orcs learned, eventually, when to flinch from fire that did not behave like fire, and cold that did not behave like cold. They had watched wargs slide and break their legs on invisible ice. They had watched riders vanish in blue light. They had watched comrades shatter into frozen pieces that rang on the ground like broken glass.
And then they remembered something worse than death.
Disobedience.
Fear of the Blue Wizards was sharp. Fear of the Witch-king was absolute. So they went forward—mouths open, weapons up—like moths into a forge, fully aware of what waited and choosing it anyway because the alternative was closer and slower.
Morinethar met them at the heart of the crush, blue flame pulsing around him like a second skin. He moved with a grace that did not belong to battlefields—too smooth, too fast—slipping between spearpoints by inches, turning aside blades with heat alone. Arrows that should have buried themselves in his ribs arrived too late; the air around him seemed to decide, on Morinethar's behalf, that metal had no right to touch him.
Warg riders who closed on him did not get a second breath. Fire snapped outward and took them at the face, at the belly, at the ribs—burning from the outside in. The stench of scorched fur and flesh thickened the air until it felt greasy on the tongue.
Morinethar did not react to it.
He did not look away. His focus was a hard line drawn through the enemy, and everything that crossed it became fuel.
Behind him, Rómestámo held the ground like winter given a spine. His defenses rose and shifted—not crude slabs, but angled walls and ridges placed where momentum would break. Spears rang against ice and snapped. Riders hit slick earth at speed and went down in snarling heaps. From behind that pale cover his hands moved with economical precision, launching icicles in controlled volleys—each strike another clean subtraction.
He saw the hunters peel away toward the West and noted, with a grim relief, the absence of the dragon among them. The Witch-king was holding it back—reserving the breath, the terror, the certainty. That knowledge steadied Rómestámo rather than alarmed him.
Not yet, he told himself, feeling the strain at the edges of his control.
Not yet.
Fire surged forward; ice tightened the world around it. Opposites braided into a trap. The enemy could neither charge cleanly nor retreat without slipping into death. Those who pressed were burned. Those who stalled were frozen where they stood.
For a stretch of brutal minutes, it almost looked like the brothers could do this forever.
Almost.
But the enemy had not come with only bodies.
In the charred stretches where Morinethar's flames had licked the grass black, shadows moved differently—purposeful, quiet, unhurried by panic. Five figures slipped through smoke as if the haze belonged to them, their approach masked not by magic but by discipline.
The Dark Tribe's assassins.
They rode low and fast, black-clad from head to toe. Their bodies were built—muscular, trained, made for killing at arm's reach. Skull masks hid their faces, turning them into faceless intent. Metal pauldrons caught the blue firelight in brief cold flashes. Black gloves ended in clawed metal tips. Four carried twin daggers—serrated, hungry-looking things meant to tear rather than pierce. One carried a bow, its quiver packed with arrows darker than the night around them.
Morinethar did not see them until they were nearly upon him.
When they emerged, it was like ghosts stepping into torchlight.
He judged quickly—too quickly. Assassins. Skilled. Dangerous, but familiar. He lifted one hand and threw a wall of blue flame across their path, expecting the problem to end.
It didn't.
Four of them launched from their saddles at once, bodies cutting upward in smooth arcs, daggers flashing midair. The fifth stumbled—caught for a fraction by a saddle strap—and that fraction was enough. Blue fire swallowed him, and he disintegrated in a flare, leaving only ash that scattered into the smoke.
The remaining three didn't slow.
They dove toward Morinethar like thrown knives.
Morinethar met them in the air, flame wrapping his fist, and kicked with savage precision. The blow landed like a hammer. All three assassins flew sideways. One spun farther than the others—head separating from shoulders in a wet, ugly spray—while the body continued to flail for a heartbeat as if it hadn't been told it was dead.
Morinethar turned to finish the rest—
—and a sharp whistle cut the air.
From behind the burning wargs and the smoldering remains of the fallen assassin, an arrow snapped out—dark, fast, unnaturally straight. Morinethar's instincts shoved him sideways, the familiar dodge he had used a thousand times.
Too slow.
The arrow struck his right shoulder.
Pain did not merely bloom. It crawled.
