Chapter Text
The fifth bells of Tirion had not faded yet but Maeglin already halfway to the wilderness. His wounded head made his vision dizzy and each steps only brought him pain. His face pale with blood loss but he knew he must kept walking for if the guard of the White City found him, there's no reasons he wouldn't be taken as a prisoner.
For a while, he walked without thought. His limbs moved from habit, not will. The rhythm of his breath, ragged though it was, became the only sound that marked his passage. His body swayed with each step, every motion grinding against the wounds hidden beneath his torn cloak. His shoulder bled still from the stones, his ribs were split from the boot that had struck him, and the dried dust upon his face itched with the salt of tears he had not meant to shed. The cloak they had given him hung heavy on his back, fine wool and starlight-thread turned to burden. In one hand he carried the flask that the captain had left at his feet, in the other the small loaf of barley and honey that already seemed too precious to eat.
Each step tore at his breath. His vision swam in and out of focus. At times the world bent around him, and he thought he saw faces in the air. Of his mother’s, pale and still, her eyes hard with the memory of judgment. Glorfindel’s, the one golden elf that once held him in his arms now seems distant, his mouth set in weary contempt. Even Fingolfin’s face returned, but softer, old sorrow carved deep upon it. All of them watched him walk, silent as statues. None reached out. None called his name.
He wondered how far the curse of his deeds could reach. If even here, beyond the walls of Valinor, the shadow of Gondolin would follow him. He had betrayed a city. He had given Morgoth the path to its heart. He had watched fire consume its towers, had felt the heat upon his skin as the mountain roared. Yet none had known what that fire had done to him. None had seen the years in Angband, when light was stripped from his eyes and voice from his throat. None had seen how Morgoth had torn his very being apart and bound what remained of him to one of the Silmarils, laughing as he did so. Maeglin had screamed until no sound was left in him, and even then the darkness had found ways to listen.
He remembered every moment. And now, walking beneath a sky that offered no mercy, he wondered if he had ever truly escaped.
When the shadows of twilight deepened into night and the stars began to kindle in the east, Maeglin turned aside from the path. He climbed a knoll that rose gently from the plain, where a single fir tree stood leaning eastward, as though bowing endlessly to an unseen king long departed. Its bark was silver-grey, its roots gripped the stone like claws, and its boughs whispered to no one.
Here he laid down his pack, removed the cloak with care, and lowered himself slowly to his knees for the ache in his side burned like hot coals. He unwrapped the linen band that covered his brow. The wound, dealt by a jeering citizen’s stone, had caked black upon his temple, tangling dark hair into stiff cords. He poured a little water from his flask precious as moonlight and let it cleanse the skin, though it stung like fire. He tore a strip from the hem of his tunic and bound it anew, clumsily but firm.
He thought of the forges where he had worked, the silver veins that had glowed beneath his hammer, and how he had once dreamed of shaping something eternal. Now even his name had been stripped from him. Anath-nórëa, the Forsaken of Grace. That was what they called him now. It sounded strange in his mind, distant, as though belonging to someone else. Perhaps that was mercy, to be no one at all.
His body grew heavy, and his hands trembled where they hung at his sides. Somewhere within his chest, his heart faltered.
He tried to keep his eyes opened, but it grew heavy. his hands shivering where they hung at his sides. Somewhere within his chest, his heart faltered. He tried to draw breath, but the air no longer answered. His sight narrowed to a single point, the faint shimmer of light upon the flask beside his hand.
And then Maeglin, son of Aredhel, lay still beneath the tree and his eyes dimmed.
The air suddenly thickened with a strange tremor, a low hum that seemed not of sky or earth but of something deeper, something living beneath both. Then the grass upon the hills bent low and the dry thorns rattled like mourners’ hands.
From the far edge of the barren plain, the forest began to move. It was an old forest, older than the walls of Tirion, its trees tall and grey with age, roots deep in the bones of Arda. They heard the faint echo of the fallen elf’s spirit and knew the grief that had followed him. Their leaves quivered though no storm passed through them. Their trunks groaned.
The tree branches bent low, touching the edge of Maeglin's cloak with its leaves. Then others came, oaks with thick branches, birches white as frost, pines black and heavy with resin. They surrounded him in a slow circle.
