The shadow of Dol Guldur had once been a suffocating shroud over the southern woods, but now it felt like a flickering candle in a hurricane. Kaelen sat on the back of Smaug, who was currently flying at an altitude where the air was thin and the stars felt close enough to touch.
Beside him, Thranduil stood on the dragon's scales as if they were solid ground, his cloak of "Non-Existence" rippling in a wind that couldn't quite touch him. Ereinion sat near the dragon's head, his hand resting on the luminous bridle, his spear Aeglos humming a low, steady note of cosmic power.
"Ready, boys?" Kaelen asked, pulling a pocket watch from his robe. "We're precisely three minutes away from making Sauron regret ever leaving the Void in the first place."
The Siege of Nothingness
They didn't arrive with a blare of trumpets. They arrived with a Global Silence.
As Smaug descended over the Hill of Sorcery, Thranduil raised his hand. Down below, the thousands of Orcs, Trolls, and Easterlings stationed at the fortress looked up, but they didn't see a dragon. They saw a "Blind Spot" in the sky—a hole in reality that hurt to look at.
The Void-Soldier Drop
Thranduil didn't land the dragon. He opened a thousand micro-rifts in the air above the battlements.
From these rifts stepped the Woodland Void-Guard. They didn't fall; they drifted down like predatory feathers. When an Orc swung a scimitar, the Void-Soldier simply "un-phased," letting the blade pass through them, before tapping the Orc with a finger.
The Orc didn't die—it was simply Unwritten. It vanished from the timeline, its armor clattering to the stones as if it had never been inhabited.
Ereinion's Light: The Purge of the Pits
While Thranduil's soldiers erased the army, Ereinion leaped from Smaug's back. He descended like a falling star, Aeglos pointed directly at the black heart of the fortress.
"The dark has hidden here too long!" Ereinion shouted.
Upon impact, he didn't create an explosion of fire. He released a Nova of Information.
The "White Void" flooded the dungeons of Dol Guldur. This energy didn't destroy; it reclaimed. The necrotic spells holding the fortress together were overwritten by the pure, primordial math of the universe. The black stones began to turn into white quartz. The poisoned water in the pits turned into clear spring water.
The Necromancer—a flickering, hateful spirit—screeched as the light of Ereinion's lineage, amplified by Kaelen's magic, began to give him a physical form just so it could properly exile him.
The Continental Fold
Sauron's spirit attempted to flee, a dark cloud rushing toward the East, toward Mordor.
"Oh, no you don't," Kaelen muttered, standing up on Smaug's neck. "We discussed this, Thranduil. The 'Fold'."
Thranduil nodded. He reached out with his mind, grabbing the "Space" of the hill of Dol Guldur and the "Space" of the center of the sun.
The Fold Technique:
Selection: Thranduil pinpointed the exact coordinates of the escaping Shadow.
Overlap: He folded the map of Middle-earth until Dol Guldur touched the surface of a distant, uninhabited star.
The Kick: Kaelen provided the "Void-Push."
With a sound like a giant book slamming shut, the entire hill—fortress, shadow, and fleeing spirit—was momentarily displaced. When the "Fold" snapped back, the hill was gone. In its place was a perfectly circular, grassy meadow, smelling of wildflowers and fresh rain.
Sauron wasn't dead—you can't kill a Maia so easily—but his essence had been scattered across a billion miles of vacuum. It would take him a few thousand years just to remember his own name.
The Victory Tea
Smaug landed in the center of the new meadow. The dragon looked around, confused. "Where... where did the gold go?"
"I told you, Smaug," Ereinion said, patting the dragon's snout. "Gold is just heavy dirt. Look at the grass. Isn't it much nicer to breathe air that doesn't taste like sulfur?"
Thranduil walked over to Kaelen, his Void-Soldiers flickering out of existence as they returned to the hidden Greenwood. "It is done, Master. The South is clean."
"For now," Kaelen said, pulling a picnic basket out of a rift. "But the universe always tries to fill a vacuum. Luckily, we're the ones who own the vacuum."
He sat down on the fresh grass and started laying out sandwiches.
"Come on, boys. Ereinion, stop trying to make the butterflies glow in the dark. Thranduil, put the 'Continental Fold' away before you accidentally swap the moon with a giant cheese wheel. It's lunch time."
As the three of them sat in the sun, the "Cozy" Master and his two "OP" sons, the world of Middle-earth felt a sudden, profound sense of relief. The Great War had been cancelled due to lack of interest—and because the main villain had been accidentally teleported into a solar flare.
"Master?" Thranduil asked, biting into a cucumber sandwich.
"Yeah?"
"Can we go to the Shire next? I hear they have excellent compost for your pumpkins."
Kaelen grinned. "Pack your bags, Prince. We're going on a road trip."