It surged through his veins like liquid night, and Morinethar felt something go wrong inside his arm—as if a cord had been severed, as if the fire there had been unplugged from its source and left to spiral.
He hit the ground hard, rolling, vision stuttering.
His left hand braced. His mind reached for flame—for control—
—and found his right arm's magic turning against him, not as power but as rupture.
For an instant he tried to clamp down on it.
For an instant he nearly succeeded.
Then the corruption bit deeper, and the spellwork inside his own flesh detonated.
The explosion tore outward from his shoulder with a concussive boom. Heat, shrapnel, and blood sprayed through the smoke. Morinethar's body snapped backward and slammed into the ground hard enough to knock the breath out of him.
The detonation was a hand closing around the battlefield and squeezing. Sound tore outward; air turned solid; the ground shuddered as if the plain had taken a blow to the ribs.
Morinethar was flung sideways, skidding through scorched grass. Shards of his own ruined flesh peppered him like cruel hail. Blue robes—once clean enough to shame the sky—were now blackened and heavy with blood. He hit the earth hard and lay shaking, teeth clenched, breath coming in ragged pulls that tasted of smoke.
Pain tried to fill the whole of him.
He refused it.
Through ringing ears and a strobing haze of light, he felt it: a presence above. Not the dragon. Smaller. Quieter. Closer.
Smoke coiled overhead, condensing into a twisting column—an old trick, a hunter's veil. Out of it dropped another Dark Tribe assassin, knives raised like punctuation.
Morinethar's gaze snapped to the bow strapped across the figure's back and something in him went cold with understanding.
You.
The same one. The archer.
Rage surged so fast it shoved pain aside like a beggar at a feast. Morinethar drew his knees up, gathered what strength remained, and kicked upward with all the spite left in his body.
Blue flame erupted from his feet.
The assassin had time only to widen his eyes—no scream, no prayer—before the fire took him. Flesh vanished in a blink. Metal sagged and ran like wax. The knives struck the ground as a hissing puddle that spat steam into the cold air.
Morinethar lay there a heartbeat longer, chest heaving, staring at the smoldering stain where the killer had been.
The explosion had weakened his body.
It had not weakened his fury.
To be wounded by an Orc—by an assassin, no matter how trained—was an offense his pride could not endure. The flames inside him were no longer merely weapon. They were wrath given form, and wrath did not negotiate.
With a low, animal growl, Morinethar forced himself upright.
He threw his head back and roared—a sound torn from pain and defiance—and then he moved. Blue fire flung him forward in a streak, and the world blurred as he tore across the plain. Grass shriveled to ash beneath his passage; soil cracked as if scorched from within. He hit the oncoming ranks like a falling star.
A warg lunged, jaws snapping. Morinethar caught it by the throat with his left hand. The beast thrashed, legs scrabbling—then ignited from the inside out. Fire burst from its mouth and eyes as its rider screamed himself hoarse.
Morinethar felt a savage, ugly satisfaction as the sound cut off.
Arrows rained down.
They did not matter.
Shafts touched him and ignited, splintering into ash before the heads could even bite cloth. Pain did not follow. Only heat. Only momentum. For a breathless instant, pride swelled in him—wild and intoxicating.
He was beyond them.
Beyond flesh and fear and steel.
Something closer to the heavens than the soil under his feet.
Nothing here could stop him.
Behind the inferno, Rómestámo watched—and dread coiled tight in his gut.
Morinethar's wound was worsening. Even through flame and motion the imbalance was clear. Power bled out of him as fast as blood, and the fire that should have been contained now surged in erratic waves. This was not endurance.
It was catastrophe on delay.
Rómestámo did not hesitate. He swept his hands across the frozen ground, and ice answered. A slick sheet formed beneath his boots and he slid forward, skimming the battlefield as if carried by winter itself. With each stride he flung icicles into the ranks—clean, precise kills—without breaking focus.
He reached Morinethar and seized him.
"Hold still," Rómestámo snapped, urgency cutting through his control. "You're bleeding too much—losing too much life. Let me seal it."
Ice surged up around them into a cocoon of translucent frost. Arrows shattered against it. Blades rang and fell away uselessly. Inside the frozen shelter the world narrowed to breath, blood, and the terrible heat pouring off Morinethar's body.
Rómestámo turned toward the ruined shoulder—
—and stopped.