The forest wept. The sound was like rain that did not fall, a mourning drawn from the heartwood of every tree. It rose and fell in waves until even the wind fell silent, and only that vast whispering grief remained. Then, as if moved by one mind, the trees reached down. Their roots slid through the dust like gentle hands. They lifted the broken body of Maeglin from the road and carried him into the shadow of the forest.
There, where sunlight faded and moss grew thick as velvet, they laid him in the hollow of an ancient oak. The ground beneath him pulsed faintly with life. Branches wove themselves above, forming a canopy that sealed away the sky. Vines crept over him, slow and tender, wrapping his limbs in green. The wounds upon his skin closed beneath the sap that flowed from their touch. His breath stilled but did not cease. It lingered, faint as the sigh of leaves.
He did not wake. His eyes remained closed, long lashes resting upon cheeks pale as carved marble. His soul was torn long ago by the hand of Morgoth and scattered beyond the reach of Arda. And now, What lay within the husk that remained was only an incomplete soul. The forest knew it. Yet they did not let him die. They poured their strength into the shell of his body, cradling what was left, feeding him the hum of roots and the slow rhythm of growth.
Flowers bloomed and withered in the space of a breath. The moss deepened until it covered him entirely, and still the trees hummed. They sang of the fallen one who had been cast out by light and claimed by shadow, and of the strange mercy that had bound him not to death, but to dreamless sleep.
They guarded the body with the last thread of soul that bound him to the world.
When the greater part of Maeglin’s fëa broke from the silent husk that lay guarded in the forest of Aman, it fled not toward the Halls of Mandos nor to the far shores where the weary find rest. It fled outward, beyond the Circles of the World, drawn by a deep and violent current, as though the Music itself sought to cast him far from all memory of his former grief. In the vast darkness that lay outside Ilúvatar’s creation, where cold rose like smoke from the void, a new thread of destiny seized him and carried him northward into realms untouched by the Valar. A place where another universe brushed against Ilúvatar’s world like two waves crossing in the dark.
Thus the spirit that had once walked the street of Valinor was swept into Jotunheim, where frost was older than time and the bones of the world lay beneath endless night. There, amid a battlefield still steaming with the remnants of war, the fëa found an empty vessel. A small infant with blue-skin, its parents fallen beside it. The child’s soul had passed only moments before and the shell remained warm with recent death. Drawn by instinct to survive, Maeglin’s fëa settled into the waiting form and breathed life into it.
He wailed once and in that sound two fates became one. The blue skin faded and replaced by pale white skin as white as snow.
Not long after, Odin Allfather came upon the ruins of the fallen stronghold. The frost giants lay scattered, defeated, and the bitter wind swept through the shattered halls as if mourning the cost of victory. Amid the rubble Odin found the small child wrapped in remnants of a torn cloth, its skin so white as if born from the ice of the Jotnar. He bent over the infant and beheld something strange upon its brow: not merely the mark of Jotun lineage, but a faint shimmer as though starlights shine beneath the skin.
Odin was not a gentle king, but he was not heartless. He took pity and decided not to end Jotnar royal blood for a baby bore no sins like its parent. When he lifted the child, it stopped wailing as if it sensed safety finally came. The baby looked up at him with dark eyes that seemed older than an infant’s should be, eyes that carried a lot of sorrow. Odin felt the weight of something unspoken, perhaps it was guilt, perhaps something more tender. He said nothing of this to his warriors. Instead, he wrapped the small form in his cloak and carried him away from the field.
Odin had carried battle-worn bodies before, countless in fact, but never one so small and so light it felt like a sigh gathered into his cloak. The journey back from Jotunheim was long. The wind sharp, the sky restless with the smell of spilled blood. The guards who saw him return whispered among themselves, for the All-Father bore no trophy, no prisoner, no captured relic of war but only a bundled infant, sleepless and silent, whose strange dark eyes blinked against the brightness of Asgard.
Frigga heard long before she saw. There was something in the air, some disruptions in the threads of fate she habitually listened to. The faint vibration of a soul that did not belong. She met Odin at the golden archway of the palace, her steps quickening, her brows drawn in worry.
“What have you brought home?” she asked as she reached him.
Odin shifted the child slightly so she could see. The infant stared back up with his innocent big eyes. A curious sense of quiet hung around him.
Frigga’s breath hitched the moment their gazes locked. She felt it. The child’s fea was unlike any she had touched in the worlds of Yggdrasil. Greater part of this soul lingered in him like a flame, but another parts was absent entirely, as though severed and sent spinning into some unreachable place. And yet what remained in him pulsed with fierce resilience.