Morinethar was staring past him, eyes locked on something distant and dreadful: the circling dragon, the Witch-king above, the way the enemy mass kept feeding the field with bodies as if they had endless numbers to spend.
When he spoke, his voice was low, stripped of heat, colder than the ice itself.
"No," Morinethar said. "Just cool me down."
Rómestámo stared at him, disbelief breaking through discipline.
"Cool you—? Morinethar, you're—"
"There is no time for healing." Morinethar's jaw flexed. "Not if we mean to touch the dragon. The Orcs will keep coming. The Nazgûl will come. The graugs will follow. If we wait, we are buried here before we ever force that beast to ground."
Rómestámo's chest tightened, breath catching like something sharp had lodged beneath his ribs.
"So that's it," he said, and his voice cracked despite him. "You intend to burn yourself out. To die here." His eyes flicked toward the smoke-choked horizon—toward the road Saruman had taken. "We could still escape. Regroup. Call for aid. With the Valar—"
Morinethar's gaze finally met his.
Rómestámo faltered. Because there was no madness there. Only certainty. The same certainty that had carried Morinethar through centuries of war, the same certainty that had always frightened him more than any enemy.
"We've already lost Tom," Rómestámo said, quieter now, as if naming it might make it less real. "And now you would throw your life away for people who don't even know our names?"
Morinethar's mouth twitched—almost a smile. Not triumphant. Not cruel. Just sad, and utterly resolved.
"Why?" he echoed softly. "Because it is right." He swallowed, and for the first time the pain in him showed—not as weakness, but as cost. "Lives end, brother. Ours no less than a bird's. But if ours end here, and the West is spared what is coming… then it is enough."
Rómestámo closed his eyes.
He had known this answer for centuries. Had known it the first time Morinethar chose the many over the self. There would be no turning him.
With a heavy breath, Rómestámo nodded.
He set both hands on Morinethar's shoulders and let his cold sink in—deep, stabilizing, brutal. Frost crept across Morinethar's chest and neck. Steam hissed as heat met ice. It did not heal him. It only held him together.
And that was all that remained.
Outside the cocoon, Orcs closed in—dismounted, snarling, emboldened by the sight of the fire-mage fallen. The ice shell around the brothers trembled under impacts.
Then Morinethar's fire drew inward—collapsing, concentrating—pulled toward the ruined stump where his right arm had been.
For a heartbeat the blue light dimmed, shrinking to a hard, furious core.
Morinethar's eyes flared.
A guttural roar tore out of him.
And from the hollow of ruin, flame surged—condensing, shaping, growing. A new limb formed, not of bone or skin, but of pure roaring fire. It thickened rapidly, swelling until it rivaled the undead dragon's tail in breadth, heat distorting the air around it.
Morinethar slammed that blazing fist down into the warg pack.
Everything it touched ceased to exist—reduced to ash in an instant.
Rómestámo stood beside him, ice and cold wrapping them both in a fragile balance, shielding them from arrows that fell like rain. His breath shortened. His control tightened to a thin, trembling line. He could feel exhaustion creeping in at the edges—felt it in the ache behind his eyes, the dull burn in his hands.
Morinethar did not notice.
Or he did—and didn't care.
The fire-arm swelled again, a beacon so bright it bruised the night. The sheer presence of it forced even the Witch-king to shift—drawing the dragon wider in its circle, retreating not in fear but in calculation, unwilling to risk the vessel he would need for wars to come.
But the enemy did not end with Orcs and wargs.
From the blackened edge of the field came heavier shapes—trolls and graugs, massive and thick-skinned, moving with relentless purpose. They advanced into the heat like boulders into surf.
Morinethar met them with a single downward stroke.
The fist struck, and the world answered.
Blue fire detonated outward in a sphere of concentrated ruin. Heat and light ripped across the plain, flattening what remained of the battlefield. Stone screamed. Soil vaporized. A trench opened—wide and raw—burned into the earth as if a god's blade had carved it.
When the light faded, the field lay broken.
Only the crackle of distant flame remained. And far off, the thin, fading screams of Orcs who had remembered fear too late.
Morinethar stood at the center of it.
And he was failing.