“His parent?” she asked quietly.
“Gone.” Odin’s answer was blunt, tired.
Frigga studied the child longer. She brushed a thumb over his cheek, expecting him to recoil or fuss, but he remained still, watching her with unsettling focus.
“What do you intend?” she asked at last.
Odin exhaled slowly, the kind of breath that held more weight than air. “To raise him here. To give him a life that does not end in frost and blood.” Then lower, “To give Thor a brother.”
As if summoned, small feet pounded down the corridor. Thor barely old enough to swing a wooden practice hammer without hitting himself. He raced toward them, eyes wide with excitement.
“Father! Mother! Is it true? The guards said you brought a monster baby!”
Frigga shot Odin a look so sharp he winced.
Thor skidded to a stop in front of them and gaped at the bundle. The child stared back, expression unchanged, though something in his gaze sharpened—as if measuring this loud golden creature who would one day shake worlds with his footsteps.
“He’s not a monster,” Frigga corrected gently. “He is just a baby.”
Thor leaned in closer, squinting. “He’s so small.”
Frigga smiled despite herself. “Most babies are, dear.”
“But he’s so pale,” Thor added in wonder. “Like he came from death.”
“His coloring is different, yes,” Frigga said, “but that only makes him unique.”
Thor’s face brightened instantly. “Can I hold him?”
Odin opened his mouth likely to refuse but the infant reached, tiny fingers curling in Thor’s direction. Frigga took the child from Odin’s arms and settled him carefully into Thor’s. Thor froze, holding the baby as though he were made of spun glass.
“He’s cold,” Thor murmured. “Why is he so cold?”
Frigga wrapped the cloak tighter around the baby. “He’s had a difficult beginning,” she said. “He will warm in time.”
The infant blinked slowly, his little brow furrowing, and Frigga felt a sting in her chest. She touched the child’s forehead gently. “He needs a name.”
Thor brightened dramatically. “Can I name him? Can I?”
“Yes,” Frigga said gently.
Thor puffed out his chest, clearly taking this as a sacred task. He looked down at the baby as though searching his soul which ironically, he might’ve been for the infant stared back at him with uncomfortable intensity.
“I will name him… uh…” Thor’s face screwed up. “Shadowbaby.”
“No,” Frigga said instantly.
“Frostling!”
“Absolutely not.”
“How about Snowhite…”
“Son,” Odin interrupted, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Maybe let your mother choose.”
Thor deflated, but nodded.
Frigga took the infant back into her arms and holding him close, humming instinctively. His body softened into her warmth. The name came to her not from prophecy or omen, but from the simple sense that this child whatever his origins and whatever ancient sorrow he carried, needed something gentle. Something belonging. A home.
“Loki,” she said softly. “He looks like a Loki.”
The infant blinked and cooed.
Thor frowned. “What does Loki mean?”
“It means,” Frigga said with a small smile, “that he has a clever spirit. And perhaps a mischievous one.”
Thor brightened immediately. “Oh! Then it fits perfectly!”
Odin watched them.
Frigga holding the child with the tenderness of a mother who had decided in a heartbeat to love him, Thor beaming at his new brother, the baby staring up at his new family. There was a twist in Odin’s heart. Fate had delivered this soul into his hands for reasons he could not yet see.
Frigga pressed a kiss to the infant’s temple. “Welcome home, Loki.”
And for the first time since Odin had found him, the child giggle. A small and sweet sound. And his heart instantly swelling with love.
Yes. Loki would do.
Valinor had always held a stillness woven from peace, but today the silence crept in like a cold tide, unsettling in a way no one could immediately name. Birds stopped their songs. The wind hesitated in the branches. Even the light of sun seemed to dim for a heartbeat, as if the very air waited for a truth too grave to carry.
Then the bell from the Halls of Mandos rang.
One heavy toll, deep enough to make walls tremble. Another followed, spreading over the plains and hills and white towers like a shroud drawn across the sky. The sound was old, older than the memories of most who heard it, and yet all felt its meaning instinctively. No Elf died in Valinor unless fate itself had shattered. The bell had last spoken in the First Age when sorrow filled the world like smoke. Now it spoke again.
Panic stirred through Tirion. Eldar stepped from their homes to look toward the west where the Halls of Mandos lay hidden behind shadowed mountains. Mothers clutched their children and asked questions with voices already shaking. Scholars in the palace corridors dropped their scrolls without noticing. Servants forgot their duties. In every face there was the same fear, the same confusion, the same whisper forming before anyone dared speak it aloud.
Who has died.
Before the words fully spread, a rider approached the city. The white road parted before him although none knew whether to bow or flee. His armor bore the insignia of Mandos and no one of Tirion had seen such a messenger since the Elder Days. He carried no banner. His steps echoed through the courtyard as though he walked alone in a void.
By the time the rider from Mandos approached the gates of the royal palace, the courtyard was crammed with anxious nobles, anxious guards, and members of the House of Finwë who had all abandoned their duties. King Finarfin stood at the top of the stairs, sunlight sharp on his golden hair yet unable to warm the dread tightening around him. Beside him Fingolfin watched in taut silence, jaw clenched, hands rigid at his sides. Even those who had seen the Wars of the Jewels could not steady themselves now. Death in Aman was a thing they had believed utterly ended.
The rider approached, bowed his head, and spoke with a voice stripped of all ornament. There was no ceremony in news that broke the laws of their land.
“A death has been recorded in Aman.”
Every person in the courtyard gasped. Finarfin’s breath caught though he did not allow it to show. The messenger continued before the king could speak.
“The one who has passed is of the House of Finwë.”
A cry rose from among the courtiers. Shock rippled like a stormwind. Aredhel, who had come at Finarfin’s summons, stood near the pillars and felt her blood turn cold. She pressed her hand to her mouth, her knees weakening, even before the name was spoken. Something inside her already knew.
The messenger lifted his gaze at last.
“The one who has fallen is Maeglin.”
Aredhel’s cry tore through the courtyard like a blade. She stumbled forward before anyone could move, her strength abandoning her as if the news itself had struck her down.
Glorfindel, who had only come to the palace on some half-formed instinct, staggered as if struck through the chest, breath punched from him. He shook his head violently, refusing the truth. Maeglin had been troubled, yes. Maeglin had been estranged. Maeglin had been… complicated. But dead? In Valinor? Impossible. It had to be impossible.
Finarfin closed his eyes for a single moment, and in that moment he felt the weight of his own choices press upon him. The judgment he had given. The voice he had allowed to sway him. The exile he had stood behind. Now there was no action left to mend it.
He forced himself to breathe through the roaring in his ears.“If Maeglin is dead,” he said, “then where lies his body? I would have him brought to rest beside my father, Finwë, among the royal tombs. Whatever has passed between us, he is still of my blood.”
The messenger turned his gaze upon Finarfin, and there was something in that look that chilled even the king. Not disrespect, but a terrible, sorrowful contempt as one might look upon a man asking to claim a treasure he had already cast into the sea. “You cannot have his body. His body is beyond your reach.”
A murmur of outrage rippled through the hall. Fingolfin’s composure snapped. “Explain yourself. What meaning is this? Did beasts take my grandson? Did he fall into chasms? How can the body of an elf in Aman be beyond reach?”
The messenger lifted his chin. “His body is guarded.”
“Guarded?” Turgon repeated, disbelief cutting into anger. “Speak plainly. Guarded by whom? And for what purpose? He was our kin—”
The messenger’s lips curled faintly, not in amusement but in scorn. “Your kin? Now you claim him so.”
The words struck like a slap, echoing in the stunned silence that followed. Aredhel sobbed harder, burying her face in her trembling hands, for she could not answer that accusation. Others bowed their heads, knowing the messenger spoke truth.
“The forest holds him,” the messenger answered. “And it bars all who approach. No creature of Arda, mortal or immortal, may set foot within the circle where he lies. The trees have knit themselves into a wall of living wood, thicker than any stone. Even Yavanna herself cannot command them to open.”
Gasps rippled through the hall. For trees to defy their own maker was unheard of. It meant a wound so deep that all of Yavanna’s children had rallied in grief.
Aredhel collapsed to her knees, shaking violently. Her son who she had disowned before all of Tirion was gone. Her words had been the last he had heard from her. Not a blessing. Not forgiveness. Not even understanding. Only rejection. The memory struck her with such force that her breath broke into sobs. Grief dug into her like claws. Guilt flooded her chest until she could not breathe.
“No,” she whispered. "My son..." That single word shattered under its own weight.