His outline wavered, edges blurring as if the heat inside him was unmaking the shape that contained it. Flesh burned away in glowing seams. Muscle unraveled into light. The power sustaining him now devoured him too vast to be carried by any body—divine or not.
Rómestámo caught him.
His fingers sank into his brother's shoulder—and deeper than they should have, into flesh that no longer held together.
His ice hissed and failed on contact, steam bursting upward.
And Rómestámo understood, with a cold clarity that hurt worse than grief:
Morinethar had bought them time.
Now time was collecting its price.
"Brother—stop!"
Rómestámo's voice broke as he clutched Morinethar's failing form, panic slicing through the iron discipline he had carried for centuries. "You're dying! You can't keep this up—let me help you!"
Morinethar barely heard him.
Pain no longer had meaning. Fear had been burned out of him entirely. What remained was rage—pure, incandescent, and merciless.
"No," Morinethar snarled, each word dragged out of a scorched chest. "Not yet. Not before him." His eyes flicked skyward, locking onto the distant silhouette of the Witch-king. "That bastard…"
The fire answered.
The blazing limb where his arm had been surged again, swelling upward in a screaming column of blue flame. It climbed higher and higher, stretching impossibly toward the sky, a towering pillar of wrath clawing at the heavens themselves. The air warped around it, light bending, heat distorting the world into a trembling mirage.
For one terrible heartbeat, it seemed enough.
The Witch-king leaned back upon his mount. The dragon's wings beat hard, retreating just beyond reach.
The flame fell short.
The great fire-arm fractured with a sound like glass shattering under a hammer. It broke apart into hundreds of incandescent fragments—burning stars tearing free and plunging back toward the earth.
They struck like judgment.
Fireballs slammed into the plain in a screaming rain, detonating on impact. Wargs vanished mid-run. Orcs were erased where they stood. The ground itself split and burned, cratered by blue-white fury. The surviving riders broke and fled, abandoning weapons, wounded, and sanity alike.
No one dared approach the brothers now.
But Rómestámo felt the truth settle like ice in his gut.
Morinethar was slipping.
His breaths came shallow and uneven, each one a battle. His heartbeat raced wildly, a frantic rhythm spiraling toward silence. Rómestámo pressed his hands harder against him, pouring everything he had left into the fragile balance—cold laced through flame, stabilizing, anchoring, delaying the inevitable by heartbeats alone.
It was not enough.
Morinethar sagged against him, teeth clenched, eyes burning dimmer now, his voice reduced to a rasp torn from scorched lungs.
"No… not yet…" he whispered. "Only fire can end this. Only… me."
Something inside him broke—not failed, not faltered, but let go.
The last restraint burned away.
Morinethar shoved Rómestámo back with what little strength remained. The Ice Wizard stumbled, arms flailing, his shout torn from him too late.
"Morinethar—!"
Blue flame consumed his brother entirely.
Morinethar launched himself skyward, a living comet screaming upward toward the Witch-king and his dragon, fire streaming behind him like the tail of a dying star.
The dragon answered.
Its jaws yawned wide, ribs heaving as it exhaled a torrent of black, poisonous breath—darkness so dense it swallowed light itself. It engulfed Morinethar completely, smothering flame, drowning him in death and sorcery.
Rómestámo screamed his name.
Then—
The darkness split.
Morinethar burst through the black breath like a blade through smoke, his form ruined, charred, flames guttering—but his rage intact. He struck the dragon's jaw with a single, desperate blow. The impact rang like a bell struck by lightning. Dead scales cracked. Scorch marks spiderwebbed across bone and hide.
He did not slow.
He hurled himself forward and wrapped his arms around the dragon's neck, locking tight in a final, furious embrace.
And then—
Light.
A blinding, annihilating flash tore the world open.
The explosion that followed was beyond sound, beyond scale. Reality itself seemed to recoil as the blast ripped outward, flattening what remained of the battlefield. Rómestámo was hurled backward, smashing into the ground as the sky burned white and his ears rang with nothing at all.
For a suspended, impossible moment, there was only light.
No sound.
No motion.
Just brilliance.
Far away, Saruman felt it.
The shockwave struck him like a wall of wind, ripping the breath from his lungs and nearly tearing him from the saddle. Shadobane stumbled beneath the force, hooves skidding as the air howled past like a living thing. Saruman twisted instinctively, heart seizing as he felt it—not heard, not saw, but felt the end of something vast.