Turgon stood rigid beside her. His hands trembled but he did not fall. He felt a suffocating hollowness rise from within, a feeling he had not known since Gondolin’s ruin. Maeglin had been a burden in his eyes, a shadow of old wounds, a reminder of mistakes he did not wish to face. Yet the truth swept over him now with brutal clarity. He had driven the blade deeper. He had demanded Maeglin’s expulsion. He had been blind to the sorrow in the boy’s eyes. And now there was no chance left, no redemption.
“It cannot be,” Fingolfin whispered, though his voice was thick with dread.
“It is,” said the messenger. “The forest has taken him into its keeping.”
Aredhel’s sobbing became a raw, broken wail.
Glorfindel closed his eyes hard and turned away, guilt burning through him like fire.
Turgon’s face twisted, and for the first time in his long life he looked utterly lost. “But he is my nephew,” he said quietly, pleading with a voice unused to pleading. “I wish to give honor where once I gave wrong. Let me at least—”
“No,” the messenger said, and this time his voice was cold.
Finarfin, whose dignity had carried him through wars and rebellions, felt his composure finally crack. “Speak,” he said harshly. “If the forest has claimed his body…why? For what cause?”
The messenger looked around the hall, letting his gaze pass over each face. Courtiers who had scorned Maeglin could not meet his eyes.
“Because he was cast out by the hands that should have held him. Because he found no shelter in the homes that should have been his. You disowned him. You shamed him. You stood by as others raised hands against him. And so, when his life flickered and failed, the forest offered the mercy none of you did. It has deemed you unworthy to lay him to rest.”
A murmur of denial, protest, horror rose among the elves. Many began to weep openly, others argued with shaking voices.
The messenger raised his hand and the hall fell abruptly silent.
“And now you ask for his body? To lay him in honor among those who never once honored him in life?” His voice darkened. “Tell me, on what right?”
Turgon lowered his head in agony. Fingolfin clenched his fists. Finarfin closed his eyes, unable to deny the judgment cast upon them.
The messenger’s next words were worse.
“His soul is too damaged that even after death Mandos does not house his soul,” the messenger continued over the growing chaos. “There is no record of his passing within the Halls. His fëa did not come to us.”
Finarfin stepped back as if the floor had tilted beneath him.
“So where is he?” he whispered.
“We do not know,” the herald answered. “It is as though he chose the fate of Men instead. slipping beyond the circles of the world, into whatever lies past our sight. He is gone.”
The courtyard exploded.
Fingolfin shouted for silence, but his own voice cracked under the weight of guilt he had buried for years. He had done nothing to stop the cruelty shown to his own grandson, nothing to restrain his children when they tormented the boy for the stain of his father’s blood. Every memory struck him like a hammer.
Glorfindel stood motionless in the chaos, pale as death, the soundless world suddenly draining around him. He had promised Maeglin an undying love once. He had sworn to cherish him. And then he had broken him with the coldest rejection an elven heart could deliver. He had watched Maeglin’s hope die in his eyes. And after that? He had cast him out with the rest. His own voice was among those that had condemned the boy, louder than most because he had been trying to drown out the guilt. Now that guilt came roaring back, volcanic, choking him. He pressed a hand against his chest, gasping on air that would not come.
The messenger raised his voice again, and the anger in his words cracked the air.
“The Valar will convene a trial,” he announced above the turmoil. “Those whose hands dealt injury to Maeglin, whose violence led him to the forest that claimed him, will answered before the Valar. Exile, confinement, or sundered ties shall be their sentence. Prepare your names. They will be called.”
The crowd recoiled. Fear stirred, but so did remorse. Faces that had once glared at Maeglin now turned pale with horror.
The messenger’s final words were not shouted. They were spoken with the gravity of doom.
“Justice shall be exacted within this city. For the life lost was innocent and the sorrow done to him was great.”
He turned and left the hall without waiting for reply. His departure felt like the passing of a storm, yet no relief followed.
Finarfin remained standing though his hands were clenched until the knuckles whitened. He felt the weight of his crown as if it were stone. His voice had condemned Maeglin. His court had allowed the mob. Now his kingdom must face the judgment of Mandos.
And above them all lingered the toll of the Bell, still echoing through memory, still lingering in every heart.
A reminder that even in the Blessed Lands, sorrow could find its way.
And that the death of one unloved elf had shaken the whole of Valinor.