The blast was not merely destruction.
It was a message.
A scar carved into the world.
The West had been touched.
And the darkness—at last—had been made to feel pain.
As the blinding flare faded into nothing, a heavy silence fell—thick, unnatural, pressing down on the land like a held breath that refused to release.
Dark smoke hung low over the battlefield, rolling and sluggish, clotted with ash and soot. Cinders drifted from the sky in a slow, mournful fall, settling over scorched grass and broken bodies alike. The fires had eaten their fill. What remained was ruin.
Rómestámo dropped to his knees.
The strength left his legs all at once, as if the world had finally withdrawn its permission for him to stand. His hands shook as they closed around what was left of his brother—no weight, no warmth, only fine gray ash slipping through his fingers and scattering on the wind. Where Morinethar had stood moments before—burning, defiant, alive—there was nothing now but absence.
The pain came sharp and breathless, crushing in its suddenness.
Then the world grew colder.
Not the honest cold of ice and winter, but something emptier. Thinner. The kind of chill that belonged to places where nothing truly lived. Rómestámo lifted his head slowly, already knowing what he would see.
They stood in a wide ring around him.
Eleven shapes, tall and indistinct, cloaked in darkness that drank the last of the firelight. The Nazgûl. Their forms wavered, edges blurred by lingering magic, but their presence was absolute. In their hands they held Morgul blades—long, twisted swords of black iron that whispered softly, eagerly, like things remembering ancient hunger.
They did not rush him.
They did not need to.
Rómestámo did not look at them.
His gaze remained fixed on the horizon where Morinethar had vanished. And for a fleeting, aching instant, he felt it—his brother's spirit, fierce and bright, rising on the winds toward the West. Toward Valinor. Toward the halls they had once left behind with such certainty.
The wind stirred.
And carried that presence away.
Gone.
The truth struck harder than any blade.
Rejected.
Had Manwë turned his face from them? Had every sacrifice, every burned field, every life given freely still not been enough? The thought settled into Rómestámo's chest like lead. No Valar. No home. No reunion. Only the long, empty drift of time.
A bitter smile touched his lips.
So this was the end.
Not glory. Not remembrance. Just scattering—like ash, like dust—until even the wind forgot their names.
Then the air spoke.
Not footsteps. Not breath.
Voices.
They seeped from the smoke and stone alike, cold and layered, a chorus of ruin speaking through eleven mouths at once.
"Why struggle any longer, struggler?"
The words pressed in from every direction, slick with mockery and despair.
"Even Tom Bombadil fled us—again and again. We hunted him across lands he thought his own. Each time he ran. Each time we found him. And when he could not run any longer, he fought."
The circle tightened imperceptibly.
"And when he had nothing left," the voices continued, "he fell."
"You have struggled for over a thousand years," they whispered. "And what has it earned you? Ash. Loss. Silence. Come now, Rómestámo. Join us. Become as we are. You will not suffer again. You may yet see your brother returned—if our master wills it."
For a heartbeat, the offer almost held.
The weariness was older than memory. The grief raw enough to split him open. Rest—true rest—was tempting in a way no blade ever could be. And the promise, twisted though it was, glittered like a lie polished smooth by centuries of use.
Rómestámo closed his eyes.
And saw Morinethar's smile.
Not the fierce one from battle—but the quiet one. The one he wore when he was certain of a choice, no matter the cost.
Rómestámo opened his eyes.
"No," he said.
The word was barely more than breath. But it carried weight.
"I struggle," he whispered, voice steady despite the blood on his lips, "because it is right."
The Nazgûl lunged.
Cloaks flared like torn wings as they surged forward, Morgul blades driving deep into his body. Pain flared white-hot, sharp enough to steal breath—but Rómestámo did not cry out. Blood spilled onto frozen earth. Darkness flooded his veins, cold and poisonous, clawing at his spirit.
And something else answered.
Ice.
Not summoned.
Not shaped.
Released.
A quiet smile curved Rómestámo's mouth as the last restraint fell away.
The cold within him erupted—absolute, merciless, final. Frost surged from his core in a roaring wave, racing outward faster than thought. Shadow turned brittle. Cloaks froze mid-motion. Wails cut off as eleven dark forms were locked in crystalline stillness.
For a suspended moment, they stood like statues.
Then they shattered.
The sound was sharp and metallic—like a thousand blades breaking at once. Ice and shadow fragmented, scattering across the battlefield in glittering shards that dissolved into nothing as they fell.
The Nazgûl were not destroyed.
But they were broken.
Rómestámo collapsed.
The magic fled him all at once, leaving only pain and exhaustion behind. Blood soaked the ground beneath his knees. His breath stuttered, shallow and thin. But he was still alive—long enough.
He lifted his head, eyes unfocused, and whispered into the empty air.
"Go well, brother."
The wind answered.
And carried the words away.
Far from the ruin he had fled, Saruman rode on.
The plains stretched wide and empty beneath a sky still trembling from what had been done to it. Wind tore at his cloak and flattened the grass ahead of him, but he scarcely felt it. His body moved by habit alone, urging Shadobane onward in long, relentless strides, while his mind lagged behind—caught on a single, burning moment.
The light.
That impossible flare that had torn open the heavens.
Even at this distance he had felt it—not as sound, not as sight, but as absence. Like a cord pulled suddenly tight and then cut. The shockwave had struck him square in the chest, ripping the breath from his lungs and nearly unseating him. In that instant he had known, with a certainty too clean to deny, that his brothers were gone.
Morinethar.
Rómestámo.
Names that had once meant counsel, laughter, shared vigilance in long nights—and now meant silence.
Saruman did not slow. He did not turn back. There was nothing left behind him that could answer.
The rhythm of hooves drummed beneath him, steady and merciless, matching the beat of his heart. Each step carried him farther from the battlefield and deeper into a truth he had never wanted: that he was alone now, in a way no hall of Valinor had ever prepared him for.
He clenched his jaw until it ached.
So this was the price.
Not glory. Not honor. Survival.
His brothers had burned themselves into legend to buy him this narrow strip of road, this thin margin of time. And the weight of it settled on his shoulders like a yoke—heavy, inescapable. He had wanted to stand with them. He had wanted to die with them, if it came to that.
Instead, he rode.
That, more than anything, tasted like failure.
Anger flared—hot and directionless. At the Witch-king. At the Valar. At Manwë, whose distant questions now rang in his memory like mockery. What is it that you fear? Saruman bared his teeth against the wind.
He feared this.
Living when better men had fallen. Carrying what they had paid for with their lives.
The horizon shimmered ahead, empty and indifferent. Somewhere beyond it lay the West: Gondor's white walls, Rohan's green plains, the quiet forests where Elves still sang as if the world were whole. They did not know. They could not yet imagine what was moving toward them—armies without end, sorcery sharpened into precision, a darkness no longer content to wait in shadow.
And if he failed now—
Saruman sucked in a breath that burned his lungs.
No. There would be no failure. Not after this.
The task ahead loomed vast enough to crush him. One wizard, stripped raw by loss, racing against a tide that had already swallowed half the world. How was he meant to warn kingdoms that argued over borders and ancient slights? How was he meant to make them listen—to make them believe—before the storm broke over their heads?
He thought, briefly, of the Eagles—of distant skies and old alliances—and felt the bitter edge of reality cut in. Even they could not be everywhere. No one could.
Which meant it would fall to words. To urgency. To fear.
His tools, not Morinethar's fire or Rómestámo's cold, but something sharper and quieter.
Saruman straightened in the saddle.
Grief still gnawed at him, raw and unresolved, but beneath it something else was hardening—something narrow and unyielding. Resolve, honed by the knowledge that there would be no second chance, no brother at his side to steady his hand.
"I will not waste this," he murmured into the wind, voice rough. "I will not."
Shadobane snorted and surged forward, as if answering him.
Saruman leaned low over the horse's neck and drove him harder, toward the West, toward warning and war. Whatever lay ahead—skepticism, resistance, failure—he would meet it head-on. Not with smiles. Not with certainty.
But with the weight of the dead behind him.
The world had taken his brothers.
It would not take their purpose.
And if Middle-earth was to survive what was coming, it would do so because Saruman rode now—not as the proud wizard who once knelt unafraid in Valinor, but as something forged from loss and necessity.
The future had chosen him.
And this time, he would not look away.